Picture this: It has been awhile since you started your Job Search. You updated your resume, uploaded your profile in many Job Portals in Internet, contacted your friends and colleagues asking them to inform you on job opportunites. Everyday you browse the newspapers and classified ads, and spend hours surfing the net. You have applied for so many job offers related to your profile that you may have lost track of them but, up to now, you have not received a single message from the recruiters responsibles for the job offer posts.
Then you question yourself: What am I doing wrong? Is my resume Ok? Has this something to do with my photo? So many questions boggle your mind, and you start asking around your friends and family to assess you. You review all the assessments, correct and improve all the remarks on your resume, profiles and cover letters and continue with your job search but, after a while, no news from recruiters.
After a conversation with a friend, you realize it's time for seeking professional help: A recruiter who can check your profile, improve your resume and help in your job search. You get to this recruiter recommended by another friend, and start working with this person. After long interviews, questionnaires and profile reviews and rewording, things start getting into perspective. You have become more "appealing" to the labor market, not only local but also international. Your professional network has grown, and your profile has been visited and reviewed by other professionals who even contact you for professional input and comments on your posts in your network. Now you have become interested in working abroad and start applying for jobs overseas, but still no answers from recruiters.
Your "Job Searching Advisor" pinpoints a few issues that might affect the perception you cause in the recruiting community: Age, previous employment history (turnover ratio, accountabilities, etc.), skills, formal education, migratory requirements (for overseas employment). Some of them could be easily fixed, others would require time and money (like going back to college), others like age, gender and nationality have no fix. It is your call to fix what you can and keep going, or folding up to here.
So far, you have spent months or even years on your Job Search, without a single note from a recruiter for an interview. The sensation of defeat overwhelms you so hard you get sick. After a period of sorrow, you start realizing that, along the process:
a) You have produced an improved professional image of yourself in your network and your professional community.
b)You have identified your resources, strengths and opportunities for improvement.
c) You acquired the ability of visualizing activities which you want to participate, among other positive things (like caring for your own health, for instance).
In your professional community, you should be known by now in your area of expertise, skills, formal studies and training obtained during all your working experience timeline. The question that should arise now is: Since my services and experience are not required at present time by the labor market, what can I do with them to create goods or services, demanded either locally or abroad?
All doors have been closed for you since you started your Job Search. The reasons are beyond your control, so it is time for you to open a window by yourself, custom made for you and others you want to invite to participate in a new job opportunity, fitted for you, your ideas and your plans to complete this enterprise.
Entrepreneuring can provide you the job you have been looking for, with opportunities for personal and professional growth. For sure you have identified many business opportunities around your community that can be done with few resources available. You might as well continue with your Job Search, but this time you could start making profits out of your expertise and labor, producing goods or services, on demand by your community and out of it. You could get with others in your network to obtain materials, resources, investments and more know how to increase and improve your productivity. If you have skills, hardware and training that enables you for freelance work , you may register yourself in portals for freelance professionals, such as Upwork (https://www.upwork.com/).
There are even free online courses about entrepreneuring that could form you, as well as improve your formal training and skills for a determined job or activity you may try. EDX (https://www.edx.org/) is a portal for MOOCS courses that you may take them for free, or pay to get a certificate. Now it is time to update yourself and sharpen your skills and expand your network even more.
Two final pieces of advice:
Whatever you decide and do would bring consequences. they might be good or bad right now, but at the end they can change for better or worse. Keeping that in mind, a plan is important. No matter how volatile is the environment you are in terms of economy and other social circumnstances, a plan is the backbone that keeps your job searching (and your job keeping if you were able to land one) going. It would help you to react faster to changes and adapt for success. Spend some time developing a plan for either entrepreneuring or job searching. It will keep you in path and manage resources.
If entrepreneuring is your way to go, remeber that it might get rough at the start so, when this happens, also remember that hurting sensation of defeat when fighting against events out of your control. You know what to do, how to do it and how to make it more profitable. Fate might bring you a Job Opportunity along the way while entrepreneuring, and that would be your call on leaving or taking it.
Godspeed to you all and hope to see you out there!