Summary
Sometimes I have to take paths that ultimately seem fruitless, just to get somewhere. I could apply this idea to any area of my life. Now it's my turn to look for a job.
This is my 200th post. Actually, it’s my 201st post, but I don’t want to get lost in the world of numbers. Let’s go to another world!
This number wants me to write something serious.
I could defend myself by saying that I only write about serious things, but I think even I would laugh at myself.
This post is very close to what this blog was originally intended to do. Maybe it can help someone else who wants to become a digital nomad.
Job search in the online world
I decided to share my experience with location-independent job search mainly because this area is full of avoidable traps. These traps are mainly embodied in the promises offered by prepaid systems.
Because promises and good-sounding advertising are behind almost every system.
I had to chew my way through a few systems to finally arrive somewhere. I didn’t know it at first, but these systems not only didn’t give me work, but also forced me to finally articulate who I am professionally.
But I’m not starting here.
The professional Facebook.
If you are not present, you do not exist.
I used these and similar phrases to position the characters on this page. I made a cover photo that looked (as professional as I could) professional, I found the most professional profile picture.
I uploaded my completely up-to-date CV (see, “About my CV and its uselessness”), turned all my experience into gold, and waited for employers to come knocking. Obviously, everyone would want to work with me.
I had a few inquiries. The first one came straight from LinkedIn. I mean, if I subscribe to the professional Premium system (about 200,000 HUF, 600 USD) per year, my chances would be much better. This offer comes up weekly.
Then a few people contacted me because they saw my CV and everything in it was so professional, but they would help me make it even more professional. I had already rejected this opportunity, and it wasn’t hard to say no this time either.
Then network builders started looking for me, and they imagined me joining all kinds of sales networks that offered serious success.
So, I had to realize that despite all my efforts and experience, the dog wasn’t even interested in me.
Of course, I set up job monitoring emails, so every day I see dozens of opportunities in my inbox that I can’t do anything about. But I’ll write about that a little later.
Job offering systems in general
Every system is free. I mean, it promises to be free.
Yeah! Sorry! Usually it’s not.
But who expects anyone to operate such a serious system for free? Someone has to pay for it, and it’s obvious that the unfortunate job seeker has to take a share of this payment.
These kinds of systems pose a serious risk for every future digital nomad!
To feel like you’re doing everything you can to get a job, you have to take these systems seriously. Filling out your professional profile is already a time investment in a system like this.
Obviously, I have to show myself, and seriously. Profile picture. Uploading your CV is often tricky because you have to fill in all the data almost line by line. Schools, workplaces, dates from to, the stupid date selectors, mandatory selection fields that don’t recognize Hungarian universities.
Then comes the name of the job you want to fill, which is an entrance to a fantasy world even in Hungarian, let alone in the terms dreamed up by the inventors of all kinds of systems.
The icing on the cake is that in many systems the number of jobs is limited. Let’s say 5. In other words, choose carefully, because that’s what your results will depend on. If you’ve been working as a facility manager for 30 years, then there’s no problem, because you only have to enter this one. But if you happen to have worked in 20 different jobs in 30 years, then pull yourself together and make a responsible decision.
So, let’s say you can spend hours registering on an average job search system. Then comes the search. Because this search is also a trap.
You can search for free and happily in several systems. Then when you have found the job of your dreams and would like to apply, it turns out that you already have to register to apply.
Jump back to the start field and don’t want to miss this job!
UpWork
This is a site offering project jobs.
Sites like this have been in my sights for about 10 months, but I haven’t put in the serious work to look for them here. So I tried this system.
It offers a lot of small jobs that I can do single-handedly. It shows job fees transparently, with descriptions that meet expectations.
Well. Last year’s registration just needs to be oiled up a little and I’ll be a millionaire.
When applying for the first job, it turns out that you don’t have to pay for it. The system only deducts from the available so-called connections for each offer I submit. I get 100 of the connections when registering, and applying for a job costs 10-20 connections. After 5 applications, the connections run out, but don’t worry, I can buy more for myself for a few USD.
But the system is free, because I don’t pay with money, but with connections. If we replace the word “konnekt” with “krumpli”, it will still only mean that we have to buy the potato.
Let’s get over this pitiful job and buy a few “konnekts” and become a subscriber in the system, because then we will only have more opportunities. By the time I blinked twice, I had already spent 20,000 HUF (60 USD) in this system. It’s okay, a good investment, because soon the job that lays the golden egg will be there.
I quickly applied for about 20 jobs and waited for the next email to arrive with the sound of the cash register jingling instead of the usual email beep.
After two days, I was still looking at the fact that the person I sent my job applications to hadn’t even opened them.
That’s when you have to look deeper into the system.
This is an evaluation system. The employer evaluates the employee, and vice versa. There are dozens of applicants for every job.
The system puts applicants without a rating – like me – at the bottom of the applicant list. The job offerer looks at the ones at the top of the list, chooses from the top 3, and we’re done. Of course, no one expects a person offering a job for 100 USD to look at the data and offers of 70 applicants.
Because when you apply for a job, you are actually making an offer. (And you are using up your connections.) So, if your offer is even professionally suitable, but someone – say, from a poorer region – would do the job for half the price, then you don’t have much chance of being selected.
Overall, you have to compete not only with applicants with more ratings, but also with those who work significantly cheaper.
The system came up with this idea that you can boost your application by offering extra connections to get to the top of the list. Of course, it is impossible to know the extent of this, so if you find a good job, then BID 100 more in addition to the 17 connections, so that you might be the first.
In the meantime, hope that your colleague didn’t go to the top of the list with 200.
I’m not kidding, when I activated this system, I had a few connections in front of me, and then the next day I woke up to 200 emails waiting in my inbox. All with excellent offers.
I had fun with this system for a few more days.
In the meantime, I redirected the emails from the inbox to a special folder. In this folder now, two weeks after registration, there are 1,673 unread job offers waiting for me
to never read them.
This system simply doesn’t work. Despite having 30+ years of professional experience, I am a snotty, bottom-of-the-list beginner to the system. I can spend any amount of money to apply, I don’t think I’ll make a dent in this or similar systems.
One of my favorites – AI Apply
Things got a little funny after that. Just as I was starting to realize that I wasn’t going to get anywhere with this system, an ad popped up in my news feed.
It was nice to get confirmation from an advertisement that my intuition was right and UpWork was useless, as you can see in the picture, the fake job offers generated by AI make it impossible to function normally.
Fortunately, the advertisement provided the solution. I should try their old system and I won’t be disappointed. Maybe the symmetry of the advertisement (only the even sentences have a period at the end) strengthened my trust, but I gave this system a chance too.
They promised that after registration, the system would be so AI-driven that I would only have to prepare for the interviews that were organized, I wouldn’t have anything else to do.
This sounded so good that I didn’t wait long to register.
Start for free! – we start from here. The first question was about the stress factor during the login, the essence of it was about how urgent it was to find a job, the scale ranged from I’m really relaxed to I’ll get the job right away.
On the next screen, a motivational piece of advice reassured me that I wasn’t one of the scum of the world just because I didn’t have a job.
Then I could enter the job titles I wanted to apply for. You can enter a maximum of five, and the AI helps in the selection by correcting the entered title to industry standard.
Now comes the selection of experience level.
These few pieces of data were enough to immediately give me the encouragement: “Thanks to your rich professional background, you have a good chance of reaching the highest level of opportunities.”
This AI knows something to draw this conclusion from all this. And if this isn’t a conclusion, then I’m already in trouble with this system.
Now comes the expected annual salary level. For me, the fact that the salary selection slider is politely set to 40 million HUF (120,000 USD) per year is already a warning sign.
I reduced the number to be on the safe side, so that I could fall on my face in the face of reality.
You still have to provide the industry, the type of employment and when I am able to work, plus whether I am willing to move for work.
And it already analyzes the vast amount of data I provided. After the analysis, there are also demographic questions, it is certainly important for employment that I do not define myself in a binary or heterosexual way.
Then we’re there to give you my card details. With all the usual trappings of such offers: This is a reduced offer, but it’s only available for 10 minutes and the clock is ticking. The basic package is chosen only by the losers, the middle one is what everyone spins.
It doesn’t matter, it’s all just a big blah-blah-blah.
Most of these systems want to ask for money without me even knowing exactly why I’m paying.
Good luck to everyone with these systems, but be careful!
Professional identity
If nothing else, these systems helped me by highlighting that my search method was not appropriate.
The question of what to call my future job title presented me with a difficult task, because I realized that I couldn’t clearly articulate it, or even define it with a single good title.
So I slowly had to realize that my personal, spiritual self-definition journey was complemented by the desire to formulate my professional identity.
This task did not scare me, and I only thought a little about whether it was safe to shine the flashlight of a midlife crisis on it from the outside. Personally, I do not feel myself to be either midlife or in crisis, so I will not identify with this well-known terminology now.
I would like to point out once again that this is a task. And it has never scared me. So I got over it in the past week.
So now I am much more specific in targeting job advertisements, and even positions that I had not even considered before have come into my sights.
Overall, I do not regret spending some time and energy with job search systems, that through my own unpleasant experiences I have come to a new realization and task. The point is that by the end of the process, I have a clearer view of who I am in the world of remote work.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
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Short introduction