Plenty of people who give advice on getting hired will compare the recruitment process to dating. As dating and recruiting both move firmly onto the Internet, tips that are thrown out to people looking for online love can also apply to your job search. There are similar concerns in play, from putting your best virtual foot forward to doing your due diligence on a potential partner (or, in this case, employer). In this article, we’ll review some of the top online dating tips and turn them toward your job search.
“The dating world is a market,” as The Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog points out, and so is the world of employment. Here are some key points of advice that apply to both realms:
1. Be Careful with Wording
At the WSJ’s Speakeasy blog, the author discusses the work of George Akerlof, who won a Nobel Prize in economics in 2001. Using Akerlof’s work for online dating and the job search is, as it turns out, a pretty good idea. He wrote on the idea of “adverse selection,” which describes hidden information as being as important as what’s stated explicitly.
“Akerlof described this in the context of selling a used car,” according to Speakeasy. “He pointed out that people assume your car is a lemon unless there is a way to prove otherwise.”
With that in mind, you need to make everything very clear before you go ahead and upload your credentials to a resume database. Do you have a particularly long gap in your employment history, for example? Explain you were raising a child or getting an MA or employers might assume the worst, according to Akerlof’s theory.
2. Post in the Right Place
An article at HLN reminds romantic hopefuls to post their profiles in the right niche. If you have specific employment needs, you may want to take that advice as well. However, in the absence of a specific need, most people prefer a large pool of prospects, which is why so many people take the route of posting to general-use dating sites with high rates of traffic.
And unlike online dating, finding a job doesn’t usually cost you money. With that consideration removed, you can set your search up to display yourself to employers on a large, reputable website without spending a dime, as job sites do not charge users to appear on them. Make sure to get a feel for the culture of a website, whether a dating site or a free job board, so you don’t make a faux pas that could cost you a date – or an interview.
3. Make a Sensible Choice
The Speakeasy blog also gives online daters advice gleaned from the work of economists Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides, who won a Nobel Prize in their field in 2010. They worked on “search theory,” which examines what kind of trade-offs people will accept in their life decisions and which will cause them to start looking again.
Theoretically, you could hold out for The One, either in your love life or your career, for the rest of your life. However, in the real world, some amount of compromise is necessary. “We don’t spend an unlimited amount of time looking for ‘the one’ because we also want to eat, earn money, and watch ‘Homeland’ (well, we used to),” according to the blog. Similarly, the perfect job may not exist. But if you’ve done your best to find a job you want with an employer you’re excited to work for, don’t let the chance pass you by because there might be something better.
In employment, as in dating, the one you can live with now is much better than the perfection that may never arrive.
