These are tough times for the job-hunting soul. Now that everything is about The Internets, the old methods seem irrelevant. There was a time -- oh, maybe four years ago -- when you could pick up the paper and find something resembling the kind of job you were looking for. In my case, there was always at least one ad for a technical writer. But those were different times. Now, there's little in the paper except, perhaps, listings tailored to those who are less likely to peruse the Internet.
But the online listings are a different story. Every headhunter in town, it seems, has an alert to let them know when someone posts a new resume. I know this because every time I post my resume I get a flurry of calls from headhunters, some with interesting offers. None of these offers ever leads anywhere, though. I'm guessing that it's become a game, that the headhunters are looking to limit the competition by contacting prospects, thereby preventing other headhunters from talking to these same people.
Of course, I could just be a cynic. And if I am indeed a cynic, this is probably something that I should add to my resume. Cynicism seems to be running rampant these days, but there are few who do it well. I should think that any firm looking for a cynic would be far better served by a professional cynic than a hack cynic, and I suspect that my many years of cynicism -- no, I'm not going to count them here -- would give me a decided advantage.
But that's assuming that the online listings really count for something, something other than existing merely to inflate the hit count of the particular website hosting the listing.
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