Lena — I feel your frus­tra­tion. I also note that in spite of your very best and dili­gent efforts, your job search has included a lot of ‘non-targeted’ activ­ity which has a very des­per­ate feel to it. Let me start by say­ing that for one human to send a thou­sand resumes in 3 years (let alone a life­time) is noth­ing short of con­found­ing, amaz­ing and sorry to say waste­ful… I don’t mean to hurt your feel­ings but blan­ket­ing the earth with resumes doesn’t give you bet­ter odds of get­ting a job.

On another note, it is easy to email me pri­vately by click­ing on the Google ‘G’ icon at the top of the page next to ‘Who is she?’ but you chose to write all kinds of pri­vate details pub­licly — which trust me when I tell you I’m say­ing this with the best inten­tions.… leads me to believe you are too chatty about your per­sonal life dur­ing phone screens and in face-to-face inter­views, and it greatly dimin­ishes your chances.

You are the 3rd per­son this week to com­ment to me about age.. I’m the same age and it’s bum­ming me out. I hope this atti­tude is not con­ta­gious. For pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures I have set my car radio to a Top 40 sta­tion. Please.….…. We retire at 65. Even if you are 50 you have another 15 good years in you. Think about it, 15 years is a long time, espe­cially con­sid­er­ing the aver­age tenure on the job these days is about 36 months. That means you could have 5 more jobs before you retire. Who do you think has it harder, peo­ple with your level of expe­ri­ence or new grad­u­ates with none? May light­en­ing strike me if I’m not telling the truth, I just job offered a 64 year old guy two days ago.

Pick 20 com­pa­nies you would like to work for that have jobs you are qual­i­fied for. Tar­get your resume to each com­pany and the posi­tion. That means make 20 resumes that con­tain the same infor­ma­tion but tai­lored to each posi­tion. research via LinkedIn, phone, Inter­net, etc., who the head of HR (or hir­ing man­ager for the depart­ment) is. Write a cover let­ter for each posi­tion to the con­tact per­son in 3 para­graphs that explain 1. Who you are (back­ground sum­mary)
2. How you learned of the job and what you bring to the table as a solu­tion provider
3. Why you want to work specif­i­cally for that com­pany and request an interview.

When you apply online make sure the resume you upload is the cover let­ter page one and resume page 2/3.

Send the let­ter via mail or email also 9research the con­tact info / email address).

Keep the con­ver­sa­tion to busi­ness and be enthu­si­as­tic but not des­per­ate when you get a call.

Attend inter­views with a smile, a nice con­ser­v­a­tive suit inter­view that doesn’t show too much skin
and a scarf, pin or some other acces­sory that reflects your style, dress shoes, skip exces­sive makeup and per­fume, and keep the con­ver­sa­tion to BUSINESS — answer with exam­ples of suc­cess­ful work you have done in the past and shake hands in an busi­ness like man­ner. Col­lect a busi­ness card from each per­son, go home and write a thank you let­ter in 3 para­graphs:
1. Thank the inter­viewer for his/her time and com­pli­ment the com­pany, team, etc.
2. Write why you want the job / why you are the solu­tion to their empty seat.
3. Explain why work­ing for the com­pany would be mean­ing­ful (apart from the com­pen­sa­tion) and how you look for­ward to hear­ing about next steps.

Let me know how that works out for you.  ~Karla