Job hunters earning over $75,000 a year are constantly being told that it can take several months to find a job. In fact the higher your salary is, the longer its supposed to take to find a job.
I have seen these numbers quoted by job hunters, newspapers and on the Internet. In fact I saw in the National Post working section the other day that a senior executive should expect it to take 12 months to find a job. While it didn’t mention what the salary expectations are, I would assume it was over $100,000. If you continue to read that that it takes months to find a job, you will start to believe it.
If you believe it will take months, then you will act as if it will take months. But, you are only acting and believing it will take months because some “expert” tells you it should take months.
I am an expert and I am telling you it doesn’t take months to find a job. And keep reading to understand why it does not take months to find a job.
Let’s consider the silliness of these estimates:
- If you earn $75,000 and it takes 3 months to find a job, if you earn over $100,000 it takes a year, then does that mean if you earn $78,000 it will take 3 months and seven days? Obviously there is no absolute “rule” about how long it should take to find a job.
- Can you imagine a sales person selling a $75,000 product taking three months to close a single sale? That sales person would quickly lose their job. But a job hunter earning over $75,000 believes their hunt for a single job can take three months. An executive earning $100,000 believes it should take one year to close a single sale? Obviously, since there are methods to generate lots of sales, there must be methods to generate lots of job offers.
What are these absurd expectations of three to twelve month to find a job based on? I tried to research where these statistics come from and was not at all successful. (If you have some information please forward it to me, and I will update this article)
Let’s assume that it does take thee to twelve months for the average job hunter to find a job. I have a couple of ideas about why people take so long to find a job.
There are challenges that slow the job hunt immediately:
- Job hunters are told by recruiters things that are good for the recruiter but not for the job hunter. The worst story I have heard so far is the experienced and talented Senior Program manager who won’t go on LinkedIn because a few recruiters he talked to told him they don’t use LinkedIn and he should not bother. This program manager is a straight forward fellow and a trusting soul and he believed “the expert” recruiter. These recruiters may have even been honest and straight forward, but they probably weren’t good at their jobs. I know many good and honest recruiters, none would have told him to limit his job hunt.
- Job hunters do not know how to create resumes and covering letters. They understand using either the Chronological or functional formats and do a great job on spelling and layout, but they don’t know how to make the Resume and the Covering Letter into a “Sales Letter”.
Then the average Job Hunter only does five things to get a job: I have included some estimates of the time it takes each week to do these things.
- Keep in touch with half dozen recruiters located in Toronto (2 hours/week)
- Reading and responding to advertisements in the Toronto Start, Globe and Mail, National Post (2 hours/week)
- Checking Workopolis, Monster, CareerBuilder, and Working.com once or twice a week. (3 hours/week)
- Heading to a networking event once a week. (2 hours/week)
- Check out jobs at Human Resources Development Canada (HRDC) (2 hours/week)
In Sales jargon, these five things is called prospecting.
Now let’s look at the job opportunities. (After we do that, we will connect the two thoughts together). In Sales jargon, this is called the number of prospects.
Let’s consider some business facts:
- In the Globe and Mail Top 1,000 public companies the top 10 employers employed over a 1,000,000 people. There were over 250 companies that employed over a 1,000 people. So assume that the top 250 have over 2,000,000 employees.
- 5% of people leave a job because they retire, get sick, die, or move away for a reason not relevant to their job. This means that these 250 companies need to fill 100,000 (5% of 2,000,000) jobs that become available.
- Before you complain and say these jobs manufacturing and retail jobs. The Globe and Mail has 1000 companies and I have only estimated the top 250. It does not include the private companies, crown corporations, public institutions, city, provincial, and the federal government that are in the Globe And Mail’s list. Therefore to say that 100,000 jobs from large companies at any time is not unreasonable.
For my American readers, change the Globe and Mail 1000 to the Fortune 1000 and add a “0″ to every number.
We assumed the 100,000 jobs came from 250 different companies. That means each company will be having about 40 jobs available on average. Let’s assume that each hiring person is directly responsible for 10 jobs. That means there are 4 people responsible for each company, thus 250 companies means you need to contact 1,000 people to connect to these 100,000 jobs. The hiring person can be a department manager, somebody in Human Resources (HR) or a recruiter.
These 100,000 jobs are not new jobs, rather existing jobs that exist and require somebody to replace an individual that has moved on. These are the majority of the jobs available in the 5 places the typical job hunter looks.
Let’s continue with the numbers – In What Color Is Your Parachute? Nelson Bolles explains that to get the job that you want, you need to receive 2-3 job offers. To receive the job offers you probably need to be interviewed by 6-9 companies with a known job vacancy. To get one job offers you will need to send out 100 – 500 resumes. Therefore to get your job, you will need 2 x 6 x 100 = 1200 resumes at a minimum or 3 x 9 x 500= 13,500 resumes.
Now to put it all our numbers together 13,500 – 1,000 = 12,500.
This means you are only touching 10% of the number of people you need to touch to get your job.
If you only do the the five things listed above, it adds up to 11 hours a week. There are 4.25 weeks in a month, If it takes you three months to find job, you have spent 11 x 4.25 x 3 = 140 hours.
Another way to look at it is the number of contacts you make in one hour. 1,000 / 140 = 7.14 contacts / per hour.
Now lets look at backwards. What if you focused on the 1,000 contacts and spent 6 hours a day at it.
1,000 / 7 Contacts /per hour = 142 hours. 142 hours/6 hours per day = 23 days.
Therefore, if you do those five items that will generate you 1,000 contacts. You can complete the task of trying to get a job with the top 250 employers in the country in one month.
Your job hunt should take about one month, 1/3 of the time the “Experts” estimate.
In summary, it takes three to twelve months to find a job if
- You focus only on the 100,000 jobs available from the top 250 employers in the country.
- You spend only 11 hours a week looking for a job.
What should you do?
Salespeople work 40 to 50 hours a week to make their sales.
You need to work 40 to 50 hours a week on your job hunt.
I don’t believe it should take three to twelve months to find a job and you shouldn’t either. I believe you can find a job hunt in 66 days, but you need to work 40 to 50 hours a week on your job hunt.
The 66 Days To A Job Guaranteed! program provides a 66 day action plan for you to get a job. Apply to the program here.
This article is part of the Free 66 Day Job Club. The Job Club provides you with actions you can take every couple of days to increase your opportunity to get a job. Join the Free Job Club here right now and start taking action to get your next job FAST!
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