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Are you a city pigeon or a countryside pigeon?

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The other day, I was waiting for a train at my station…and I was at the same time observing the pigeons hanging around on the platform (the idea of this article came from reading this awesome story, http://thewritesolution.wordpress.com/2009/09/21/job-search-tenacity-thr...)

There were 10 of them, 3 were really rawboned, and the other ones were not that great either.

A guy in front of me just dropped a crust of bread, and all of them rushed to grab that piece of food…they were fighting each other for a tiny slice of bread, one of them (apparently the healthiest) just got the bigger part.

On the other side, I do remember my summer in the countryside in France, where I saw a couple of pigeons…they were all healthy and shinny pigeons, quite fat, hanging around from trees to trees in group of 2-3 individuals.

So are the city pigeons stupid? Or the countryside pigeons cleverer?

It is really difficult to say or to explain.

But what I can say is that pigeons living in the countryside have much more food and less competition whereas in the city, pigeons are much more concentrated, so there are more pigeons for less food.

As a consequence, if you are a pigeon living in the city, you will have more chance to suffer from starvation.

The moral of the story?

It is better to live in the countryside…No I am joking.

The moral of the story is that when you look for a job, try not to be that city pigeon, struggling for a tiny piece of food against a huge competition.

Find your countryside where you can have your food more easily without fighting all the time.

It means that sending your CV for a job, is acting like a city pigeon.

90% of the time, you are struggling for less food with a huge competition

Actually sending CVs all day long make you a proper city pigeon.

And job boards are big places where you can find only city pigeons hanging around. You will see, they flock into the same jobs, same ways of looking for a job, same CVs.

Countryside pigeons are elsewhere, they are going from trees to trees picking up nuts effortlessly.

They go to networking events, they write articles, they are seen as experts, they don’t act as city pigeons.

They find their uniqueness. They know where to go and how to get there.

So they find their food more easily and can really live longer and better.

City pigeons always act the same when they find a piece of food: they rush to get it, eat what they can, and just wait for the next one…hoping to get more than the neighbor. They only see the world in a really short term period.

So are you a city pigeon or a countryside pigeon?

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Editor's Welcome

 

Hello! And welcome back as we enter 2012, with a busy year ahead of us all. With talk of double-dip recessions, a possible partial or even full break-up of the Eurozone and unemployment rates set to hit nearly 9%, topics such as organisational streamlining, staff resilience and talent management are likely to be on many an HR professional's lips over the next 12 months.
 
But to lighten the gloom here in the UK, we also have the Queen's Diamond Jubilee and its attendant public holidays to look forward to at the start of June. Followed by two weeks of Olympic Games from 27 July to 12 August and the Paralympics from 29 August to 9 September, each generating their own excitement, but also issues to work through for hard-pressed HR departments trying to sort out the multifarious staffing issues in advance.
 
So with an interesting but challenging year to come, HRZone promises to be with you, supporting you all the way and providing our usual insightful blend of news, analysis, community blogs and expert comment to help you sort the wheat from the chaff. As ever, we love to hear from you too so feel free to either post your words of wisdom to our blog section yourself or, in the case of longer, more in-depth ‘expert voice’ articles, drop me a line with any ideas to cath.everett@siftmedia.co.uk.....
 
Cath Everett
HRZone Editor 
 
 
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