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What is job-hunting? why does it suck so fucking much?

  
 
Disco is My Class War
05:34 / 29.09.02
Perhaps this should go in the Head Shop, but it begins with personal guff so here we are. I am currently looking for a job. A fulltime, possibly administrative or whatever comes along job -- nice if it was doing something I'm really good at like editing or media stuff, but okay if it's not. Also, I now have a really good reason to get a 'proper job' -- not just to save money for my own purposes, but I'm probably moving in with the current squeeze (the new squeeze! the very lovely new squeeze) and so will need to pay far more rent for a lovenest of the appropriate size.

So, I've spent the last six weeks applying. With no luck. Interviews, but no callback. Sometimes not even an acknowledgement that they got my application. Artificial exchanges with temping agencies, girls on phones who don't care who you are and are not nice, lists of imaginary desirable attributes like 'self-starter', 'team player', 'adventurous'. It's beginning to wear me down, to the extent that getting a knockback can throw me into deep depression and crying fits for a weekend (this weekend).

What, precisely, is wearing me down? First of all a sound knowledge of the global labour market and how relatively employable I am: qualified, experienced, presentable, subcultural capital, white, eddicated, good phone voice et cetera. (Gender shit notwithstanding. Which is testing the substantiveness of various employers' equal opportunity policies, I suspect.) Second of all, it's this thing, right? Applying for a job means thinking of it in attractive terms, mobilising a certain desire for employment, talking it up -- because you have to want something in order to get it, I feel, and this always goes down well in interviews. And then when you don't get the job, you are left wanting something you couldn't have. At the same time, I know damn well that the minute I do get work, I'll be cursing how little free time I have, getting up early, and two weeks into fulltime paid work I will be coming home every night needing a glass of wine and to black out in front of 'Sex and the City', a show I despise.

I work very hard on various other unpaid projects, some of which are turning out well. I am currently writing productively. So my self-esteem doesn't generally depend on being employed or doing 'vocational' stuff for money -- I'm a writer, writers get paid little, it's for love. This is fine. But the self-esteem is really beginning to wear, making it more difficult to be happy/bouncy/deal with living, and I fear I am headed down a nasty spiral of depression. For what seems like a totally stupid, microfascistic, capital-shoved-down-my-throat kind of way. In a way that suggests I am lazy, slack, stupid, and any number of negative things. Which I most emphatically know that I am not.

Advice? Suggestions? Common experiences? Sophisticated analysis of the labour market, anyone? Bitching about fulltime work, anyone? A glass of cheap port?
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
07:19 / 29.09.02
Nothing useful to add here, except that I know how you feel. The prospect of job-hunting fills me with a sort of cringing dread, largely due to my having left full-time education only to walk smack into the recession of the early Ninties. The whole ghastly procedure was compounded by the fact that I had to scrape together a certain number of rejection letters each week or my dole was at risk. This proved probelmatic, largely because the majority of personnel departments are staffed by bone-idle bastards who can't be bothered to sign a rejection letter. Including an s.a.e. so that they could reply more easily proved fruitless, unless you count the application that was returned in the envelope I'd provided with a large red cross through it. Niiice. Then there were the people who would take the ime to phone me up and accuse me of lying about my qualifications (I did my diploma a year earlier than schedualed) and the annoying way that letters relating to electronics jobs were generally addressed to "Mr Colin".

Of course, things are rather different now; I'm not a teenager anymore, I have some experience under my belt, etc etc. Can't say the prospect of finding a new job is filling me with joy, even so.
 
 
sleazenation
09:59 / 29.09.02
Not much useful to add here either apart from 'don't let the bastards grind you down'

Which is easy to say but less easy to deal with as the sheare weight of rejection slips lands in the mailbox each morning like some strange harvest of bad news. - maybe keep a file of these letters and laugh at them -I have had knock backs from companies that have demonstrated a complete lack of llteracy in their rejection letters and have survived - and have had some really posative rejections as well.
 
 
w1rebaby
10:32 / 29.09.02
I suggest that your job hunting would be a lot more enjoyable if you were to take advice from other hunters, and load up on booze and high-powered firearms first. Unfortunately, you can't then strap recruitment personnel to your truck, take them home and eat them, because they are poisonous. But, stuffed and mounted, they brighten up any room.

I know that however often you say "this is all bullshit, I'm not taking it seriously, I don't care whether I get a job for The Man anyway" every time they say "Sorry, we're really looking for a self-motivated highly-starter" it hurts. Like being knocked back by someone you didn't really fancy anyway.
 
 
Nelson Evergreen
14:07 / 29.09.02
I'd rather be miserably broke indefinitely than ever have to go out and "find" another job again. As it is, I've got a pleasant little part time number which allows me to live every bit as austerely as I did on the dole, without having to actually be on it. Which is better than nothing.
 
 
Warewullf
15:18 / 29.09.02
I'm going through the same thing. But you have one up on me: you're getting rejection letters!! I haven't gotten anything!! It's the curse of job-hunting on the web, I suppose. It seems E-mail isn't taken very seriously so companies don't feel that they have to reply to your applications. Bastards.
 
 
Trijhaos
15:45 / 29.09.02
I hate job-hunting. It seems so damned futile. I have come to the conclusion that it's a lost cause. I will just give up hunting for a job, turn my back on society, and go live up in the hills somewhere.

I've had two job interviews and two rejection notices in my year of looking. It's not even like I'm looking for a job that requires, intelligence, skill, or really much of anything. The thing that gets me is that I can do the jobs I'm applying for and probably far better than the people they hire instead of me. Damn them all! Damn them and their need for "employment history"!
 
 
nutella23
16:11 / 29.09.02
Agreed. Job-hunting is next to "getting teeth drilled" on my list of unpleasant experiences. I never used to have trouble finding employment though until the late 90's, then the time required to find a job seemed to leap from days or weeks to months. And months. And months...This was also around the time that the temp agencies started setting up around here in earnest. And of course I now realize that bachelor's degrees are considered a dime a dozen. (I've thought about going back to school but its a bit cost-prohibitive. Am also still paying back college loans.)

The whole process has indeed become a humiliating experience. Also, many employers now do credit checks on anyone applying, never mind all that drug-testing, background checking fun. Can someone please explain why a person's credit rating is a factor in considering them for a position? It just seems like the number of hoops your'e required to jump through now is never-ending. And once you do land a job, how much job security do you actually have these days?

Getting back to job availability, it seems that the number of entry-level positions is increasingly diminishing, as the temp agencies make more inroads into the labor market. I hate temp agencies but don't have a whole lot of choice these days. It seems to be the only game in town, next to finding part-time creative solutions to supplement one's income. Most everyone I know works 2-4 jobs (at least one of them through a temp agency), plus something "on the side" that can be used as a creative outlet.

I do know a couple of self-starters btw. But they were born into money, and used their trust funds to start their own businesses. Lucky them.
 
 
illmatic
17:53 / 29.09.02
Credit ratings? Fucking credit ratings!? That is seriously fucked up. Maybe we won't have that long to wait before that starts happening this side of the Atlantic, as Blair seems happy to import all the most odious aspects of corparate America.
I'd second you in saying that the rise of temp agemcies is responsible for a lot of the worst aspects of employment.
I always figured "self-starter" was a euphenism for "c@#t".
 
 
.
09:05 / 30.09.02
Job hunting is probably the most demoralising thing that can ever happen to a person. I did the whole thing for about five months before I got the job that I'm in now. And I got this job via knowing the boss, rather than applying from an ad.

My advice is pretty simple- replying to job adverts is pants. Everyone knows all that "self-starter, team player, works-hard-plays-hard" stuff is BS. And if it's not, is that the sort of job you want to be doing anyway? Why aren't there any ads that say "Work-shy slacker with keen intellect needed for occasional thinking, 'blogging and doodling" ?

The best way to get a job (and I'm convinced is probably the only way to get a job, or one's first job out of college at any rate) is to network. Ask friends and family who they know who might employ you... Then if those people won't give you a job, ask them who they know. And so forth. At least doing this feels more productive than writing off yet another form letter + CV.
 
 
Someone Else
12:41 / 30.09.02
I've just landed a job at the BBC after 8 (count 'em) months of depressing interviews with cretins and dole-grinding. Keep your pecker up; things will change eventually. In the meantime, enjoy the ample time to write, exercise, record music, paint paintings and get stupidly, stupidly drunk on a Tuesday afternoon. Recruitment consultancy is, to me, the most mysterious industry in the world; has anyone ever got a job through one? Where does their money come from? Why are they so relentlessly unimaginative, with their talk of 'transferrable skills' which they seem incapable of recognising, all the while sucking on the corporate ideal that there's 'no such thing as a job for life' and and and...

...Like I said, things will get better. Try rewriting your CV; bullet points, short, overselling every little thing you've ever done. All the city boy Archeresque media lovey yuppie proto-millionaire go-getters are inveterate liars and users, so don't put yourself at a disadvantage.
 
 
Disco is My Class War
09:47 / 01.10.02
Oh but I DO lie. Everyone does. I was in a joint interview with a friend three weeks ago (we were going for a jobshare arrangement) and he totally invented a nonprofit web-hosting business that we both supposedly ran... At which point I picked up the ball and talked about how many communities we were hosting. We still didn't get the job.

But yeah, anyhow, today I am thinking of changing the strategy: freelance work, retail in a bookstore, something non-officey. Have gotten some freelance research/compiliation work for a reference book which begins in early October, might be able to get some more if that turns out well.

And networking is, of course, the only way to go. That's my advice as well...
 
 
grant
16:12 / 01.10.02
Mister Disco: What, precisely, is wearing me down?... I fear I am headed down a nasty spiral of depression. For what seems like a totally stupid, microfascistic, capital-shoved-down-my-throat kind of way. In a way that suggests I am lazy, slack, stupid, and any number of negative things. Which I most emphatically know that I am not.


"Rejection hurts." - Henry Rollins, being deep.

I think job hunting also emphasizes a primordial feeling of dwindling resources, of being near some "cut-off" point where you won't make it through the winter.

To answer the question in the abstract, I know quite a few "self-starters" and they're all either freelancers or independent contractors, writers or computer people who survived the dot.com bust.
 
 
angel
16:36 / 01.10.02
Mister Disco, your last post reflects almost exactly what I was going to suggest to you. The very little I know about you (and that is very little) leads me to think that you must have skills that would lend themselves much better to running workshops, freelance writing, that sort of thing. Which of course means that you have lots of little jobs rather than one big one. I also thought that you would most likely have the contacts for this or be able to tap into a network what can provide contacts.

Don't know if that is useful, but it's what popped into my head whilst reading the thread.

Apologies if I've got that all arse about.
 
 
The resistable rise of Reidcourchie
18:33 / 01.10.02

Largely agree still looking for work myself, anything now just for money and again what i really want to do fades into my free time.

I'm British and i got credit checked when starting my current job (though it is with a bank). Particular things I hate are those companies that want you to send in a hand written letter so they can analyse your hand writing and people who send you excercises to do before they'll give you a job. If they don't have the judgement to work out from a CV wether or not they want to employ you then they can piss off.

It's pretty petty but if any of the rejections relly get you down write back to them explaining what bunch of wankers you think they are (I only did this once and it was to explain what I though about them trying to set me excercises) not very grown up but it can exorcise all your shitty feelings that your beating yourself up about.
 
 
Less searchable M0rd4nt
19:13 / 01.10.02
Reid:- I can see how that's sorely tempting (I've sometimes had to be physically restrained from sending a rejection letter back to the person who wrote it with all the spelling and grammatical errors ringed in red pen and "F- SEE TEACHER" at the bottom), but it's generally not a good idea. A response along the lines of "Thanks anyway. Maybe you could keep me in mind if something suitable turns up in the future?" has netted me a couple of jobs in the past.
 
 
Persephone
20:30 / 01.10.02
Once in the middle of my coffeeshop tenure, I interviewed for a position as a church secretary. I did get called back for a second interview, despite disagreeing with the feminist chaplain about the nature of God in the first interview. But then I received my rejection letter --which actually said, "Dear [name misspelled], thank you for interviewing with us; however, the Supreme Being has determined that this is not to be your place in the Universe."

Back to the coffee mines for me, then.

I would think that you're a self starter, Disco. Because nobody ever tells anybody to go make a zine.

A way that you can tell whether you're a self-starter is to ask yourself how much it makes your eyes bleed to have people tell you what to do. I am beyond perverse in this measure.
 
 
w1rebaby
20:40 / 01.10.02
Reidcourchie: Anyone who tries pseudoscience like handwriting analysis is obviously not someone worth working for. What next, an extra fee so they can do a full horoscope on you? "You have the interview at 2pm, and make sure your hair is short so the phrenologist can properly feel your head first"?

I'm glad that drug testing is not at all common in the UK, because I would not work for anyone who did that. If your manager can't tell if you've got a drug problem, what are they being paid for? Not to mention false positives. Strangely, I don't even take illegal drugs any more.

(Premonition: three weeks' time, fridge turns up for first day at new job to be greeted with "Hi! Nice to meet you at last! Just pee into this plastic cup, and we can get started! Oh, and you shaved your head specially, how considerate! I can see you've got a bright future here.")
 
 
kagemaru
20:50 / 01.10.02
I'm job hunting right now - next interview in 72 hours.
I'm still reasonably positive about it - and can get some consolation by doing my freelance gigs anyway.

Some observations collected during the last few months of looking for a job/being denied a position:

. a - you get to be evaluated by the lower rungs in the evolutionary ladder; I mean, my appliocation letter gets scanned by a frigging _graphologist_?!

. b - you get more chances if getting the job if you already have a job; it's the same with girls - they're likelier to get interested in you if you're already matched up with someone ; probably has to do with proving your worth.

. c - education is useless; the Masters want drones, not intellectuals. I got kicked out of an interview with the line "Your qualifications are too high for this post, we are looking for someone that's not so good." It was the joke of a lifetime.

. d - they would realy love it if it were you paying them and not vice-versa.

. e - maybe I'm paranoid, but interviewers get a big fat kick out of their job. Power without responsibility.
 
  
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