Never in the history of work has anyone actually enjoyed looking for it. But the frustration, exhaustion, anxiety, anger, and despondence I’ve heard from white-collar job seekers over the past year have been unlike anything I’ve encountered in my 15 years of reporting on the economy. They went to good schools. They worked at reputable companies. They’ve looked for jobs before, and they thought they knew the drill. But now, in the current job market, they’re utterly baffled. None of their tried-and-true approaches to the job hunt seem to work anymore. It’s as if they went to sleep in one world and woke up in a scarier one.
In a sense, they have. We’re in the midst of a deep white-collar recession, which is generating more unemployed professionals than job openings. And technology has simplified job applications to a single click, flooding employers with way more…