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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Applying for jobs online, Rick saw this coming!

Good morning!

It's no big secret that I don't love my boss. Sit in a room with me for more than fourteen seconds and you're bound to hear about the evil Bossman, a man who goes through my garbage and comments on any candy wrappers/food wrappers that he may find. (For the record, I've now taken to throwing any offending food wrappers in the ladies room trash. One would HOPE he doesn't go through that trash!)

Well, after three plus years of service, with no raise, no bennies, and plenty of self esteem shredding, I sat down with hubby last night and decided that I need to find a new job. That may seriously cut into my writing time ( which I do at work many days) and my spider solitaire playing time (which I also do at work) and my blogging (again, at work...geez, what do I DO at my job?) but that having my mental state brought back from the brink might be a good pay off.

So I set out to find myself a new job. In this economy, a couple of things amazed me right off the bat:

1) There are still plenty of jobs to be had.

2) There are a ton of ways to apply for jobs, and very few of them involve actually meeting the prospective employer.

Seriously, have you applied for a job online? How can a future employer make a judgement call based on an email? You can't submit handwriting samples to an expert to see if the prospective employee is a possible serial killer. You can't do a smell test to see if the "PE" is stinky or not. You can't listen to the "PE's" voice, which is vital if you're hiring a receptionist...I mean, having computer skills is a must, yes, but if your receptionist has a voice that makes people want to chew glass, all the computer skills in the world won't make up for it.

So I found three jobs to apply for right away. And I found these jobs three different ways: One in the paper...one online, and one by word of mouth. (I was busy last night!)

However, now that we are in this non personal world, no one actually wants to meet with me to start the application process. Which is too bad since I can pretty much talk my way into anything. Nope, I spent a good portion of this morning sending applications by fax and email. I do have to pick up one application at the job site...but they want me to fax that back to them. Heaven forbid I step foot into the office!

Now, I know some people find it tiresome that I bring a lot of my points back to Rick Springfield songs, but face it, folks, the man saw this coming. More than twenty years ago he penned the song, "Human Touch" a song that bemoaned this planet's increasing connection via computer and disconnection with each other. And now, here I am, trying to be as impressive as possible with a cover letter and a resume.

Oh, wait...this feels really, really familiar! Oh, that's right...this is a query letter and a synopsis! So now, instead of trying to sell a 95K word novel with an eight sentence query letter and a two page synopsis, I'm trying to sell my skills as an employee.

Well, now that I've put it into a context I understand...I can do this!

I'm off to fax! Have a great day!

2 comments:

  1. I'm really bad at the 'applying for jobs' thing. I got this job based on a phone call, the last job someone found for me AND wrote my resume, so the last successful resume-to-interview process I went through was in 1992.

    Good luck!

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  2. Well, I found this job through the paper, and had to interview at Bossman's house. That should have been a tip off about what a pompous dink he is. I don't generally do well with resume's on online. I'm much better in person. We'll see...just starting the process is making me a happier camper!

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