The (Mis?)Adventures of a Perpetual Job-Hunter/Job-Hater

I wrote yesterday’s post with some relative clarity, I thought… but today the potential employer called to let me know that they’re proceeding in the recruitment process since yesterday’s interview went well. They will be contacting my references, and their final decision will be made by the end of next week. My gut feeling tells me that an offer of employment is pending.

And that gut feeling is accompanied by a feeling of disappointment, I guess I can call it. I’m not being ungrateful… this is a stupid, stupid initial reaction from an unemployed bum, I know… of course I’m pleased that I have another prospect, especially since I quit last week without anything to fall back on. While I’m glad that I can return to the work force almost immediately after leaving my last job quite spontaneously, I’m also a little disappointed because I have a feeling I know what my pragmatism will guide me to do. Sure, it’s an uninteresting job that pays an almost laughable salary… but it’s a job that pays… and even though I was intially unfazed by the unpaid aspect of an incredibly exciting magazine internship, I feel my pragmatism enveloping my idealism again, telling me that I can’t turn down an actual job… because I just can’t.

Ugh, it’s so unbelievably frustrating to be yoked to this kind of pragmatism. Even after all these posts that seem to trace an evolution (however slow and winding) in my approach to finding the right career for me, here I am, taking two steps back, thinking about settling for something that I already know will not make me content.

Oh, what am I doing.

A gem of advice: DO NOT accept a job at a company that lacks a legitimate HR department! Not only will you witness HR violations occur left, right, and center (and all known to the phony HR department they’ve set up) during your miserable tenure at the company, but you will more than likely be f*cked with when it comes to your final pay.

So, learn from my situation, dear friends. Here are a few tips to bear in mind if you have the misfortune of being f*cked with by a former, legitimate-HR-department-less employer, thereby prolonging your ties (against your will) with a company you despise:

#1: Incessant emailing lets them know you mean business. Harass, harass, and harass them again for what you’re entitled to.

#2: Point out the stupidity in the lame justification they will try to sell you in their attempt to f*ck up your final pay. Do this in conjunction with tip #1.

#3: Be extremely thorough in your explanation of why they are wrong. Do this in conjunction with tips #1 and #2.

#4: Be ready to bust out the big guns: tell them you are not afraid to take the issue up with the labour board, and if they don’t get the hint after you tell them that, go one step further by declaring you are well-connected with employment lawyers. I’m almost at this point! Also, I do know employment lawyers and would be more than happy to send along contact info if you need it!

#5: Do not just “let it go”, people – yes, you may just want to throw in the towel and wash your hands of it all so that you can finally begin the process of erasing your experience with the company from your memory forever, but don’t let them get away with this bull$h!t. Just think of all the days you spent languishing at your desk, utterly bored and unfulfilled… so first they want your soul, and now they want a portion of your earnings, too??? NOoooooOOoo, I don’t think so!

I wish I could explicitly name my former employer to give you all a proper warning! The ad for my former job is on Workopolis right now and is extremely deceptive… how I wish I could expose the dishonest company behind the pretty ad. Sigh.

Hokay, my sincerest apologies for last night’s utterly depressing post! I hope I didn’t lose my small handful of readers (are there any more of you out there???) because of my wallowing. I’m a little more chipper today, I promise!

So my rant last night was a little heavy, but for more humourous work rants check out www.workrant.com. A ton of the rants posted there are comedy gold – all of you fellow job-hunters/job-haters will appreciate the humour, the unabashed, expletive-rich declarations of boss-hating, and knowing that you are not alone. So read a few and post a few of your own… you might find it therapeutic – empowering, even – to send your thoughts out into cyberspace since you’re forced to muffle them in the office.

I received a much anticipated phone call yesterday afternoon from the potential employer I mentioned in an earlier post – I’ve been invited to complete some editing tests, and if all goes well on those, I’ll secure an interview! Ack, The Interview. I absolutely dread interviews because I always over-prepare for them, only to under-perform during the actual thing… always.

The initial “pre-screening” interview was conducted over the phone. Fortunately, the kind woman from Human Resources was never able to reach me live when she attempted to call me – instead, the pre-screening interview was set up via a series of voicemail exchanges, and this highly convenient game of phone tag allowed me to prepare a nice little script to adhere to unwaveringly during our chat. It’s always a good idea to anticipate the questions that a potential employer will ask you, and since I’m a stronger communicator in writing, it helps me flesh out my thoughts better if I write down the general gist of my answers and expand them verbally afterwards. A great tip, I think, for all of you who share the same preference for writing! Anywho, I decided I’d go that extra mile this time and write an exhaustive script from which I could read VERBATIM (while throwing in the occassional, “you know”, “hmm, that’s a good question”, etc., to make it more natural).

So of course I was incredibly confident that I’d ace it, especially given the format of the inverview, which not only allowed me to refer to my script but also to the company’s website on my laptop, all the while pyjama-ed out and lying on my stomach (the most comfortable position, I think!) in bed. I was so ready, I thought, so ready.

Imagine my horror when the kind woman from Human Resources asked me questions about my current position rather than inviting me to discuss my relevant previous experience as an Editor. I wanted to impress her by emphasizing how multi-faceted my previous job was; instead, I gave her a rather cringe-inducing one-sentence answer when she asked me about what I did. Yes, I froze. =S It wasn’t in the script!

The script did help me in answering some of the more general questions that she asked, but let this be a lesson on how not to prep for an interview - while I didn’t quite bomb it and was able to redeem myself just enough to snag an editing test invitation, sometimes excessive preparation can limit you and ironically under-prepare you if it leads you to take the kind of narrow approach that I so gracefully took. I think from an employer’s perspective, a good interview is a good conversation… and no one likes talking to a wall!

A good friend of mine just recently started her own online vintage clothing shop (shop online here: http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7957463), which has really inspired me. She and I often discuss the importance of choosing a job that incorporates what we’re passionate about in life, and since she hasn’t yet found a position that’s well-suited to her interests in this terribly limited job market, she took the initiative to essentially create a job for herself that allows her to apply her talent, creativity, and her passion for vintage fashion in a manifest way. I’m both incredibly proud and envious of her. That’s right – I’m envious, and I’ll own up to it! ;-D I’m envious because she’s on to something, folks – something that not many people my age are on to. Not only is she a self-starter with strong initiative, but she’s bold enough to exercise the selectivity that leads an individual down the path toward a self-fulfilling career.

I think it’s relatively safe to say that we know all about initiative. We hear all about it in discussions geared toward career searching and career development, we read all about it in job advertisements and in literature on what it takes to make entrepreneurial ventures successful. It’s clear that initiative and all things career-related go hand-in-hand. But let’s talk about selectivity for a sec, which my friend’s admirable venture has prompted me to contemplate…because I think everyone in my current position – desperate to be liberated as soon as possible from a soul-murdering job – forgets about the importance of selectivity due to the overwhelming notion that any other job would be sheer bliss in comparison… and don’t get me wrong, it probably would be, but if we’re talking about self-fulfillment here, then I think a certain longevity needs to be entrenched in that sheer bliss. A change of scenery would only bring about temporary job happiness; soon enough, though, if it’s just another job that stifles your potential, suppresses your creativity, discourages your autonomy… boy, I can really go on and on here… ahem, the welcome change of scenery will very quickly become just an alternate backdrop to the same mind-numbing and soul-killing you endured in the job you bolted from in the first place.

And yet even with that acknowledgment ever-present in the back of my mind somewhere, I’m still totally and utterly guilty of allowing this “any other job would be sheer bliss in comparison” notion to guide my job-searching frenzy. And “frenzy” is indeed the best word to describe my job search, due to my gross lack of selectivity, which is rooted, of course, in my dire need to realize my dream of abandoning this Human Resources Department-less (scary, right?), employee-undervaluing company with just a moment’s notice (courteously giving Awkward Boss two weeks’ notice is almost incomprehensible to me!). It’s all a haze. For example, when I frantically scour Workopolis job ads, I rarely fully absorb and process what positions entail. I copy and paste the same generic cover letter in all of my applications, the odd time making poorly thought-out modifications that evince an embarrassing lack of care on my part to tailor my applications to the specific positions I apply for (and on really bad days, I should confess, I’ve even submitted cover letters that specify incorrect job titles in the very first line – “I wish to be considered for the Production Editor Position” when actually I was applying for a Proofreading position… oops!). I next to never have a clue about the company I’m applying to work for. In the midst of the onslaught of resume submissions propelled by my need to find a-job-any-job-oh-please-I-need-to-get-out-of-this-place!, my desire to find a job that will make me genuinely happy and motivate me to be the most impressive, most valuable, most engaged employee that I can be doesn’t translate. I know in this horrible job market we job-searchers feel that we have no choice but to apply for anything and everything and that being selective is incredibly risky…I need a job, NOW, you may be saying, and being selective could jeopardize my chances of finding employment NOW. Everyone is in a different circumstance, of course, but if you have room to allow selectivity/your interests/your passions/your larger career goals guide your job search, then do so. The benefits, I think, are manifold – for both practical and “transcendent” reasons. Under the practical umbrella of benefits, for example: it’ll minimize the time you spend applying for (and, in the event that you are called back from potential employers, respectfully declining interviews for) jobs that you aren’t actually interested in. This has happened to me a few times – it involves truly begrudging effort to dodge phone calls from potential employers you’re no longer interested in or devise believable and reasonable excuses when declining interviews for positions you initially expressed enthusiasm about. Moreover, it’ll give you more time to allocate toward tailoring your applications with care (learn from my laughable mistakes!), thereby increasing your chances of recruitment. Under the “transcendent” umbrella of benefits: it will help you preserve your own conceptualization of a self-fulfilling career, one that won’t evoke a visceral reaction of disgust when you think about doing it for 40 years.

I think the preservation of this conceptualization is so vital in my search for a self-fulfilling career because I’m confident that the distinction between a job and a career is that the latter goes even further than providing one with an opportunity to make money while doing something extremely enjoyable… it’s so much more, I think, in that it provides one with the ability to intermingle work and selfhood; a career is so much more personalized and self-revealing, allowing one to manifestly demonstrate to others his or her individuality and passions with work and the workplace functioning as a kind of vessel for that process of “selfhood-revelation”.

Okay, so I realize that that’s some pretty lofty, idealistic discussion – but more hard-nosed entries will follow in the near future to problematize things…for now, though, let me revel in this idealism! Anyway, being selective, obviously, is contingent on knowing what you want – it’s contingent on knowing you. Oftentimes we lose sight of that, which is why I think the self-fulfilling career can be so darn elusive. But God bless my vintage fashionista friend for showing me the truly wonderful things that selectivity can lead to.