Volunteering for groups such as the Red Cross has become a resume-builder for many in the recession.

 

Once upon a time, conventional wisdom was that someone who already had a job was around six times more likely to find a new job than someone who was out of work. Unfortunately for the unemployed, things just got worse. A lot worse.

Last week, CNN Money reported that many companies and recruiters are no longer considering unemployed applicants:

Employment experts say they believe companies are increasingly interested only in applicants who already have a job. "I think it is more prevalent than it used to be," said Rich Thompson, vice president of learning and performance for Adecco Group North America, the world's largest staffing firm. "I don't have hard numbers, but three out of the last four conversations I've had about openings, this requirement was brought up."

Whether or not employers can legally advertise that they will only accept candidates who are already employed — by, for instance, stating it in a job listing — has become a murky gray area. Some companies have removed such language from their job materials, including one South Carolina recruiter who did so after being asked about it by a CNN reporter working on the story!

But whether or not it’s explicitly expressed, what’s obvious is that even those who have been laid off for reasons that have nothing to do with their performance have a lot to overcome.

So…where to start? Many people who haven’t been able to find a job are finding other ways to boost their resumes, as this article explains:

They are tour guides, airport greeters, hospital helpers, fund-raisers and more. They provide hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of work for free. They are volunteers. And, neither the struggling economy nor summer doldrums have taken a lasting toll on their numbers or hours of service. But they aren't always easy to find: Some area organizations have worried about finding enough help this year. Yet help has come from a strange place: the ranks of the unemployed. Many people who have lost their jobs are volunteering to stay busy and fill gaps on their resumes.

What’s most interesting to me about the article is that it tracks how attitudes towards the recession and unemployment have shifted. Initially, many people faced with job insecurity or job loss dropped everything else to focus on finances. But that has shifted yet again, sometimes for the very reasons laid out in the CNN Money report:

When the local economy hit the skids, "we initially lost volunteers - about 200," Baugher said of the volunteer corps of nearly 2,000 people today. Then, as Lee County's unemployment soared -- to a peak of 14.2 percent in January -- "we got droves of people coming in to volunteer: people who'd lost their jobs. ... Quite a few got jobs through volunteering."

In fact, entrepreneur and author of The Brazen Careerist Penelope Trunk thinks that job-hunting is the last thing you should do when you’re unemployed. She’s got five other things you should be doing, which all at their core are basically ways to prepare for your next job. The one that makes the most sense to me is number five, “practice talking about yourself with everyone.” Rarely do people acknowledge that interviewing is a skill that takes practice, and many people -- particularly those laid-off after years with the same employer -- are decidedly out of practice:

High performers practice for interviews. So now you know what you’re aiming for, but you need to talk about it with everyone – parties, at the gym, on the phone with friends. When they ask how you’re doing, talk about what you’re doing like you are in the job interview. And the good news is that the better you get at talking like that, the more you will actually believe your story, the story that being unemployed is lucky because you have learning opportunities.

However, eventually most people will be back to the job search, and news like the CNN Money report can be discouraging. But it’s important to remember job-search-steps.com’s assessment of the unemployed jobseeker’s secret weapon: "Actually, you have one big advantage from a job search standpoint when you are unemployed: time."