Part 9 (1/2)

Unfortunately, this is merely a historical note about this method. Many years ago I used to audit groups that used this method, plus similar job clubs in Michigan, Boston, San Diego and Northern California, and I can tell you job clubs worked as well as I have here described. But, the model died. For four reasons: changes in the use of the telephone; the rise of new technologies (the Internet, e-mail, texting, etc.); loss of federal funding for training job-seekers; and-most importantly of all-an increasing unwillingness in Western culture to work this hard. You won't find a single one of these left (so far as I know) anywhere on the face of the Earth. We (Nathan and I) have looked.

What you will find, instead (which is why I have listed job clubs here), is hundreds of job-hunting groups that call themselves ”job clubs” but they are not. They are far from the Azrin model.1 They tend to meet only once a week, and then for only a couple of hours, and may more accurately be described as Job-Search Support Groups. Their job-hunting success rate is usually around 10%, if that.

But there are some rare exceptions, with a much higher success rate-50% in fact-particularly if they use this book as their guide.2

Still, even ”dumbed down,” and having a much lower success rate, job-search support groups have one sterling virtue, and that is, they provide community to the otherwise lonely job-hunter. This is very, very valuable. No one should ever have to job-hunt all by themselves, if they can possibly avoid it. We all need encouragement and support, along the way.

A nationwide directory of job-search support groups can be found on Susan Joyce's wonderful website, job-hunt.org, located at tinyurl.com/7a9xbb.

3. Using the Yellow Pages. This method works 65% of the time. It involves going through the Yellow Pages of your local phone book, or actually, the Index to those Yellow Pages, so you can identify subjects or fields of interest to you. Then you go from the Index to the actual Yellow Pages and look up names of organizations or companies in those fields, in that town or city where you want to work. You call them, set up an appointment, go visit them, and explore whether or not they are hiring for the kind of work you do, or the position you are looking for. Of course, in this post-2008 period, it's a lot harder to get employers to consent to see you-in large companies, anyway. Still, you will note that you have a nine times better chance of finding a job with this method, than if you had just depended on your resume.

4. Knocking on the door of any employer, office, or manufacturing plant. This method works 47% of the time. It works best with small employers (25 or fewer employees) as you might have guessed. Sometimes you blunder into a place where a vacancy has just developed. One job-hunter knocked on the door of an architectural office at 11 a.m. His predecessor (for he did get hired there) had just quit at 10 a.m. that morning. If you try this method and nothing turns up, you broaden your definition of small employer to those with 50 or fewer employees. With this method you have an almost seven times better chance of finding a job than if you had just depended on your resume.

5. Asking for job-leads. This method works 33% of the time. With this method you ask family members, friends, and people you know in the community (or on LinkedIn) if they know of any place where someone with your talents and background is being sought. It is a simple question: do you know of any job vacancies at the place where you work-or elsewhere? Using this method, you have an almost five times better chance of finding a job, than if you had just sent out your resume.

6. Going to private employment agencies or search firms for help. This method works 27.8% of the time (at best) on down to 5% (at worse). These agencies used to just place office workers; now it's hard to think of a category of jobs they don't try to place, especially in large metropolitan areas. A directory of these firms in your area can be found at . Into their search engine put ”Employment agencies” and the name of your local town or city, to get the relevant listings. The wide variation in success rate (5%27.8%) is due to the fact that these agencies vary greatly in their staffing (ranging from extremely competent on down to inept, or running a scam). Still, at their best, agencies are four times more effective than just depending on your resume.

7. Answering local newspaper ads. This method works 24% of the time (at best) on down to 5% (again). With this method, you answer ”help wanted ads” in your local newspaper, especially the Sunday edition, a.s.suming your city or town still has a newspaper, online or in print, or both. See the website Job Search Steps found at tinyurl.com/d58l8z for how to use them. As for a directory of online newspapers from around the world, your best bet is Newslink, found at parable figure is 35.9%, and the overall figure for the American worker is 11.3%, the lowest level since 1916.)3

If you're not a union member, but you like this method (or you're desperate), employers tend to pick up workers (called day-laborers) early in the morning, on well-known street corners in your town (ask around). It's called pick-up work, it's usually short-term, usually yard work, or work that requires you to use your hands, usually paid to you in cash that day, and definitely temp work. But no job should be ”beneath you” when you're nearly flat-broke. All work like this is honorable. And while such jobs usually don't last long, occasionally they do, or-if the employer is impressed with the quality of your work-they can lead to more permanent employment. Sometimes.

9. Going to the state or federal employment office. This method works 14% of the time. You go to your local federal/state unemployment service office (prehensive site, job-hunt.org (or as she likes to say, ”job dash hunt dot org”), found at tinyurl.com/d9vxnv4).

11. Posting or mailing out your resume to employers. As you've probably figured out by now, this works at getting you a job (or, more accurately, at getting you an interview that leads to a job) 7% of the time. And I'm being generous with this estimate.

This comes as a shock to most job-hunters.

When you're unemployed, and job-hunting, or trying to change careers, everyone will tell you: a good resume will get you a job. It's virtually an article of faith among the unemployed (and their helpers).

Why does everyone keep telling us this, when it has such a miserable success record? Oh, you tell me. Why did everyone entrust their money to Bernie Madoff? Or why did so many people buy those incredibly risky financial instruments or mortgages that led to the Great Recession back in 2008? I don't know. I guess if you hear something often enough, and from enough different sources, you start to think it must be true.

Anyway, there it stands. Indisputable. The success rate of resumes is only 7%. And actually I'm being generous with that estimate. One study suggested that only 1 out of 1,470 resumes actually resulted in a job. Another study found the figure to be even worse: 1 job offer for every 1,700 resumes floating around out there.

By the way, once you post your resume on the Internet, it gets copied quickly by ”spiders” from other sites, and you can never remove it completely from the Internet. There are reportedly now at least 40,000,000 resumes floating around out there in the ether, like lost s.h.i.+ps on the Sarga.s.so Sea. Yours, among them. That can come back to haunt you if you ever fibbed (lied?) about anything, once a would-be employer Googles you, even years later.

And now, last but not least: 12. Looking for employers' job-postings on the Internet. This method works on average 4% of the time. Yeah, I know, you're somewhere between surprised and shocked at this finding. I was too.

It is strange. If you have access to the Internet, and you're out of work, everyone will tell you to look for employers' job-postings (vacancies)-either on the employer's own website (if you have a particular company or organization in mind), or on specific job-boards such as CareerBuilder, Yahoo/Hot Jobs, Monster, LinkUp, Hound, or on niche sites4 for particular industries, such as Dice; or on non-job sites such as Craigslist, or even on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites.

The question is, how helpful is the Internet when you're out of work?

The answer is: well, that depends.