The 'WHAT' and 'HOW' of it

Yes indeed; searching a job is a serious business and to go about it without honing your skills is like driving a vehicle without having learnt to drive. You may never reach your destination and worse, you may get hurt.
Everyone talks about the increasing competitions in all walks of life. There is no field more competitive in the entire human operations than the job-field where you seek to be selected for a job of your choice, from among many qualified and experienced persons. Also in any other race you first get a chance to perform and only then you are evaluated based on your performance. Whether it is a 100 meters race by athletes or a race for the market share by the goods and services produced by a company, the chance to perform is given first, and the performance itself brings the rewards. Unfortunately in job selection you will be evaluated without first being given a chance to perform. The evaluation is based on the impression someone gets as to how you will probably perform. Therefore in this field, impressing that you can creditably perform is the principal race. This is the reason why the job seeker has to perfect the skills of presentation and communication.
It is like confronting and telling the athlete that he will get the gold medal if he can prove that he can run! The evaluator in job selection evaluates a promise or the record of a previous performance and not the performance itself. This is why the past performance and achievements get the attention in an interview and even here the presentation of the performance is involved and not the actual performance. It is the skill of presenting that comes into play. You might have education, experience and skills in your specialty but the evaluator sees these only as good as you can project in your networking, resume or interview.

This question is best answered by examining what is ‘merit’. From the point of view of selectors, a person who can prove that he can do well and when such proof prima-facie cannot be doubted, it’s meritorious. Add to this the fact that once selected, such a person may do reasonably well on the actual job and there is no way to find out if the person not selected would have done any better. Examine the backgrounds of the most successful people you know and you often wonder how dozens of others with equal qualifications are doing lesser jobs. It is likely that the successful persons we see at the helm, got there in the first place by projecting themselves and then went on to make the best of the opportunity they created for themselves. On the other hand numerous well qualified people rot in lesser jobs because they are unskilled to project themselves for proper jobs or job-changes.

Do the Competent Too Need to Hone Their Skills?

Certainly the world will be a better place if competent persons shake off their complacence and tone up their job seeking skills so that they do meet competition and get selected for the higher jobs they deserve.

Whether you call it a science or an art, training for job searching has arrived as much as ‘coaching for competitive examinations’. In the 70s, the really brilliants never took coaching books for succeeding competitive examinations. It was sufficient if you were thorough in the subjects. Later on competition got bloody and the presentation in the given short time called for special skills. The selection for choice courses became an elimination process and only the fittest survived. This led to a coaching industry of mammoth proportions. Considering that job selection process had been an elimination process for a long time in the past, it is a wonder why job-searching skills so far did not see much organized coaching. Perhaps the brief of candidates that they either won by merit or by ‘recommendation’ made everyone conclude that no preparation was necessary. Even the candidate who prepared and succeeded was dubbed as the lucky guy or a recommended candidate. Those who succeeded through preparation knew the value of preparation but only of late such persons are speaking out how their preparation helped.
In Today’s situation, even the most brilliant person has to do some self training or take coaching for job search skills. Otherwise he may lag behind in the race for jobs.

A special category of persons is those coming out of premier institutions who attract campus recruitment. Is there a need for job hunting skills in such a seller’s market? Well, the truth is that where competition is first rate and stakes are very high, skills are more relevant. A candidate facing campus selection in fact has a narrow choice and if he does not like what is on offer, he is left to seek less rewarding jobs outside. Within the narrow choice once again, top rate compensations and preferred specialty lines do not come together. Add to this the fact that the candidate has competition from no less brilliant people for the same position. It is natural then that such a candidate who is otherwise very logical and intelligent falls prey to prestige or greed. He may grab the best paying job in his campus choice in spite of the fact that it is not a line or discipline close to his heart. He consoles himself imagining that the first job is only a stepping stone and price-tag. Soon he tries to change to a line or specialty of his choice. This behavior is so common that it is bringing some disrepute to all high flyers coming from Ivy-league colleges. Whatever may be the ethics of such situation, it can be recognized that the candidate in a typical situation such as this, needs guidance. It will try to show as to how he should deal with the special problems he will face in his later attempts to change his job. He has to convince a new employer that he is qualified for the line in which he has no experience. He has to put forth convincing reasons for leaving a job where he claims he is going great guns. This time he will be measured against people with some experience and not freshers like when he completed in campus recruitment. He will find that performance and not promise is the yard stick.

Many job seekers imagine that every job has to be advertised for the sake of getting proper talent as well as for being fair to all. Today’s size of the market and the cost of advertisements are such that it is no longer correct to blame any organization which does not publicly advertise its jobs that fall vacant. Further, when the employer is able to get enough candidates without advertisement and prefers to have only a manageable size of crowd to select from, he has every justification to say good-bye to public advertisement. Add to this the fact that government and public sector job market in many developing countries is shrinking, and you may see less and less public advertisement.
More and more employers find it prudent and convenient for doing only limited advertisement. The media chosen for such limited advertisement is invariably very selective. They may dispense with advertising in the newspapers altogether and go for only professional journals, or go in for insertions limited only to local editions of newspapers. This is almost the rule with private employers who advertise on need-basis and not as a policy of fairness. Even such need-based advertisements become local and choosy media.