“I’m applying for jobs I’m qualified for yet I’m getting ignored even by recruiters. I’m educated, have a degree, am very motivated and have a great resume! I don’t get it. Why aren’t I getting any responses? I don’t get it!”

Does this sound like your situation? Are you also finding it difficult to get an interview – or even an email back from a hiring manager – let alone a job offer?

In a good economy, it can be difficult for some people to get responses from recruiters and hiring managers and in a bad economy where many companies continue to downsize it can be even worse.

When I say some people the fact is that many people hold skills and have experience that either doesn’t come across as being outstanding in their resume (ie. perhaps their resume isn’t interesting enough or written well-enough to hold the reader’s attention) or perhaps there are many other people with their skills also on the job search market and employers can pick and choose amongst them.

In other words, these people are finding it difficult to stand out for the right reasons and attract potential hiring managers.

For the person who is applying to many jobs and getting no responses, the best thing to do is to fully understand what part of the job search process you’re failing in. If you’re getting interviews but no job offer, this is different to applying for jobs and simply not getting responses.

In the first instance, you’re impressing people enough to get the interview but are most likely failing during the interview process. Perhaps you are being outshone by the people you’re competing with and interviewing with for the same jobs. Maybe you’re bombing the interview and just don’t know it.

In the second instance, the fact that you aren’t getting interviews can be the result of a multitude of reasons ie. your resume is no good, you’re applying to the wrong jobs.

The point is that you need to figure out where in the process you’re failing and then figure out why. Then you determine how to fix it.

If you’re firing off dozens or hundreds of resumes by email and are not getting responses, it’s probably a combination of the fact that you are competing with hundreds of other people for the same jobs, and the fact that for one reason or another, your resume and/or profile isn’t doing enough to stand out from these hundreds of other people.

In other words you’re probably not standing out from your competitors for the right reason(s). When you turn the job search into a numbers game (and applying to jobs through job boards is clearly a numbers game) it can be difficult to rise to the top and separate yourself from your competitors. That’s why you’ll often hear people talking about getting yourself out from behind your computer keyboard and searching using other methods like networking.

While I’ve read many resumes that look great and make me think “I have to interview this person” the fact is that eventually you’re going to have to meet the people who could possibly hire you face to face.

The problem is that many times the traits you have that could impress someone enough to want to hire you are ones that only come to light in a face to face situation. If you’re simply firing off resumes to nameless faceless people through email and are not getting the response (or any response) you’re looking for, it might be time to get out from behind your keyboard and really start job searching.

I recently read a report from the Conference Board that showed that less than half of US workers – 45% to be specific – like their job which is the lowest result in the 22 years that they’ve been measuring it.

When the survey started in 1987, 61% of respondents were happy in their jobs but over the past 22 years, this number has steadily declined.

About one quarter of respondents also felt that they didn’t expect to hold their current jobs in one year’s time. I’m not sure if this is because they were planning on looking for a new job, felt they were going to be laid off or (more likely) a combination of both as it wasn’t expressly stated.

Having said that, I suspect a significant percentage of these respondents figure that they’re going to be laid off at some point in the next year and that perhaps there isn’t much they can do about it.

Over the past 22 years, this poll has shown that job satisfaction has steadily declined and specifically areas like job security and the interest in the job have dropped dramatically. Certainly 22 years ago while layoffs and downsizings occurred, they somehow didn’t seem to be as prevalent and widespread as they are today.

As a high school student in the late 1980s, I recall when IBM went through a large downsizing and I specifically remember thinking about what this must have meant to the thousands of employees and their families. For some reason, this downsizing in the late 1980s is one that I remember and that stands out for me even though it didn’t affect me personally.

For many people who find that they don’t like their current job, they might simply end up feeling that they are fortunate to have a job and stay put for at least the time being. The devil-you-know attitude is one that many people probably fall back on these days and figure that even if they’re not happy, perhaps the grass isn’t greener on the other side. Certainly if some of their friends have been laid off and are finding it hard to find a new job, those who are unhappily working but end up simply feeling fortunate that they are in fact working.

I recently got an email from a friend who just got laid off several weeks before Christmas. She works for a major bank and figured that the layoffs were finished and that her job would be safe but alas, it wasn’t.

Two of her family members also lost their jobs in the past few months too so she has plenty of company.

In my friend’s case, she commented that the company she works for is fairly unorganized and tends to make decisions like reducing staff that don’t seem to indicate any sort of plan. The two of us used to work together about 11 years ago and the company we worked for would restructure and have many downsizings numerous times while we were there, often more than once in the same calendar year. So in that regard, she is used to facing this sort of thing except this time, she was one of the people being downsized.

We’ve already discussed a number of aspects of downsizings and restructurings in previous posts but in general terms the best ways to remain include are to ensure that you do the following:

Make the company money, save the company money or ideally do both: If you can quantify how much money you bring into the company (ie. sales) and/or how much you save the company, chances are the company can quantify this too and will therefore know your value to the company compared to your peers. Sometimes you might be working in a position that neither brings in money or saves the company money (ie. customer service roles for example) so it can be difficult for you to quantify your importance to the company especially when the downsizing axe starts getting swung. In this case, the following points might be even more important for you to consider.

Be high profile: If you’re someone who is well-known in your company and has a good reputation, this can only help when it comes to deciding who will be let go and whose job will remain. Taking part in high-profile tasks that show people within your company your skills and accomplishments not only helps your resume, but it can help to separate your from your peers. Certainly being well-known within a company doesn’t guarantee anything but it can help.

Be well-liked: This is more about having a good personality and being someone who others in the company like to be around than it is about kissing ass or becoming a sycophant. No one likes a whiner so make sure you aren’t the person that the company looks at downsizing if only to rid themselves of the personality.

Go the extra mile: During downsizings I witnessed earlier in my career, I noticed that many times the people who got downsized were the people who were (not surprisingly) generally poorly regarded in the company and they more often than not tended to be the people who were last in and first out each day, too. Offering to help out and do more than what your job requires can often help your cause and remind your colleagues and superiors that you are a valuable resource to the company.

When I was in university, I worked for a company that was rumored to be close to having a fairly sizeable downsizing in their office area. I worked part time in an area that was not going to be affected but the rumors were floating around as to who was getting chopped and how big the cut was going to be.

Finally, the day came and we started seeing people leaving the building during the day with their belongings boxed up so we knew that the layoffs had begun. I was sitting in the lunch room at the time and a few tables away was one of the loudmouths who worked in the office that was experiencing the layoffs. Someone made a comment about how the layoffs were unfortunate and the loudmouth commented that it wasn’t so bad because the company was getting rid of the “dead wood” in his words.

Shortly after lunch, the loudmouth found out that he was amongst the dead wood, as he was let go. The rumor was that he responded by barricading himself in his office and shredding as much paper as possible before he was escorted from the building for the last time.

In this instance, the moral of the story is to understand your value in the company.

While we can’t predict this 100% and in this economy, even productive people can be laid off, your best bet is to show value to the company and where possible make it obvious to others how you either add revenue to the company, help the company decrease costs or ideally, how you do both.

The funny part is that the loudmouth didn’t have a particularly good reputation certainly amongst the people I worked with, so he clearly had an overinflated opinion of himself.

Layoffs, downsizings and rightsizings all mean the same thing: The company will continue long after you are gone.

Companies have come up with creative names to describe when they eliminate jobs and people that they don’t need.

They used to call it a layoff ie. “We are laying people off. You are being laid off.”

Then they started calling it a downsizing ie. “We are downsizing. You are being downsized.”

As political correctness crept into our vocabulary, HR-types figured they needed to soften the blow and invented the term called rightsizing ie. “We are rightsizing. You are being rightsized.”

Rightsizing means the same as layoff and downsizing but it sounds better. Rightsizing makes us believe that we weren’t the problem, the company was the problem.

Trust me, you were the problem. Specifically, it was a problem that you were taking up a desk and chair and cashing a check every few weeks. That was a problem to the company’s board of directors and by extension to their shareholders. And their earnings per share, too.

The most recent round of layoffs were probably described by senior management as helping the company “prepare for the future” or to “become leaner” or “to become better able to compete in the new economy” or something like that.

By rightsizing, your company has told you that they were the wrong size while you were in their employment. Now that you are no longer there, they are the right size.

Interestingly enough, the company has also indicated that it was their right to rightsize you. That’s why it’s called rightsizing. They had the right to reduce their size and rightsizing happens to involve downsizing you. In that regard, the choice to rightsize you will always be considered the right decision.

Very clever, eh?

The key to remaining employed is to ensure that your name stays out of the company directory.

A former colleague of mine once told me this while we were working for a company that was known for having restructurings several times per year that resulted in job losses each time.

I was working on contract at the time and my name hadn’t been added to the company directory yet so he suggested I do what I could to ensure it stayed out of the directory.

I saw his point, and suggested that it was true that if our name wasn’t in the company directory, those making the decisions regarding job cuts wouldn’t know we were still employed and couldn’t downsize us. I already had an unlisted home phone number I told him, so being unlisted at work might have a further benefit based on his advice.

The theory was that senior management wouldn’t be able to find us at work because when they typed our name into the company directory to find out what floor we worked on, our name wouldn’t be there so they’d probably assume they’d turfed us in the previous round of layoffs.

The sad part is that as much as we were joking about it, at the time it actually seemed quite true and accurate. Headcount meant everything and a contractor like me didn’t actually count as an official staff member which had its advantages when it came to laying people off.

Moral of the story: The best way to remain employed these days is to ensure that the company you’re with understands your value. If you can show that you’re adding value – or more specifically adding revenue – you stand a better chance of remaining employed than someone who is doing a job that isn’t seen as bringing in revenue or is seen as doing a job that the company could do without.