The Perils of Making One's Resume Too Available

Have I mentioned that I have applied for a lot of jobs? I graduated in May of 2009 and after nearly a year and half of—fortunately for me—underemployment, and the number of my CVs out in the job-search abyss has to be approaching the hundreds. Yes, "hundreds," as in plural. I’ve uploaded my resume to countless job-search sites, emailed my resume to dozens of prospective employers, and I’ve even used the archaic U.S. Postal Service once or twice to forward along my qualifications. What has all of this accomplished so far? Obviously not gainful employment, or I would not be voicing my disdain in this modern, anonymous medium. Rather, I have inherited something that’s more of a headache and cruel burden to all of my electronic modes of communication.

You see, I get crap emails all the time from bogus recruiters in high-turnover industries. And I mean all the time, like more than five a day. Often, they are even bold and savvy enough to sneak through my spam filters, engendering the rare instance of subdued excitement at the possibility that lies within the subject line “Position opening," which is immediately quashed when I learn that it’s for selling life insurance exclusively on commission. That’s assuming it’s even for a real industry, often it isn’t and it’s just in the form of some type of scam, or pyramid scheme.

Even more charmingly, I even get phone calls from these fraudulent recruiters. I’m also the lucky recipient of more than one of these per day. I’m not of the timid sort, so I have no problem telling these people to take me off their lists, but then much to my dismay, the calls will just show up from a different number.

I’ve taken my resume down from anything that appears even remotely suspect in regards to legitimacy, and it has lessened the volume of this obnoxious bombardment. My advice would be that even if you are desperate, be discerning. These sorts of circumstances we find ourselves in are often—quite literally—ones where we cannot afford to waste our time.

The “Experience” Catch-22

This morning I thought I would give myself a refresher on what’s currently out there in the entry-level job market. I went to one of the bigger employment search engine websites and searched under the key words: “entry level”, which produced about twenty of what I would describe as viable results. The listings were still fairly typical of the times: sales representative, account executive, management trainee, etc. I clicked on the first posting, which was for a position listed as “Entry Level Outside Sales Representative.” As the title would indicate, it’s sales. (Prior to searching at length for entry-level employment, I had no idea there were so many ways to pronounce “salesman.") Scrolling through the particulars of the job posting, I landed on the “Requirements” section, the first of which was as follows:

"1-2 years of proven Business to Business Sales Success"

Huh? This is a job that literally (literally!) has the words “entry level” within its title, and one of the prerequisites to consideration is one to two years of experience? Surely, we must have conflicting definitions of “entry-level?”

This, in my experience, is actually far more common than you would think. I’ve inquired about dozens of jobs that have put out this same obstruction. How is one supposed to gain experience at the entry-level if one doesn’t have enough experience to be hired at the entry-level? It’s a textbook catch-22 if there ever was one. Sometimes, if a company is feeling particularly ghoulish, they’ll even stash this little paradoxical nugget near the end of the listing, so as to dash your hopes at their absolute fever pitch.

So how does one circumvent this absurdity? Well, you could always lie on your resume I suppose, but you run the risk of being found a fraud at some point, which could ultimately be worse than not getting the job in the first place. If anything, this reaffirms the importance of internships and garnering any sort of practical experience you can as an undergraduate. When the market is this saturated, any sort of upper hand you can establish for yourself is going to help your cause. It doesn’t necessarily have to be experience: establish connections, network, become highly-versed on your desired field, etc. Hell, if you’re feeling really desperate, you could even write a blog.