July 7, 2011: You young folk probably won’t remember this song. It goes something like Please Mr. Postman look and see , if there’s a letter, a letter for me. If I remember right it’s about a young person anxiously awaiting for the Postman to deliver a letter from a love interest. Of course this was back in the day before cell phones, email, texting and Facebook. Yes – you young folk – we did have telephones back then, however, long distance calling could be cost prohibitive.
However, as an unemployed person, I don’t share the same sentiment as this lovelorn song writer. In many cases, it’s please Mr. Postman, DON’T have any mail for me! Notice of the discontinuation of unemployment benefits and unexpected bills, like a camera stop sign violation (yes I got my first not too long ago) generally come via snail mail. Rejection letters too are usually sent snail mail. It’s my experience that “no news is good news” is not applicable in the job hunting world. No news, especially after a second interview, likely means another candidate has been offered the job, and the employer is going through the hiring process and drafting up rejection letters to the unfortunate non-selected candidates. That is, as I have stated before, if you are lucky to hear anything at all!
So then you wait. And wait. You wait for the phone to ring. You check your email. And you make the dreaded walk to the mailbox. You know with 100 percent certainty if you see the return address of the potential employer with whom you recently interviewed, it’s a rejection letter. So you sigh and slowly open it up and brace yourself for disappointment.
Long term job hunting is not for the thin-skinned, insecure or faint of heart! Rejection is part of the deal. I had one job seeking friend who was positively crushed when she didn’t hear anything at all after sending out a flurry of resumes during her first week of job hunting! It’s part of the deal, part of the game. At an interviewing seminar I recently attended, a fellow job seeker stated she was very offended by the job playing game, about having to follow a set of rules that didn’t seem fair to her. But it’s part of the deal, part of the process. It’s my experience it’s just best to accept it and fully embrace it. Because if you play the game right, you will, eventually, get a job.
So if you get the dreaded rejection letter or call, you have to pick yourself up, dust yourself and get back in the job seeking saddle! If you work very hard and have a bit of luck in this economy, you will find a job. Two members of the job networking group I facilitate both recently found good jobs in their field. I know they both were extremely diligent in their job search and treated job hunting like a full-time job! I am so excited for both of them! Good luck guys!
So no funny stories today loyal blog readers! But I am planning an amusing entry for the next couple days, so stay tuned.
Let me end this post with a link to an article recently published in the ND Fargo Forum. It reflects my sentiment regarding including my home state of ND in my job hunt.
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/325718/publisher_ID/1/
Lisa
SmallTownWordNerd 