JOCELYNE LLOYD: Help wanted, apply within

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JOCELYNE LLOYD: Help wanted, apply within

Looking for a job has to be one of the most demoralizing activities almost everyone must do at some point in their life.

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Presenting a document that outlines all your qualities, ready to sell yourself over and over to a bunch of strangers with the knowledge you’re going to be rejected most of the time requires its own skillset. Should “sucker for punishment” go under qualifications or experience on the resume?

When you’re a student looking for summer work or a position to help pay your way through university, the job-hunting experience brings its own brand of cynicism. How do you answer a prospective employer who asks what makes you perfect for this role, when you already know you’re going to hate this minimum-wage job but you have bills to pay?

That’s if you even get a callback for an interview.

A few decades ago, when I was a young university student looking for work, I remember one summer where I handed out 90 resumes. In those days, you created the document at your school’s computer lab and used that original to make copies as needed at late night photocopy centres. Sometimes you had to pay for a stamp and mail it to a newspaper to hold in a classified ad numbered box for the undisclosed employer to pick up, but usually you hand-delivered it right to the business in question and at least got one chance at a face-to-face with the hiring manager.

That is largely no........

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