Five More Reasons Not to Look for a Job

Looking for a job has been unproductive for you and for good reason. I have written on this issue a number of times on my own blog and here are yet more reasons why looking for a job is an activity left over from the last century and won’t be productive this year, next year or in 10 years. 

1. You are one of 300 resumes for one open position. The odds are way against you so why waste your time. You are likely someone that also buys lottery tickets figuring that someone has got to win. Good luck to you. 
2. A robot will likely replace your job or has already done so. If you don’t watch Sixty Minutes, you should. A recent episode explains how so many jobs have already been replaced by robots and way more to come. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57601121/are-robotshurting-job-growth. People who are unskilled are now also unneeded. Sorry, but if you could not figure out why you had to learn geometry on ninth grade (it was to learn how to think) and now you have no skills and no ability to think and need a job where someone shows you what to do, you are out of luck. 
3. Looking for a job is backwards. You are trying to find someone who needs a worker and then you will fit yourself to the position. That is backwards. The way to make money is to figure out what people value, what they will happily pay for and then learn how to provide it. That is called making yourself of value. Note that learning something does not necessarily mean going to school. Some of the most successful people are self-taught. 
4. You place yourself in a continuous position of dependence. If the job disappears or the company goes out of business, you are back in the same place. Don’t look for a job—figure out how to earn income that is independent of some company or someone giving you anything. Make yourself valuable so that people want what you offer. I pay the woman who cleans my house $160 for 5 hours of work. She has worked for us for 30 years and I hate to think she might ever retire. She has no education, speaks only some English but is valuable. 
5. Looking for a job is just laziness. Up until the year 1900 or so, there were no jobs. People farmed their land, learned a trade or took up a profession. These people sold their talents and skills to other people in town. Looking for a job is finding someone who has already done the hard work or creating excess work so that you can simply show up and get paid. The good times are over. There is no excess work. 

A few months ago, I saw an interview on CNBC with Jack Welch, the ex-chairman of General Electric. He said that one of GEs business was hurt so badly in the recession, that its revenues would not recover until 2014. However, that division would achieve its pre-recession revenues with 14,000 people instead of the 23,000 employed pre-recession. The point—if you are just "labor," this economy has little need for that. What the economy needs is skills, talent, ability to innovate, motivate, create and move an idea from inception to fruition.

Fast food workers can strike all they want but the reality is, none of the above is required to work in fast food service. Reality is just that, like it or not, fair or not. You can piss and moan or use this post as a description of the new reality.

Larry Klein is publisher of the Wealthy Producer Blog, is among the 1% and has not has not had a job in 33 years.