On the Job Hunt

Over the years, this hasn’t gotten any easier but it has gotten weirder.

I don’t think anyone out there actually likes job hunting (you can let me know if you feel differently in the comments section). It’s a grind.

I’ve been forced to get used to the Zoom/Teams job interview. That stinks. People in my generation were not raised to look at themselves when holding a conversation. It feels wrong. Thankfully, I’ve been meeting with the Reunion/Scholarship Committee that I’m a part of this way for the last two years. If it hadn’t been for that, these interviews would still be throwing me for a loop. BUT it is very convenient. AND it’s much better than the few places that wanted me to record an interview with myself and send it to them. That was trippy and I hated it. And, yep, it certainly showed in those interviews.

I cruise Indeed several times a day and they’re nice enough to send me direct emails regarding jobs that might be a good fit for me. I’ve sent in a few applications (hence the interviews, duh!) but I’ve noticed something really strange happening there.

The job descriptions are messed up.

Example: I was looking to apply for the Administrative Assistant position for a local Traffic Control company. It advertised ‘one location’, again, duh, how often does the office move around? However, it clearly stated that they preferred the candidate to have ‘one year experience in a dental office setting’.

Excuse me?

Ummmm…ok?

I went to send in my resume and there were questions…there are always stupid questions that the employer could answer for themselves if they just read the resumes we’re all sending in. One of those questions was; How much time are you willing to spend traveling for this position?

Again, excuse me?

If you’re applying for a job to be ‘on the crew’ this question makes great sense. If not then it makes no sense because it’s one location job, remember? You already said so.

I said; 0%

It kicked my resume for the one location office position!

Another job with a local law firm advertised itself…in the heading…to be part time.

The first thing you see in the little blurb before you open it is ‘more than 40 hours a week’.

What? How is that part time? BTW, do you think that’s really a draw at $17.00/hour?

These job ads are riddled with this stuff. Absolutely chockful of misleading information, information that doesn’t pertain to the position, BAD, really really, BAD spelling/grammar. They did want people to apply….right? That little red or blue squiggly line that pops up when you’re typing does NOT mean the computer is WRONG and you are RIGHT. No, it does not. It does not mean; Hey! That’s awesome! No, it does not.

How can they let it go out like that? I’m beginning to think that there’s a nice niche business out there just in doing people’s Indeed work! Just, literally, in getting their Job Board profiles RIGHT and looking good, and properly advertising their open positions so those position are attractive to the right people. I honestly think there’s a nice little side gig in that.

I could combine it with how; How to Run Your Facebook Page…Yes, Spelling Counts! (Goes for a bunch of websites too….WTH?) I am bowled over by the amount of shoddy work I’m finding just in looking for a job.

Face it, if you’re serious about getting a job you’re going to LIKE and WANT to STAY at, you’re like me. You see the ad. You check out the reviews. You go to Facebook and their website and make a judgement call on the company regarding whether or not you want to work for them. If they don’t look like they have their act together the talented experienced people will not apply and, in the end, the company will wonder why they get so many people who ‘don’t want to work’ and suffer from a high employee turnover rate.

Just stay with me half a second here, I warned people decades ago this was going to happen. I did. I railed about it with the schools and how they were NOT teaching my children proper spelling and grammar…to this very day they will use Google to spell something for them because I got sick and tired of being the Household Dictionary! Those teachers told me they were ‘the professionals’ so I should leave it to them along with ‘as long as she knows what’s she’s communicating that’s all that matters’ (WHAT?) and….I shit you not, I will never forget this conversation to the end of my days….’that’s what spellcheck is for’.

Now those special little kids are out there trying to run a business and they can’t even spell ‘business’! (Or ‘bookkeeper’…holy mother of god! They cannot spell that.)

Drives me nuts.

(Breathe. In. Out. Breathe. In. Out. Relax. Let it go.)

Ok. Apologies. But that really grinds my gears.

Anyway, I’ve been lucky enough to land a few of these Zoom/Teams interviews, had one today and I have another one tomorrow for a job I really want at a local college, which, of course, means I won’t get it. But it’s perfect even if it is just for the summer.

They all ask the same questions. Strange.

Mostly they like to start with; Why do you want to work here? I hate that one. It’s always an ego stroke and, well, I just don’t do that. Nope. Truth is, I don’t want to work just for them, at this point, they have a job that matches my requirements and I have skills that match theirs. Let’s explore.

They ask; What software do you run with proficiency?

I rattle off, what I think is, the important software titles in my repertoire. Things like; Microsoft Office, you know, Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, Access, Adobe, Photoshop, Audacity, MovieMaker, YouTube Creator, Canva, InDesign (which I don’t like) several proprietary databases, and a few more.

At this point, things seem to get quiet and they seem to get this confused glassy look in their eyes.

They ask me what my attention to detail, what my organizational skills are for multi-tasking. I tell them the truth; I don’t have a method for that. Well, not really, it would be hard to explain to anyone so I just sort of leave it at that. Truthfully, I work best in ‘organized chaos’. BUT I do add, that I just do it. And I do. In the end, I just f’n do it. You can trust and believe that whatever it is, it’s done by the end of the day, and it’s right.

I’ll let you in on something here; Long ago and far away, I was tested in school for my ability to read and remember and to see and do. I have…something…I don’t know what it is. My memory is awesome, let’s just put it that way. This gives me a laser focus that a lot of people will find ‘rude’ but the truth is, I am so into my task, I don’t even know you’ve walked into the room. Honestly, you can be standing right NEXT to me, just walk right up, and I will NOT KNOW you’re there. You have no idea how many times this has happened to me. I am not being rude. I am not ignoring you. I am so into…The Zone…the world has faded away.

Therefore, it can be difficult for me to immediately switch gears. I can easily be editing your video, while putting together your newsletter, checking/answering your email, and working a flyer all at the same time. That’s a breeze and I prefer it that way. So, yes, it can be hard to shift into ‘Hi, how can I help you?’ mode while keeping all of that running in the back of my mind.

They ask me to tell them something I’m proud of. (I hate this question). I tell them about the 15 MONTHS that I spent ALONE in a BASEMENT at my last job in a CHURCH. (It takes a lot to leave it at that and keep my voice nice and light…a lot.) I tell them about the weekly and monthly newsletters and the bulletins, the graphics, the social media, the advertising, and working across so many committees of people who were never actually, you know, THERE. When they didn’t have so much as a pastor, I held them together and did it ALL. To lighten it up and maybe show my more creative side, I tell them about my novels, how I’ve edited and formatted them for print and ebook and I do that for other people too. I tell them about my website and how I’ve made all the graphics and the content.

All of that goes along with the regular stuff of printing, phones, ordering supplies, filing, helping people with their situation, taking payments, doing balance sheets…you know. The ‘regular stuff’.

By the end of it all, they’re sitting there looking at me as though I’ve told them I was just paroled on First Degree Murder charges.

Aren’t these GOOD THINGS? Aren’t they USEFUL? HELPFUL? Don’t you want someone like that? Someone who has skills and talents and the drive to work FOR you and your business?

Once in a while someone will show me a glimmer and ask how I’ve learned to do all of these things, where did I go to school, something like that.

BTW, most never ask. They just sit there looking puzzled knowing that the Education section of my resume before them is blank. (Hey! I graduated high school in 1984…I don’t need to put that down so it can give away my age and knock me out of the running in the first go-round. You dig?)

For the people who ask, I tell them the truth, that I am self-taught, and I learned how to do everything for my books. I bring those skills to my job.

How do I explain to these interviewers just how I came by my skills? Where do I start?

It All Began with Typing Class in high school at a time, Just on the cusp of when a high school education was still enough to get you an entry level position if you stayed a course and took a lot of those classes.

So, I took lots of business, accounting, bookkeeping, typing, business law, and the like classes in high school. The computers I learned on came from Radio Shack, they were all DOS, and it was the very first year for computers EVER at NLHS. Mr. Jackson had no idea what he was doing. He didn’t care. He just sat us teamed us all up (cheerleaders and jocks in the front, nerds and others in the back…guess where I was sitting?) and gave us this massive manual written a foreign language we’d never seen before and told us to, basically, ‘go to it’. WTF? Needless to say all the people in the back got a D or an F that semester and those in front…well…they did not.

We learned, on our own, how to type code….freakin’ perfectly…..and make dice roll on the screen. It didn’t mean anything to us. If course it didn’t. We were just copying what we saw. At some point in my life, that thing was going to be useful in some manner. Afterall, unlike the typewriter, I was told the computer could hold several books, in ‘files’, on its ‘hard drive’ where carbon copies and onion skins would no longer be necessary. It would make editing a matter of moving the type rather than having to retype and make it match with the next page….somehow.

When I took those typing classes, I wasn’t really thinking of a job in the typing pool at the time, I was thinking of my stories, of using the typewriter as the great tool I knew it to be. Why? Well, because, handwriting so totally sucks, and my hand can’t keep up with my head when I’m writing a story so I can’t even READ most of it later. I learned to type 100wpm on a Brother Electric (fat old boat!) simply so I could tell my stories better. Oh, yes, and it will be useful in an office, for sure.

Do they want to hear about how I learned to use a….word processor…on my own?

What about learning how to use my first computer….ten years after touching one in class and being petrified of the damn thing but knowing I HAD to learn how to USE it. Do they want to hear about learning WordPerfect? What about AOLPress? Would any of them know what AOLPress was? What about GeoCities? After all, those places housed my very first websites where I put my stories online for free. The places I was introduced to HTML and figured it out all on my own. Yes, I really did that. I’m still proud of that fact.

In order to standout and or at least keep up with other people I had to learn how to make an eye-catching header and a main graphic for whatever story it was at the time. Each time I did I learned something new or tried a different program.

Do they want to hear how I was on .Mobi Pocket Books long before Bezos bought it and made it Kindle?

What about the book trailers I’ve had to learn to make? My other videos on…well…lots of stuff. The ones I did every week for the church, I tell them about those. But mine?

The audiobooks? How I’ve had to learn audio software so I can record a number of my own books. Other books, the ones that are only on Audible, are a 50/50 type of contract with those nice gentlemen.

Literally, every single bit of software I know has its roots in my stories and the never-ending desire to have those stories reach people. In order to do that, I’ve had to learn and grow and do a lot of things just trying to be seen in this great big pond we lovingly call the Internet. How do I explain that to them?

In the end, the interviewers (there’s always more than one lately), regain their composure and smile and we chat a bit more. The bewilderment never really leaves their voices. We part ways and I go off to do something else. Lately, I’ve been working on the Scholarship, making the official certificate and letter paper.

I’ve been working on my website too. It’s looking…well…schweet! I really like the way the main page and others have come out. I’ve gotten all hooked, to the best my low level hosting ability, with Google Merchant. I made signed paperbacks and the new gift set available in their store. Worked on checkout with PayPal too. It looks very professional now.

Just one more little pet peeve; I wish some of these perspective employers visit it, the link is right there for them. A nice little invitation to come find out more about the wonder that is me. I’m just saying, if I were the person doing the hiring, not only would make sure the Indeed ad was spot-on, I’d check out the site. Afterall, it’s not a LinkedIn site. It’s better. On their site I would get a feel for that person before we had our Zoom/Teams meeting and know a bit more about them.

But, as always, that’s…..

Just Me.