Fishing and Job Hunting

I love allegories. I like when things mean other things. So very often I find myself thinking in allegory. For example, today I was thinking about job hunting (not me, just in general). And I immediately began to think of it in terms of fly fishing. I recently married a wonderful man who is passionate about fly fishing. And thus, I have learned a thing or two about it myself. So here for you is my comparison between fly fishing and job hunting.

Fly fishing is all about knowing the fish you are after. You can do this a couple of different ways, the first way is to pick your fishing spot and research it. There are all sorts of blogs online that discuss the numerous fishing spots in any given area. Other fishermen talk about what flies they used and what results they had. By reading these blogs and other helpful articles you can determine whether you should use a wooly bugger or ten cent trout killer. You learn things like the types of fish in the area (trout, bass, etc.) and what kinds of things they like to eat (which is determined by what kinds of bugs frequent the area and what size the fish are in the area). Once you have determined what sort of fly to use, you can either make it yourself or buy it at the local fly shop. Then you head towards your fishing destination and test your learning. But there is another effective way of determining which fly to use to catch the fish you are after. Anyone who has sat on the banks of a water mass (river, creek, lake, etc.) has probably seen the fish that jump out of the water. They are feeding on bugs that are just hatching on the water surface. So what a fisherman will do is try to determine what the hatching bugs look like and then use a similar looking dry fly to catch the fish. This to me is an exciting way of catching a fish, because you can actually watch the fish jump out of the water and grab your fly. Beautiful. This way of determining which fly to use is probably not something to just do on its own, because you never know if there will be hatching bugs. But once you've got the bite you still have to hook the fish and reel it in. Now this is probably the hardest part for me. In regular rod and reel fishing, when you get a bite you jerk the rod to hook the fish and then you just wind your reel to bring the fish in. In fly fishing, I've learned that you don't have to jerk the rod (though I can't seem to keep from jumping when I feel that bite) and you certainly NEVER wind the reel. To bring the fish in you keep your rod tip up and just pull the line in slowly with your hands. The fish eventually swims your way and there isn't really a huge struggle. And then you have a beautiful fish lying in your hands.

Now what the heck does that have to do with job hunting. Well you can't just throw your resume out there and hope for the best. You have to research who you are trying to catch with the resume and then tailor your resume to suit that "fish." For example, if I am trying to get a job with a school, I'm going to emphasis my years as a teacher in all the different settings that has been in. But if I'm wanting to go into retail, I'm going to emphasis my years of customer service. The job I'm in right now affords me both types of experience and so I can emphasis which ever is more to my advantage. I also am not going to just set my researched resume out there and hope for the best. I'm going to keep putting it out there, maybe changing it up a bit. And the smallest little nibble is going to make me react. In short I'm going to keep sending out the flies until I bring something in.

And I won't even begin to mention the amount of research done just to decide where is the right place to fish!

Disclaimer: I have greatly simplified and put into my own words the process of fly fishing, so please remember that that is not really the point of this blog. :)