Some time ago a member wrote to me lamenting that although he was responding to a great number of opportunities, no one was contacting him about his credentials.

It is a sad fact of life that the way job search works with regard to posted jobs is that it is atypical if anyone even acknowledges the receipt of your resume. Unfortunately, with the number of responses, and the lack of clerical help at most firms, even that simple courtesy is much too time consuming.

The approach most firms use is to try to hide who they are. They don’t mention the name of their search firm or if they are a corporation, the name of the company. The Internet allows them to do this in much the same way that P.O. Box numbers were used in the Sunday New York Times. (Are all of you old enough to remember that far back when newspapers were king?)

Of course, “one hand clapping” doesn’t make any noise. Are you responding to the right postings? Is your resume terrible? Is there just too much competition? Alas, you will never know. Very few folks have the time to do a complete and thorough analysis of your background as compared to the others that were submitted. Truth be told, I have never heard of it being done.

We are all big ticket items. And, there is only one of us. That means you typically only make one sale. At times, even the number of shoppers out there can be few and far between.

Where we all end up is not knowing what is working and what isn’t.

Classic direct mail techniques require that you get a certain response rate. If the response rate is zero or close to zero in our context that still doesn’t mean your “product” isn’t working. To be quite honest, it isn’t a good sign either. Chances are something isn’t right, but what?

My suggestion is to team up with other members of The FENG. (I hope this idea doesn’t come as a shock to any of you.) In the classic argument of “big college versus small college,” I always opt for the big college. There is no bigger university in the world than The FENG.

If you do a little networking, (I hope not another shocking idea), you can pair yourself up with someone or several someone’s who share a sufficient number of background connections with you that their advice and counsel will make sense and ring true.

Alas, with my background in Advertising and Publishing, I’m not much good at giving really specific suggestions to Bankers or Manufacturing types. It just isn’t where I come from or where I live.

If you want to get to hearing TWO hands clapping, you are going to need to seek out the company of those you trust so that all the possible improvements can be made to your program.

And let’s be honest here, with 34,000+ kind hearted individuals to choose from, you can’t lose.

If you take the time to connect with other members, it will sure be a lot noisier than the sound of one hand clapping.

Regards, Matt