Getting a Job in the Depression - A True Story

Our loyal reader recently inquired why I haven't posted any posts in a long stretch of days now. I informed him I am knee-deep filtering my offers in the robust job market and it occupies my post-graduate schedule. My strategy is fairly straightforward - allow me to enlighten you.

Each week at 8:00 am PST on Monday, I send out my resume to approximately 50 companies I am over-qualified to work for. I once sent a resume to Subway that only said my name, Eat Fresh and the name of my accredited institution of higher learning. I then wait by my phone for the offers to roll in. I systematically reject all of them after leading them on for a few minutes to build my self-confidence. I then re-write each point on my resume by including the phrase "highly sought" in front of all descripting adjectives. Then, at about 1 pm PST, I go to Monster.com to look at entry-level positions. Invariably, no matter what I put in the search field, half of all of the opportunities are from the US Navy. I can type in actor and: Media Opportunities, US Navy comes up. Granted, if I was in the Navy, I would probably be doing quite a bit of acting, especially pretending to be in agreement with most of my superiors ideologies, however, I highly doubt the Navy is the ideal place to get noticed by anyone who isn't trying to kill you.

Once I pass on all the Navy opportunities, I go to Careerbuilder. I send out my resume to compete with execs who have been recently bought out and I have seen fairly mixed results, in that, sometimes I get a response saying they are not interested and sometimes I don't get a response at all. I sent out my resume to the Yankees last week because I heard they were giving money away, but I only came away with a 3-year deal. Sorry George, I'm looking for bigger fish. Anyway, the one thing I have going for me at these sites is my salary history, which is an employers hiring strategy to squeeze their servants as much as possible. My history includes my latest jury duty stint that paid $15 a day plus travel expenses, and it has employers drooling.

Alas, there is, in my estimation, one great place to find work: Craigslist. Maybe it's just me, but I like my job site to double as a place to get free furniture and see who's turning tricks in the local community. Sometimes I get distracted on Craigslist by the lack of real jobs and start wandering to other Craigslist sites (did you know there is a Craigslist called the Western Slope in Colorado?) Is this some kind of sick joke? I thought it was too - until I found a job that pays double digits everyday to wave at people, http://westslope.craigslist.org/csr/964999054.html.

Now I've got time to blog again. I'm back in the game, George.