The Job Market Experiment

So I have been looking for work for quite some time. Almost a year now. I look for work in the post production field. I live in L.A. It's like living in India and working on computers. There is actually work for it here. Anyway I read an article that for every job you apply for 5 other people are applying for it. I think that's b.s. So Decided to conduct my own experiment.

I posted an entry level position in the post production field. I even put "this is an entry level position". One it did not stop people that were completely over qualified for applying for this job and two I also wrote, "for people looking to get there foot in the door". That didn't stop people with five plus years in post production from applying for this job. This probably isn't news to anyone who reads anything about our economy. I agree that people who are over qualified are taking lower paying jobs just to get by in our slow economy.

As for how many people applied for the job. Well I posted it Sunday afternoon and deleted it Monday the next day at 6pm. I received thirty three emails. Every cover letter was standard. There was nothing I hadn't written before. There was nothing I could see that stood out. Most people did not have websites and most resumes were in pdf format. Which I thought was smart because you can pen pdf files on Mac or PC.

I know some people might be thinking what I did was a little unethical. I see how it might be perceived that way but my point is to try to encourage people and tell them what I have learned from this. I personally have found it hard not knowing how many people I am competing with, wondering if I'm not good enough, and really if there are things that I could do better. Honestly I don't think there is. I think it's a rough economy; It's like throwing darts blindly and hopefully one day we are all going to hit the bulls-eye.

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