When Meridith Levinson from the American CIO thinks about job searches, few positive associations come to her mind. Moreover, the words are: frustrating, discouraging, inexorably.
Over and over again, she meets people looking for a job who tell her about their frustrating moments during their search. The most commonly named moments she has listed up for the German CIO.

Due to the fact that the application process is more or less for freelancers, we would like to show you that you are not alone with your frustration: Here are the top ten dangers for your motivation during the project search.

Project providers listen up: We urgently recommend to avoid these!

1. No answer to an application: Applicants are not expecting a rapid response, because they know that their application was probably not the only one. However, not receiving any answer might be very frustrating.

2. No further contact after an interview: It is even more disappointing when there has been a personal meeting and there is no further contact.

3. Unreal and expired projects: Experience shows that the same projects are sometimes advertised repeatedly. Applications to those projects lead to nothing. Misgivings that those projects do not even exist are justifiable. This was even confirmed by the employees of some companies. But why? Concerned applicants would think that those projects were only advertised because the company wants to look solid to their competitors.

4. Very specific requirements: The market becomes more and more demanding and in order to be the perfect fit, you have to fulfill a lot of requirements. However, those many requirements also have positive aspects: You save time, because you won´t apply for a job for which you do not have all the qualifications, yet.

There is a lot of frustration online, too
5. Complex application-software: Applicants reported ineffective search functions in project portals, for example, that take a lot of time and nerves, because they had to read a long result list to find something.

6. The shortage of experts: When freelancers who are looking for a new project hear something about the shortage of experts for the thousandth time, they would just love to stand up and shout: “Here I am!”

7. The alleged better situation on the project market: Of course project searchers love to hear about a lot of open projects. However, if they stay projectless in an allegedly improved situation, it might be a bit demotivating.

8. The question: “Why have you been unemployed for such a long time?” People searching for projects don’t like this question because it sounds a bit like an allegation that they either did not search enough or that something is wrong with them.

9. The supposition that they are not ready to step back: Levinson has talked to a lot of IT-experts who have been searching for a project for a while and who were definitely ready to take a step back – also financially. However they think that they weren’t hired because the recruiters were afraid that they weren’t satisfied with their lower position and thus would try to get in a higher position quickly.

Frustration when concealing certain references
10. Delete qualifications from CV: Levinson has actually talked to applicants who deleted qualifications from their CVs and profiles in social networks. Applicants are frustrated when they are being asked to keep quite about IT-projects they are proud of. Against the advice of the recruiters, one could argue that this creates a gap in your CV.

Based on the interview with Meridith Levinson in the CIO