Job Hunting
Several of my friends have offspring who have recently graduated from college, and of course their timing couldn’t be worse. The job market is terrible for entry level jobs with the boom in AI. At least one of this group decided to abstain from the job hunt entirely, instead going straight to graduate school. I regularly ask for updates on the others, and so far no news. Interestingly, though, not one of them has decided to take an interim job in hopes that they’ll gain transferable experience. I don’t know if this generation is being advised not to “settle,” if this group is not representative of their generation (given that they have the luxury of parents who can and will support them until they can find a job), or what. All except one of this group (and he is a programmer) is extremely reluctant to use AI, which I think is part of a larger backlash to AI that seems rampant amongst Gen Z even if Gen Zers have adopted higher rates of use of AI compared to other generations.
I am moderately concerned about this group. My friends, their parents, seem to be taking their kids’ joblessness in stride, and for their part, the kids themselves don’t seem too worried. I asked one friend what her daughter was doing with her time besides job hunting, and she said that her daughter has been playing around with a Raspberry Pi and learning how to program it (growth). So clearly she’s not just sitting around the house and moping. But I have been unemployed and have known the heartbreak of constant rejection (esteem) during the job hunt as well as the despair that creeps in when it’s been a while (autonomy). It’s not fun and it ain’t pretty!
I recently finished reading Martin Seligman’s book Flourish, in which he talks about a Stengths Finder test that he helped develop. The idea is that you identify your strengths and figure out your weaknesses to know how to apply yourself to the elements of flourishing (which, perhaps not so surprisingly, align fairly well with the Right Hand of Long-Term Happiness and the Four Stages of an Event) to make a better life for yourself. It’s essentially a personality test.
I love personality tests. Career assessments are usually personality tests, as well, designed to match your personality, you strengths, with a career path that is optimal for you. In fact, the APT AI, which is a job hunting AI (and here we are back at AI), asks questions to assess your personality against five well known personality tests including the Myer’s-Briggs Type Indicator and the Enneagram test.
Just for fun, I set up an account with APT AI and completed its test, which was an AI-typical conversation asking me for my preferences and responses to given scenarios. It came back with a glowing review of my personality, pointing out my plethora of strengths (thank you for seeing my magnificence, APT AI! I say with amusement) (esteem). I was curious if it would suggest potential career paths I had never considered before, and it did. What I loved about it is that it explained why it suggested those career paths—what about my personality and experience aligns with the given career. And then for each career path, it gave me a list of suggestions for shoring up my weaknesses (growth). APT AI offers to help with a resume, and it does provide a list of job opportunities. I felt that those in my list were a bit ambitious for my experience (although, who knows? Maybe I underestimate my own skillset), and it completely ignored my statement that I would not consider on-site work outside of my city. Perhaps over time I could refine the results to be more apropos.
Thus, if you are a current job seeker, APT AI might be a useful one-stop shop for the job search if you are willing to pay money for the convenience. If you are AI-adverse, other career assessments can remind you of your value when your soul is being crushed by rejection (esteem). Look at job opportunities in your field of interest and work toward mastering any deficits in your resume (growth). Work on networking as it still holds true that sometimes the best way to land a job is to know the right person (social). Hopefully these steps will remind you of your agency in the job search (autonomy). Good luck!
For those who aren’t job hunting, what other advice would you give the hunters? Let me know in the comments.