I like job hunting

[zbigi]

Funny thing, I just realised that applying for jobs is my favourite part of entire job lifecycle (or maybe second, just behind leaving them . Job hunting involves skills, agency and has very real implications towards my actual life (especially the salary I manage to negiotiate). There's uncertainty, which creates excitement. Whereas jobs themselves are the opposite - some skills are required, but there's little agency, little skin in the game, and no excitement. Maybe I missed my life's calling to work in sales...

[candide]

Maybe I missed my life's calling to work in sales...

Sounds like it. Or maybe the calling was to run a small business. In the book The E-myth it is argued that unless you are hiring out other people under you, you are constantly in a job interview.

[7Wannabe5]

Do you also enjoy dating?

[zbigi]

Do you also enjoy dating?

I haven't dated for a while, but when I did, I didn't really enjoy it. I probably didn't preselect enough for women with whom I'd have a good chance of connection, so it was a fairly miserable experience.

Also, job hunting can (and probably should) be treated as a zero sum, adversarial, "let's fleece these suckers for all they have" game. Whereas, in dating, you're after estabilishing a genuine connection (well, unless you're a player). It's very different.

[7Wannabe5]

Also, job hunting can (and probably should) be treated as a zero sum, adversarial, "let's fleece these suckers for all they have" game. Whereas, in dating, you're after estabilishing a genuine connection (well, unless you're a player). It's very different.

Interesting. I tend to be mix of work/play/love with everything, so it doesn't seem all that different to me.

OTOH, I would say that the first 3 months of learning curve is often the most interesting in any realm.

[unemployable]

Funnier thing: Job hunting was my least favorite thing I regularly subjected myself to. Some things I enjoy more: doing my taxes, changing my car's shock absorbers, going to the dentist, dealing with Comcast customer service, cleaning cat barf off carpets, figuring out why my mom can't print PDFs off her Chromebook, taking speeding tickets to court. So I quit doing it.

More seriously, applying to housesits is the same principle, just a difference of degree, but I find it nowhere near as onerous.

[jacob]

Maybe I missed my life's calling to work in sales...

Or maybe you'd enjoy being a headhunter?

[zbigi]

Or maybe you'd enjoy being a headhunter?

I like selling myself, probably because I'm a highly specialized tool to do something technically complicated. The discussion on what the tool can and cannot do, what are its strong points in the context of the job at hand is highly technical, but at the same time has the adversarial, zero-sum context in the background, which makes it interesting in a non-nerdy way. Whereas headhunters are mostly doing absurd amount of cold calling and reaching out via LinkedIn, then do superficial match between candidate's profile and client's needs, and then hand off the candidate to the client's HR process, and move on to the next thing. It's very robotic, admin-like job, it seems. The most interesting part is perhaps the sales process, where they try to get their foot at the door of new companies, so that they can push their candidates. For example, headhunters routinely try to fish out from me where else I'm applying - with seemingly offhand remarks, which get progressively more specific if I am receptive to them (which country -> which industry -> which company -> who's the hiring manager - so that they can find them on LinkedIn).

Technical sales, on the other hand, could potentially be interesting. There, you're hired by say IBM to sell a complex tool they make for large companies which have needs that are met by this tool - but not exactly. Ensuing discussions are a complex dance that can last months. You need to prove that your tool is worth buying, is better than competition, and often custom adaptations and other services need to be thrown in to make the deal tenable. I've actually dipped my toes in technical sales near the beginning of my career, but it was so much more lucrative to be a coder remotely for US/EU companies, than to be a technical salesman for some other US/EU company which opened their office in Poland, and is paying local Polish salaries.

[Henry]

Replace "jobs" with "drugs" and you sound similar to the typical addict frothing on about loving scoring more than using.

[mountainFrugal]

@zbigi
Specifically see comic: "3. Show your math."
https://www.buzzfeed.com/nathanwpyle/th ... rviewing-f

[2Birds1Stone]

Retired technical sales exec here...........

Job hunting or interviewing is definitely salesmanship through and through. You're literally prospecting to create a pipeline of opportunities that you then try to close.

I always tell people who are really good at interviewing that if they actually have the chops to back up what they're saying, they would do well in sales.

PS - your IBM example is pretty accurate, except it's almost expected that an enterprise sales cycle will take ~12 months from soup to nuts.

You also have to have thick skin and be a "happy loser"

One of my mentors very early on in my career told me that no matter how much I like my current employer and/or how well I'm doing in my current role, take one formal interview per quarter to stay fresh, know your market worth, and see what else is out there. The bargaining power of that knowledge will improve your current situation just as much as give you the opportunity to swing somewhere else.

[Jean]

I think I hate job hunting especially because it's usually a zero sum game, and that getting good at interviewing is most likely a negative sum activity.

[mathiverse]

I hate job hunting. The adrenaline and high pressure never felt good to me. I also hated the fact my entire day was wasted on the interview and I needed another day or two to recover from the event. I also didn't enjoy having to study for many hours in the weeks preceding the interview circuit to prepare.

On the other hand, negotiating was awesome and fun. Pitting multiple companies against each other. Knowing I held all the cards since I was the one deciding whether to take this or that offer. That felt good.