That Time I Applied to 600 Jobs

“I love job searching,” says no one ever.

Right now, as of April 1, the job sites Indeed, LinkedIn and AngelList all have something in common. They are on a hiring freeze.

Does applying on job sites work?

My personal experience applying for jobs on those sites and many others has been fruitless. While my total on those three sites for jobs applied exceeds 600, I know many people have had great success in finding new jobs and employers finding great candidates.

In my case, It should be noted that I am somewhat of both a lifestyle artist and non-traditional candidate mixing freelance and full-time work. I’ve also taught marketing in the U.S. and Paris. In addition, since I published my first book and have both marketing and my writing on my resume, I have been asked why I don’t do writing full-time to which I respond “I wish it paid more” and secretly wanting to tell them to buy my books.

At times, I feel like I’m a professional job seeker. Now, I’m waiting for my unemployment, networking on Shapr, having informational interviews and decided I’m taking a different route to share more of my experiences.

This post is for those that need to know you are not alone in applying for many jobs and not to feel rejected because most of the time no one probably has seen your awesome resume anyway.

Because 118 is the average number of people that apply to one job, according to Forbes.

I’ve always tried to make myself stand out, following some advice from long ago. I have read the founders’ books, researched and recommended solutions and signed up as a member for numerous sites in the application process. But my all-time favorite question is: “Tell us something unique about you.” I have answered everything from “I was in a zumba video (true)” to “I worked on small farm in France (true)” sure they would remember me.

But, these ways that I think are clever haven’t yielded much for me. I’d really like to see one day if there was a way to show the winning resume of the job you applied for and how that person learned of the job.

One startup told me that they did not want to hire anyone looking for a job although they had a presence on job sites and received applications. And, I got the job there because I applied which highlighted that internal views on hiring can vary greatly.

Lastly, in these unprecedented times, creativity and humanity are needed now more than ever. My new bottom line is to go back to what I was doing as a graduate student at Georgetown and have more informational interviews before developing an individual narrative for a job application. I’m also actively seeing how I can add value to others through introductions, forwarding job openings to people and letting people know about networking tools.

It’s all about having faith that the right fit at the right time will come along— no matter how many jobs you may apply for.

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Previously published at https://medium.com/@LBLewisAuthor/that-time-i-applied-to-600-jobs-1a7da9574379