Had one of the best interview experience at EOA this afternoon. I discussed cordially with an experienced director that focused more on the mindset of his potential employee. Some employer may look for a clean cut record, of continuous relevant experience and knowledge, not discounting the fact that everyone’s life is unique.

There is a distinction between being competent in your job and competent in job hunting, which, depending on the duration and effort put in your daily work, you will become good at it in due time. The same cannot be said for job hunting. First, you cannot attempt application multiple times for the same company. Therefore you cannot apply the knowledge of your earlier failures. Second, you cannot arrange the order of interviews/opening and job offers. Even if you could theoretically score two or three job offers, it would most likely not come at the same time. You will most likely take the first that is being offered unless you have specific and timely information that another offer is incoming.

Ok, lets put it as a scenario here:

A person send out three application, with one of them being his top choice, and the other two being secondary, not the best but could be an improvement over the current (or not). Assuming his interview passing chance is about the same for 3 different companies, he only has somewhere a maximum of 33% chance of getting his dream job. Now add in the timing of getting interview and receiving a feedback on whether he got the job or not, all this will affect the maximum chance.

Unless a person is really patient and only pounce on the best job (when it has opening, and an interview is given), it is unlikely that a perfect continuous record can be created for most employee. I understand that employer ask questions along this line to look for holes in the story, or signs of incompetence. But I stress that a non continuous job record should not be an issue by itself. It is the nature of work and life experience, where a little bit of luck comes into play and usually it comes with a lot of up and downs.

Of course, even as I write this, a person should continuously build on skillets that will increase the odd for success. For that area is manageable and under the control of an individual.