The competition facing older workers is starting to stack up
There are a lot of daunting statistics facing today’s job seekers. And these stats are especially troubling for older job seekers.
According to zety.com, “on average, each corporate job offer attracts 250 resumes. Of those candidates, 4 to 6 will get called for an interview, and only one will get the job.”
Statistics like this make job seeking like an insurmountable task. Yet, people do get jobs. Everyday someone, somewhere is being offered a job and accepting it.
Most data shows that it takes substantially longer for older job seekers to find suitable employment compared with their younger counterparts. Is ageism to blame? No doubt that it’s out there and rearing its ugly much too often.
But, in this day and age, in large part (but not completely as this has been coming on for sometime now,) due to the pandemic, companies are looking at candidates much differently.
There was a time when a job seeker could almost guess how many people were in competition for a particular post. Not so anymore. Depending on the job and the industry, you may be competing with candidates who live as far as hundreds of miles away.
And it’s not all just remote work. Some companies hire individuals to work on site 2-3 days a week and from home the remainder of the time. This allows companies to consider candidates miles, if not states, away. If you live in Chicago, you realistically you could be competing with other job seekers in Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Cleveland, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Kansas City, etc.
This is one instance where “the more the merrier” does not apply.
But there is good news. And that is that the reverse is true as well. If you circumstances allow for it, if you live in Chicago, you can confidently apply for jobs in all those cities mentioned above and, depending on the company, be considered a viable candidate even if relocation is not in the cards.
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