Self-blame and non-supporting job-seeker support groups are keeping from getting jobs

“The long-term unemployment rate is going down much more slowly than the overall unemployment rate,” notes Sharone, an assistant professor of work and employment relations at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. “And it doesn’t include the 6 million or so ‘missing workers’ — people we’d expect to be in the workforce, but who are not.”

For his new book, Sharone interviewed 162 Americans and Israeli job seekers (he wanted to compare their experiences), mostly white-collar people around San Francisco and Tel Aviv. He also spent nearly two years as a participant-observer in local job-seeker support groups run by the government or by nonprofits.

Sharone came away with two key findings:

First off, he discovered, in America  the unemployed have a tendency to blame themselves . Sharone says the American response is due to what he describes as “the job-search chemistry game” — in the U.S., the key to getting hired isn’t your skills, it’s establishing your fit with a particular employer.

The self-blame problem, Sharone says, creates a snowball effect. The more unsuccessful someone is finding work, the more the person thinks there’s something wrong with him or her. That often leads the job hunter to get increasingly depressed and then to stop, or cut back on, job hunting.

“When your self — not your skills — is getting judged and is the object of scrutiny, then you have great vulnerability. You start feeling defective,” says Sharone.

Sharone’s second big finding: job-seeker support groups often aren’t very…. supporting. Their leaders love to talk about success stories, but rarely discuss and show sympathy for the real-world struggles and rejections that group members often face.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at What’s Keeping The Unemployed From Getting Jobs.