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Shitty Job Hunting Advice That I've Gotten

 Somewhere along the line, I've mentioned my "diverse" background of work experiences - across a vast swath of industries, and a proven track record of reliability against many challenges.  I've worked a lot of jobs, filed a lot of 1040 and W2 forms, have taken a lot of interviews, and have been the fucking new guy more times than I care to count.  As a result, I've collected lots of bits of information and advice; some good, most terrible.  So, let's take a little deep dive into the poor, bad, unworkable, or downright shitty advice I've gotten through the years:

Just Leave Your College Years Off Of Your Resume 
The premise here is that if you're applying for a job that doesn't require a college degree, don't put your college on there.  I've had tons of interviewers tell me that they won't hire a project manager without boots-on-the-ground experience...but, contractors and tradesmen won't hire a guy with a degree to swing a hammer or dig a ditch, for fear that the soft college boy will either be too PC and unfunny, or he'll jump ship at the first opportunity.  So, just leave your college degree off of your resume in order to get a job in the trades.  This opens up a clamshell of lies and untruths - if you've concealed this on your resume, what else are you lying about?  Also, you've gotta account for this huge 4 year gap after high school.

Just Spam A Company You're Interested In - it'll show that you're persistent
The premise here is that you'll appear persistent or perseverant.  The story is that one kid kept applying to job after job, and pestering every staff member he could.  Everyone on the staff said "Boy, this kid is annoying, he'll never work here," but the hiring manager said "No sir, he clearly wants to work here because he's being so persistent," and hired the kid anyway...The kid turned out to be the best hire they'd ever made; he wanted to work, so he worked harder than anyone else.  That kid's name...was Albert Einstein...and then everybody clapped
                                        -Wayne Gretzky
                                                -Michael Scott
My experience with this advice is that this'll land you on a blacklist; a do-not-hire list, which is easily done in this day and age of databases and applicant tracking.  I've witnessed a manager physically crumple up the application of a guy who would come in every Monday and apply for an entry-level job.  The manager and another department head laughed as they did so, saying "This kid is obsessed - he'll never work here."  My experience here is that I'll get in for an interview, get through the first round, then get to the second round with an HR manager before they'll "suddenly" have a change of heart and decline to offer me a job.  Most recently, as I was changing careers (and re-enrolling in college classes), their reason was "I had office work in my resume, and brewing has less prestige than working in an office."  I've been told (by various companies) to flat-out leave them alone and stop contacting them; I've been brought in to second interviews only to be told that they weren't interested in me as a candidate; and I've been told that I'd never be hired because I was obnoxious.

Just Get Off Your Computer And Shake The Foreman's Hand
In this day and age of workplace shootings, offices have security...period.  If not, they'll have secretaries or receptionists that won't let you in without an appointment.  If you're on a jobsite and hand the guy in the nice truck and white hardhat a resume, he'll accept it, then throw it away at lunch.  If you're stalking the CEO or whoever enough that you can ambush them at lunch, that'll get you a restraining order.

A few other observations/frustrations:

  • Every single HR rep or resume writing service has very different advice and opinions, and each person you talk to will say that they alone have the answer and everyone else is wrong.  There's very little in consistent messaging - one HR rep's clean, minimalist resume is another HR rep's boring resume that says nothing.  One hiring manager's advice of "list what you did, who you did it for, and why you did it," flies directly in the face of another hiring manager's "Show me numbers and achievements, not just a list of tasks you did."
  • Even if you do everything properly, your results are predicated upon the willingness of hiring managers to look at your resume and interview you, as this journalist in Florida found out.
  • With the advent of online job searches, it's not just you versus Joe The Drunk from down the street applying for a job...it's you versus 10,000 randos from The Whole-Ass Internet, 9,500 of whom are more qualified than you, and 9,000 of whom will do the job for less money than you.
  • "You can explain any discrepancies away in a job interview," is terrible advice if your resume is also terrible and won't get seen by hiring managers.
  • After the Great Recession, the "New Normal," set in and we've never actually recovered.  Today's CoViD-era "Great Resignation," is workers taking back the power and fighting against the "Do more with less" attitude of The New Normal.  Employment in the US is 5.2%, which is on the high end of what's to be expected...what all of this tells me is that it's not that people don't want to work, it's that employers have gotten used to doing more with less, and now they're unable to.

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