The Waiting Game

By Robert P. Poindexter

Rest assured that no matter how much or how long I pray for patience, it never seems to come quickly enough to satisfy me. Waiting is an excruciatingly factual part of life here on planet earth, and few have mastered a technique that even comes close to dulling the pain many of us feel when having to wait on virtually anything.

Doctors offices ply us with 10-year-old magazines that we wouldn’t even think to pick up in most situations. But after 30 minutes with nothing much to do, even the mating habits of the yellow-breasted sear-sucker can suddenly seem interesting, especially if it keeps you from making eye contact with anyone who may take that as an opportunity to give you a blow-by-blow run down on their latest sacroiliac procedure.

Call centers also attempt to ease our suffering by playing music to keep us from noticing that our time means very little to a person who may be having lunch as far as we know.

Airports, grocery store check-outs, the DMV, voting stations, concerts, movie theaters, red lights and scores of other parts of our everyday lives seemingly conspire to keep us all … waiting.

For the job seeker, a new kind of waiting game exists. That waiting time is usually spent checking email accounts every few minutes making certain that all-important message is not just wasting away in the in-box and constantly looking for the elusive missed call on the cell or home phone.

To say it can be frustrating at times would be an understatement for many of us.

But, do you know what is even more frustrating than waiting?

If you have ever gotten to the ticket counter at the airport, or finally gotten your turn at the DMV, or finally unloaded your groceries onto the conveyor belt, only to discover that you don’t have the proper paperwork, your credit card or checkbook, then you already know what’s more frustrating than waiting.

Yet day in and day out, job seekers needlessly put themselves through this pain. They wait to find the perfect job. They wait to find the time to apply to said job, and then they anxiously wait by the computer and telephone for a message that may never come.

Usually because of some little piece of information they failed to relay, or because they used a resume that failed to get them noticed or wasn’t compelling enough to incite the HR Manager to action.

Waiting is one thing, but waiting for nothing because a vital document is either missing or doesn’t relay the necessary information, well as many of you know, that takes waiting to a whole other level.

Take this advice, and before you waste one second more waiting, spend a few moments to ensure your paperwork is in order. And if it’s not, do yourself a favor by seeking the advice of a career professional who will help you to make sure that in this case at least, you’re not just waiting for nothing.