A fairly prominent blogger just posted this note on a Facebook job group:

“Gentle suggestion to job seekers – if you respond to a job eagerly and then fail to follow-through on simple requests for information, it doesn’t reflect well. If you have a change of heart on a position, just be up front about it, don’t be passive-aggressive and just go off the radar. Unless of course you’ve been hit by a truck in which case it’s understandable.”

Once I got beyond the Jewish mother memories this invoked, I quickly concluded two things:

1) Perhaps more frequently, the word “seekers” can be replaced with “posters”

2) The entire job search process is just so danged assymetric. It’s a gentle jig of information-sharing. Does the side of the table with the most uncertainty depend on the state of the market (i.e. supply & demand of labor)? Why does it have to be such a guessing game?

The whole dance of information disclosure and timing is, as I often say, dating on steroids: the ultimate in inference. I’m SO glad I’m not actively ‘dating’ anymore. But it was a precursor to finding something sustainable. Must the job search process always be the same for a thriving career?

I’m searching for other paradigms.