To Get Jobs, You Need To Think and Strategize According To Your Immediate Surroundings

Article taken from: JobsJournal.com
By Surajit Sen Sharma

Just to brighten up your day, before we get into the serious part of this article, two highly respected economists (Matthew E. Kahn and Matthew J. Kotchen) have recently published their momentous discovery that in states where unemployment grows high, internet searches on ''unemployment'' increase (extremely surprising, that) while similar searches on ''global warming'' decrease.

Though the economists did not go into other insignificant paraphernalia that also decrease in the lives of the unemployed, now we have irrefutable proof of the relation between lack of environment consciousness and unemployment rates. That is of course significant, and more so, because it shows fertile minds can always find ways to employ their time. Now back to the topic subject, the need to strategize according to your immediate surroundings.

While the mentioned research might seem wasteful, foolish, unwanted, and a waste of public money, in fact it is not. Professor Kahn (who has a stellar resume, to put it mildly) is a professor at the UCLA Institute of Environment, the Department of Economics, and Matthew Kotchen is an associate professor of environmental economics and policy at the Yale University. The research they have spent their time on is totally aligned with their job responsibilities and immediate surroundings, and that is what makes it publishable and fruitful. Back to the subject of this article again, if you strategize taking into account your immediate surroundings, you succeed. And even though your efforts might seem foolish to some, such opinions are of no consequence, as long as your work strategy is relevant to your immediate surroundings.

The need to shift from a generalized approach in job searches and shift to strategies more in line with immediate surroundings is also underlined by the latest federal report on unemployment that shows unemployment varying widely between different states, and being caused by quite separate reasons that are primarily local in nature. The lowest rate of unemployment, 3.6%, is in North Dakota and that is greatly below the national average of 9.5%. While economists claim the low rate of unemployment in North Dakota is a result of high level of natural resources and low population, I would risk a guess that the prosperity of North Dakota also results from the local laws. Old laws still prevalent in North Dakota prohibit banks and corporations from foreclosing farmland or any home or homestead situated on farmlands or holding title to land marked as land for farming. End of the story. No foreclosures following the mortgage crunch equals lesser impact of the recession. However, there were also no significant increase in the number of jobs in North Dakota.

In contrast, Michigan, which has the second highest unemployment rate in the nation, a sizzling 13.1%, also added the highest number of jobs since June among other states, totaling almost about 28, 000 new jobs. Most of these jobs were in the manufacturing sector.

So, the effects of the recession as well as pace of recovery is not uniform across the nation and varies widely from state to state. Thus, career or job search strategies, which do not take into account local conditions, will be disconnected from reality, and have a much lower chance of success than career or job search strategies that are aligned with local conditions and immediate surroundings.

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