The Art of Looking For Employment

Leaving the job market in 2004...scary
Dropping the family income by 50%...more than scary
The experience and results of being a stay-at-home Mom...Priceless

And now: trying to re-enter the job market...scary

Let's see, how do we do this? Historically, it's been easy! Find an ad in the paper, apply, interview, pick from job opportunities for the one you like best. At least, that's been my experience.

Where we live...there are NO job listings in the Sunday newspaper. Well, okay, there are "some" but very limited. All jobs are re-directed to www.dailypress.com, where they are further re-directed to www.careerbuilder.com.

All jobs require an online application, and a resume, sometimes more. All job applications ask the same questions as provided on the resume. Redundancy at its finest. I filled out a job application today that took over 90 minutes to complete. That was just one application. Several applications have taken more than an hour each, none of them was less 45 or 50 minutes, and all equally redundant. For some jobs, I believe it is companies that are just "fishing" to see what the market is producing in terms of potential employees, with no intention of ever hiring. Yet just one of the reasons I NEVER apply for a job unless I know who the company is. None of the generic and unidentified applications, no thank you. You'd be surprised how many companies out there hide their identity. Who wants to work for a company that is so secretive and underhanded, anyway? What, are they advertising to replace someone who hasn't been fired yet? Again, no thank you!

I applied for a secretarial job back on December 12 for a job with the City of Newport News. It would have been a foot in the door, excellent benefits, and okay pay. Turns out our next door neighbor also works for the city, so I got an unofficial update from her just last weekend. Seems that they received over 150 applications for this one job, and the pile was eventually whittled down to 25 potential applicants. She saw that I am included in the smaller pile of 25, but I only know that because my friend checked and told me. Here it is two months later and no official news. Now the unofficial word is the City is "sitting on jobs until the economy picks up". Hmmm, there is no information about this on their webside, so applicants are expected to wait around? My guess is that most of the applicants will have moved on by the time the City gets around to interviewing.

The first job I applied for happened soon after we first moved here. It was for a part time job in a document management company, but when I interviewed with them, found they were looking to fill a full time position for tech support. Not what I wanted at the time, and while the interview process was successful, interesting and relevant, I never heard back from them. I assumed they needed someone fulltime. I called them two weeks ago to inquire about the part time job, which has been re-posted recently, only to find out that they, too, did not hire for their FT position. Instead, they re-organized their employees to cover the urgent problem position, and then never hired for the advertised position. Of course, I wouldn't have known except I called them for another reason.

Now, some places are saying they are hiring, but to apply, you have to fill out pages and pages of applications, redundant information.

So what is the lesson here: the job search has shifted, the methods that once worked fabulously may or may not work well now. Either way, the applicant must persevere. At the very least, keep taking pokes in the dark. More realistically, it's a lot of work looking around and selling yourself...on paper and online...and hoping to be creative enough to be noticed.

Online, you say? What happened with going fact to face? Well, even the temp agencies I've contacted, first want all applicants to register online and to post a resume and online application. The occasional company asks for an email and a fax.

And, of course, this means that I'm "putting my business out on the street", so to speak. Each time I submit my resume, it becomes a situation where it is "out of my hands" and they can do with it what they will. Sometimes a company will hold onto resumes. Sometimes they keep them for future jobs. Sometimes they trash them after a few months, which would be the prudent thing to do. Sometimes they end up in a filing cabinet for years. For the next person to rustle through. In small towns, this can be amusing when people come across resumes of other people they know. This is the situation where it weirds me out the most...sending out my resume to have it sit in random cabinets or on unknown desks, out of my control and range. Too many people are now in my business, based on my own actions of giving it out. Based on my quest to re-enter the work force.

Now, if we had been able to sell our house.... but no, the housing market has tanked.
No sense in doing any of the "if only"'s As in, if only we could have held on until after the summer, so I could take Christopher on a road trip to meet one of his Grandma's before it's too late. After the summer, so I'd be done with school and NOT be trying to go to school FT while working FT and while trying to take care of a 6-yr old and ALSO trying to keep a house and bills paid. Jeez!

So, back to the online applications...in the morning!
Wish me luck. I'm not concerned, just having to stretch my imagination. Just call me the Queen of Creative Financing, Mother of Trying Not To Be Stressed.

Never a dull moment, that's for damn sure.