Not applying for work because the unemployment rate is high is mind bending to me. Can you explain your reasoning? This sounds like it is full-stop guaranteed to mean several hundred thousand people get jobs before you get considered. I like the blog idea more than playing xBox but the commitment strategy here strikes me as severly suboptimal. (You may wish to recalibrate your understanding of meaningful: delaying your start date by 24 hours costs more than double digits.)
I spent a year after college looking for jobs to apply to. I found three I was remotely qualified for (those I applied to).
If I applied for even a small portion of the jobs that pop up on local job boards, it would consume every hour of the day.
In a normal economy you'd see entry level jobs there. But every job wants years of experience and specialized certifications. I don't even have the means to get the certifications.
Taking an alternate route is a coping method. I still probe the job boards during the day.
One piece of advice: don't let the job ad make you think you're unqualified and stop you from applying. Employers often a) don't know what they want/need b) throw everything they can think of in that ad. It may be a challenge to get past the naive recruiter without all of the skills mentioned on your resume, but it can be worth it because the interview will bear out whether you'll actually be useful to the hiring manager.
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee. I understand that it happens, but I have no idea how someone decides "hey, we need a new person" and has no idea what they would like that person to do. Hiring is a hard enough problem without handicapping yourself out of the gate by not having and expressing a clear idea of what you're looking for.
How hard can it be to say "we're looking for someone who knows enough Java to follow our codebase without needing their hand held. We are also dabbling in Python so that will be a plus if you know it."? Why can't a req for an experienced engineer read "We need someone reliable and knowledgeable enough that they can do all the handholding our other developers need."? There must be some part of this that I'm missing, because actually writing a req seems too damned simple to be this FUBAR'ed.
I find it very hard to understand how an employer could not know what they want or need in a new employee
Oh, that's easy. The manager you'd be working for, the budget holder he reports to, and the person who writes the ad don't know each other, have never met, and have never spoken or even communicated except via filling in forms designed by HR people who know HR but know nothing about the industry.
I've heard people claim that employers will put out jobs with ridiculous requirements to fill some "we tried" quota for a regulation with a name that escapes me.
They also usually inflate the requirements a bit on purpose, on the basis that they will get fewer unqualified applicants that way. They get lots of unqualified applicants without doing that because "everyone knows" that employers inflate their requirements a bit on purpose.
Companies always ask for more than they need, just as candidates often claim more experience than they actually have. Don't be intimidated by what they say they want.
1) I think if you're unemployed, I think the OP is correct in saying that it's better to have something on your resume, than a large gap where you were applying for jobs
2) Some people are able to transition. I had a cousin who used to work at a factory. They downsized and he started flipping houses. He saw the market drying up (in Michigan, so he didn't get rich off of it) and went back to school and now is doing Flash design.
But, on the other hand, I have cousins who used to work in the auto industry (suppliers) and got laid off. One took advantage of retraining is now doing medical coding, but as she told me, it's hard to switch after spending 18 years working on the line at a factory. One cousin hasn't been able to make the switch and moves from temp job to temp job. Others have looked for work, and with their skill set, the jobs just aren't there...
