I’ve been looking for a job for over 8 years now. Maybe your’e thinking that I’m having trouble due to the fact that I may be unemployed or it’s a tough market out there. I guess that the best way I can answer those questions is to say that the answer is no to both points. So, why is it taking me so long to look for a job when I already have one?
I’ll give you a good example. I had called a search firm and applied for a sales position where I would work with lawyers. The woman said that I have a great resume with a background with no gaps since I have never been unemployed in my life. The problem is that I need to have industry related skills in order to work at this job.
So, I fired back and said “aren’t people who are applying for this position on non-compete agreements?.” She said “Absolutely. We received a ton of resumes for this position and we had to eliminate most of those people because they could not work their way around their non-compete agreement. We were lucky enough to find two people though who could so they are being considered for the job since they understand Discovery.”
In the end, she also said that "we deal with people who are on non-compete agreements all the time. That's the way it is."
In the end, she also said that "we deal with people who are on non-compete agreements all the time. That's the way it is."
In case you’re thinking “well Ron, why don’t you just apply for jobs in your industry even thought you’re on a non-compete agreement. It’s not like the company can’t do anything about it.
My answer would be that it would be a waste of time. First of all, my company could take an injunction out to stop me from working at that job. Sure, I can go to court and fight this but the legal fees would be over $10,000.
In addition, I would tell you that I have met with hiring managers who had reviewed my resume and my non-compete agreement and all of them said that they didn’t want to hire me due to the fact that they could be sued for any lost business since that is also covered in my non-compete agreement. As a result, I am locked out of over 95% of potential jobs in my industry.
With that said, thousands of people who are non-compete agreements that are like mine have to apply for jobs that we are unqualified for. Now, since we don’t know how many people are on non-compete agreements across the country, there may be in indication of this based on some of the links that I have listed below.
Take the first one which is a survey of people in Indiana who are looking for a job. “Of the 532 participating employers, 39% (202) said they recently have left jobs unfilled due to unqualified applicants.”
Now, let’s take a look at the second link, which is another survey from Beyond.com. “Following a national survey of nearly 4,000 job seekers and HR professionals, 75% of the HR respondents said they were having trouble filling open positions because too many of the candidates were unqualified. Meanwhile, the same survey found that 55% of job seekers felt they were not getting those open positions because they were competing with too many qualified candidates.
“Reading further, there seems to be a reason for this. “One reason why HR professionals might not think candidates are qualified is because of their resumes. 73% of HR professionals feel that job applicants do a "bad job" of tailoring their resumes to specific positions. In fact, only 28% of candidates said they always customize their resumes for a position, which means the majority of candidates may not be taking advantage of the opportunity to highlight their most relevant experience.”
Yes, it’s very easy to dismiss people like me from this survey. It’s not like we can figure out how many people are on a non-compete agreement. That can be done by putting a question on the unemployment application. Are you on a non-compete agreement and having trouble finding work in your industry because of it? Yet employment applications have this question on a non-compete agreement. Are you on a non-compete agreement? So much for bringing the unemployment application up to date from the 50’s.
If anything, there is a disconnect regarding non-compete agreements. Sure, we see newspaper articles from large newspapers like the Boston Globe, The Washington Post, or even the Huffington Post on low wage workers being on non-compete agreements yet we never see a news report on a national or cable network other than Fox News, who in the past has put a positive spin on non-compete agreements.
So feel free to read these articles and jump to your own conclusions about why people are applying for jobs that they are unqualified for. Believe that it has something to do with the applicant’s resume. The truth is that for many people, the future of being on a non-compete agreement means that you have to learn how to hop from job to job so I have put a link there for you as well.
Reading these articles below only makes the truth easier to understand about non-compete agreements. A tree can fall in a forest and no one will hear it. For a lot of people, we may or may not know that non-compete agreements even exist but we still go out of our way to hide from them because we don’t want to know about them.
Ron Hummer
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