[POLL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS] If Youre Looking For A Job, Did You

[POLL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS] If You're Looking For A Job, Did You… 0 I find the 2nd place result to be particularly surprising. We'll get to that, but… First: how I screwed up Before I get to the results or the analysis, let me tell you how I screwed up with this poll, or more specifically, with how I told you about it. When I first published the poll on JobMob a few weeks ago, I thought that the voting mechanism wouldn't let you vote from the article itself, and that you would need to click through to the website. With that in mind, I put an image of the poll in the article so that when you clicked through to vote, you would easily recognize it in the sidebar here on JobMob: eval Believe it or not, it never occurred to me that people would see that image and think they could vote by clicking on it, which now seems so obvious that I probably would have done it myself. The only reason I realized my mistake was because people who did click through to the website also tried voting by clicking on the image, and I was able to see that using a tool called CrazyEgg:eval Hopefully, some of the image clickers also realized what was going on and then actually voted in the sidebar. In any case, once I saw this, I immediately removed the poll image and put the actual poll into the announcement article. Lesson learned: from now on, no more images of polls! The poll results and what they mean Here are the official results of the poll: If you're looking for a job, did you... Get laid-off from your last job? (40%, 36 Votes) Quit your last job? (26%, 23 Votes) You're looking for your first job (21%, 19 Votes) Have a contract that just ended? (12%, 11 Votes) Started: December 20, 2009 @ 10:11 pmTotal Voters: 89 40% Get laid-off from your last job? This answer was expected because of the 2009 recessions in the countries that most JobMob visitors come from, like the USA, Israel and the UK. One thing worth pointing out is that I specifically didn't distinguish between ‘got laid-off' and ‘got fired'. For a poll to work well, the answer choices need to be clear so that your vote comes to you right away. Although ‘laid off' and ‘fired' don't mean exactly the same thing, and since the difference might not exist in all countries and cultures, I decided to just keep things simple. 26% Quit your last job? Like I said at the top, I find this result the most surprising. During a recession, you would normally sit tight in your job because there are so few other ones available, unless of course, you have a good reason to believe differently in your case. If you voted this way, can you tell us why you quit now of all times? 21% You're looking for your first job There was a good comment by Esther on the poll announcement about how the poll didn't take into account stay-at-home moms who were now making their way back into the workforce, but I can imagine that this was the option they would have chosen, alongside graduates, newly-released soldiers, etc. 13% Have a contract that just ended? A follow-up question: if you voted this, and you're a freelancer, are you now looking for a salary job or more freelance work? If you liked this article, you'll enjoy What Is Your Biggest Job Search Problem? [POLL RESULTS AND ANALYSIS].