I'm getting resume fatigue again.
About six months ago, I wrote fifty postcards to a generic address for American military personnel overseas. I didn't entirely understand why I was doing it. I hear that getting mail makes soldiers feel better, but I can't imagine they get much of a morale boost from a generic postcard. Still, I dutifully wrote encouraging messages on the postcards and sent them off into the abyss. Obviously, I never heard from anyone in response because they didn't have my address. I don't know if anyone even saw my postcards.
I'm starting to feel the same way about sending off job applications as I did about those postcards. I no longer associate the sending of a resume with an offer of employment. Even in a prosperous economy, unsolicited resumes yield a low rate of return, but this is ridiculous. There are jobs out there for which I am ideally suited, but I'm not getting calls from the employers. I assume this is because there are so many other unemployed or under-employed people who have the same qualifications I do, and I have to stand in line with all of them to wait for enough jobs to come back to sustain all of us.
I just want to cry. It's so hard not to feel defeated by this job search. It's terrible to go through something like this -- where I am trying my hardest but there is nothing I or anyone else can do to hasten the process.
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I just wanted to leave a little comment about the military postcards. My daughter is in the military and we send mail as often as we can. We started doing it early on during basic training and kept it up at her request. My family and I wondered why she wanted mail, even if it was just a postcard with hello written on it (really, if you send letters and cards almost every day you'll quickly find you've run out of things to say) and she told me sometimes mail call is the only thing you have to look forward to. It sounds really sad when you think of it that way, but she doesn't feel sad or glum about it in the least - she is there to do a job only that job lasts longer than the usual 8 hour day. She enjoys what she does, she's getting a great education and has met some great folks along the way but sometimes mail is the only life line they have to 'home'. I wanted to say thanks...she may or may not have gotten one of your postcards, but rest assured someone did and that may have made a big difference in the kind of day they were having. :)
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