In Pas­sage of Dark­ness: The Eth­no­bi­ol­ogy of the Hait­ian Zom­bie, by Wade Davis, a Har­vard eth­nob­otanist, it is writ­ten that reg­u­lar zom­bies are in a sus­pended state of ani­ma­tion due to tetrodotoxin and dis­so­cia­tive drugs being intro­duced into the blood­stream, usu­ally a wound. This death state, fol­lowed by a reawak­en­ing and  psy­chosis induced by the drugs, is hypoth­e­sized by Davis to re-enforce culturally-learned beliefs, caus­ing the indi­vid­ual to recon­struct their iden­tity as that of a zombie.

Such indi­vid­u­als are known to hang around in grave­yards, exhibit­ing atti­tudes of low affect.

Bare with me on the mor­bid sound­ing com­par­i­son but zom­bies sound a lot like some job seek­ers I have come across, prac­ti­cally par­a­lyzed in their desk chair pump­ing out hire me mes­sages into cyber­space.. I assert that these job seeker zom­bies are in a sus­pended state of ani­ma­tion, due to false hope that post­ing the link to their online resume will get them a job, intro­duced through the wound caused by pro­tracted peri­ods of unem­ploy­ment. Their bokors are mis­guided social media advo­cates — who may or may not be highly skilled and prac­ticed employ­ment pro­fes­sion­als — who con them into this social media servi­tude under the guise of being help­ful and the phi­los­o­phy that it feels bet­ter to do some­thing than nothing.

Mamma mia… let’s grow up kids… these are real lives we’re play­ing doc­tor with here.

Social media use as a com­pli­ment to a well founded strate­gic job search work plan is icing on the cake, a bonus, and in 2010 a still highly improb­a­ble way to get an inter­view. It is still more prob­a­ble for a job seeker to find an oppor­tu­nity than to be found.

I’m not good enough to tell you when that dynamic will turn around and reverse itself. But… here’s my Vul­can guess from last year.

How does a job seeker zom­bie shake a bokor? An octopomine like cure can be achieved by fol­low­ing these pre­scribed vir­tual steps no more than 20 hours a week:

• Use the Inter­net, to include social media, to search for jobs and do research on com­pa­nies you are tar­get­ing –> net­work with cur­rent & past employees.
• Do not buy into “build it and they will come” –> if you want to be found on the Inter­net be social and don’t put faith in one medium.
  • Par­tic­i­pate in LinkedIn groups and answers.
  • Post good con­tent on Face­book com­pany Fan Pages.
  • Com­ment on Recruiter and com­pany blogs.
  • Tag your tweets strate­gi­cally with key­words you’ll be hunted for.
  • Have your own blog as a por­tal for your job search with links to your online port­fo­lios — search engine optimized.
• Send your résumé as an attach­ment in a nice email to your entire con­tact list with an update of your sit­u­a­tion and ask friends and fam­ily to send it to any­one they think could be a good lead. Do not be neg­a­tive and don’t whine.
• Be sure your cover let­ter and résumé are as good as you think they are — you’re biased, get feed­back before you send out some­thing that isn’t in your favor or won’t get into the A pile.
• Send thank you notes to con­tacts and stay in touch but don’t act needy — it’s a turn off.

What about the other 20 hours of the work week? Take it off line. Back away from the com­puter using every ounce of men­tal strength you still pos­sess dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time of unem­ploy­ment. Reduce your depen­dence on bokors and you’ll find you start to come back to life:

• Vol­un­teer with a non­profit to keep your skills sharp and avoid hav­ing a gap on your résumé.
• Stay high pro­file, as a vol­un­teer of a non­profit you can attend net­work­ing events at the Cham­ber of Com­merce it is a mem­ber of.
• If you have an entre­pre­neur­ial bent, it’s a great time to launch as a consultant.
• Take a cer­tifi­cate pro­gram — there may be work­force invest­ment act fund­ing to pay for it, check your state one stop shop.
• Get those projects around the house done, when you go back to work you’re not likely to have time off right away.
• Exer­cise, do crafts, write, swap girl­friend man­i­cures, what­ever is stress reliev­ing for you. Unem­ploy­ment and debt are both in the top 10 of stress­ful life events.

You can shake the bokors who try to manip­u­late you into think­ing their social media voodoo will get you a job.