Why Finding A Job Feels Impossible Right Now

there are 9 million job openings right now and politicians keep saying the economy is doing great but then why does it feel impossible to get a job in this video I'll share four reasons why finding a job is so hard right now and I'll even reveal my personal five-step strategy that recently help three of my friends land their jobs first there's misleading data to think about politicians love to point to the record low unemployment rate of 3. 7% but that metric is kind of wrong just because the unemployment rate is 3. 7% doeses it mean 96.

3% of people are employed the Bureau of Labor Statistics or the BLS only counts people as unemployed if and only if they meet this weird criteria you must be currently available to work and you must have looked for a job in the last 4 weeks meaning if you spend months job hunting without any success and you feel discouraged and decide to take a few weeks off from spamming job boards you won't be counted towards the unemployment rate anymore the problem is if you have a lot of people who just give up looking for a job because they're discouraged have family obligations or any other reasons the unemployment rate is going to seem pretty low the metric is also missing a lot of people it does include nearly 40% of the US population those with disabilities students retirees active duty military or even stay-at-home caregivers I didn't realize how bad everything was until the other week I was talking to my neighbor and he told me he was a QA engineer and about about a year ago he moved into this new apartment he got new furniture and he finally thought he had his life together but then recently he got laid off and he was telling me how frustrating and annoying it is when he constantly hear about the news talking about how great the labor market is but at the same time he's burning through his savings and he's been submitting hundreds of job applications with no response he had no idea what was going on and while I was doing research for this video I finally figured out why he's not hearing back a 20 23 survey found that many employers are actively posting job opportunities without any intention to hire or even respond to applicants companies called this ghost job postings basically it's a strategy certain companies use to collect some very interesting data take fractal for example a digital marketing agency in 2023 Kelsey libert fractal's co-founder openly admitted that they kept adds up for associate positions even when they weren't hiring because turnover for that role is is high basically companies try to build a pipeline of potential candidates for the future although they don't have any interest in hiring someone now they want to have your information on file so they can hit you up when they need to fill a vacant spot which might explain why so many people are getting ghosted but there is another reason companies do ghost job postings and it's a lot worse than building a candidate pipeline when it comes to most job applications chances are It'll ask you to list out your qualifications salary expectations previous employers and their salaries although you've never intended to you're basically giving these companies free Insider information about their industry now they can see what their competitors are paying and gauge how many people are looking for a specific role based on this they can make major decisions like what's the lowest salary they can offer to hire someone and how difficult would it be to get a replacement if they have to fire a current employee and the amount of ghost job postings are only getting worse while they have always existed a 2024 study found that mentions of ghosting are up 77% since February 2020 the problem is these job postings create a false sense of hope people like my neighbor are out here spending hours every day applying to job listings crossing their fingers oblivious to the fact that some companies have no intention to respond next there just might not be enough job opportunities although Help Wanted signs are littered across the US many of them are hung outside of bars restaurants and gas stations the problem is these jobs might not feel worth it to some job Seekers chances are these opportunities pay pretty poorly they have unpredictable schedules offer little and no benefits or any job stability a study found that 41% of job Seekers thought there weren't enough job openings in their preferred industry and even if they can find one chances are companies are lowballing salary offers 46% of job Seekers said they could only find low-paying jobs and a big reason for this is because of Leverage employers know there are more people looking for a job than there are jobs available meaning they can offer a lower salary although some may call these job Seekers ungrateful and say they should just take what they can get in an economy where the costs of things like food rent and pineapple pizza are at an all-time high taking on a low paying job could be a net negative in economics this can be explained by opportunity cost basically the time you spend doing something is a time not spent doing something else from Monday to Friday you might be spending 50 hours washing dishes stocking shelves or serving food to get paid a wage that barely covers your basic expenses but what if instead you spent those 50 hours a week to continue looking for a job that actually matches your skill sets and salary expectations the more time you spend looking the higher your chances of getting one that fits what you're looking for and speaking of getting what you're looking for as someone who grew up without much money and worked really hard to build my own business one of my greatest Joys is being able to financially help my parents and loved ones out but one of my biggest fears is wondering what would I do if something happened to me what would happened to those who relied on me something that brought me peace of mind knowing it can help protect my loved ones is life insurance I found this company called ethos that makes buying life insurance really easy it only took a few minutes to fill out some questions online and I received my quote back in seconds what gave me the confidence to check out ethos is its excellent rating on trust pilot and its A+ score from the Better Business Bureau and it was pretty surprising the whole thing cost a lot less than I thought it would according to Investopedia each year that you wait to purchase life insurance your premiums can increase in cost by 8 to 10% and the sooner you buy life insurance the more affordable it's likely to be you can get your own personalized free quot today in minutes by clicking my link below and thank you to ethos for sponsoring this video next the recruiting process is complete complely broken chances are you've Ed job platforms like LinkedIn indeed and zip recruiter they make applying to Opportunities fast you fill out a template attach your resume and spam apply the problem is if you can spam hundreds of job applications a day so can everyone else which makes it impossible for recruiters to scan through everything as a result companies have turned to AI tools to sift through the flood of resumés a 2023 study found that up to 75% of RS are rejected by these tools before they even reach a real person the problem is studies show that both unqualified and qualified candidates get filtered out by these tools companies know this happens too but they don't really care because it's way more costeffective to use these tools than not but even if you're the lucky few whose application doesn't get eliminated by a judgmental and rude AI it might not even matter Elliot Garlock the founder of Stella Talent Partners a recruiting firm admits that even before a company advertises a job opening they might already have a pre-selected candidate for the position but how do they already know who they're going to hire before posting the job the truth is even if you groom from birth to be in the role and you pass the AI filtering tools and you're objectively the perfect fit for the job there's one other factor that matters even more do you know someone at the company a 2014 study found that referrals account for between 30 and 50% of hires and a referral who gets an interview has a 40% better chance of getting hired than other candidates the problem is when good jobs are constantly being filled by referrals it means it's the same kind of people who keep getting these opportunities people who went to the same schools parts of the same Social Circle or from a specific background it becomes a closed Network that makes it really hard for the average person without these connections to break in but here's the good news I created a five-step job launch process that three of my friends recently used to land their jobs and I'm going to break it down for you step by step but first if you've been primarily applying to jobs on LinkedIn indeed and zip recruiter by just submitting an application then you need to stop the truth is this is the least effective way to apply anywhere and I didn't realize this until I learned about the psychological phenomenon called the Ben Franklin effect basically when someone does a favor for you that person will feel more positively about you and are more likely to do you a a second favor if you want to learn more about using psychology to live a wealthy healthy life sign up for my free Weekly Newsletter reinkable link below so here's my personal five-step process step one if you don't have a LinkedIn profile yet get one upload your picture put your work in school history your hobbies you want to fill in as much as you can step two add everyone you have even the slightest connection with if you said hi once in high school or you saw them dancing at a party 5 years ago most people on LinkedIn accept every invite they receive so don't worry about it step three look for jobs you're interested in on any job portal like you normally would like on LinkedIn let's say I found a role with Uber I'll then go on Uber's career page and confirm that job opportunity is still available chances are a company's website has more up-to-date information than these thirdparty job portals then go back to LinkedIn and search for the company in this case I'm searching for Uber then LinkedIn will let you know if you know anyone that works there if you do great you have your targets and I'll tell you what to do with them later if you don't have any direct connections or you just don't like those people then click on the company page go on the people's Tab and scroll down to the people you may know these are people with some sort of mutual connections with you maybe you both know a mutual friend or a friend of a friend these are also your targets but if you still don't have anyone don't worry go to the filters immediately available and apply some criteria to narrow down the number of people basically you're trying to find people with anything in common people who went to your college who studied what you studied who grew up in your same town whatever these filter people are now your targets step four start Mass adding these Targets on LinkedIn the more the marrier once they accept go full-blown Sherlock Homes on them and investigate their profiles to find anything else you have in common Hobbies skill sets previous jobs friend connections anything once you found something in common send them a message on LinkedIn you really don't have to write much just one sentence telling them why you're messaging them one sentence introducing yourself and maybe one to two sentences about what you have in common something like hey my name is Vincent and I'm reaching out because I'm interested in the operations role at Uber I used to do operations at Mrmagic lamp company I saw that you also enjoy eating pineapple pizza and playing video games and wanted to reach out to learn more about your experience at Uber are you free for a 15-minute call this Friday at 3:00 p. m.