The Hazards of Job Hunting

So far, there has been little luck on the job front. I know it's early in one sense, but in another it's late. True, I only began looking in earnest for work a few weeks ago. Yet this was really just a renewal of a hunt that started when I was laid off in October. The difference is that now I spend more time going over listings and I have cast my net wider to catch any work that I might be suited for. Plus I was in a different market looking for whatever was available in Montclair New Jersey, which it turns out was not much.   

I keep running into the same problems, namely a lack of supply and a lack of previous long-term employment. There are just not that many jobs someone right out of college can do here. So much of what the government offers requires advanced degrees and everything in the private sector demands years of work experience. Many of the listings I come across want 3 to 5 years experience at a minimum and I only graduated college in 2008.  It seems like it's been longer, but that's a product of the free time unemployment grants, one benefit that doesn't run out.  


The jobs I read through every day are just not encouraging. The trend seems to be positions I have no chance of getting unless everyone else decides to stop looking for work. My only other hope it seems  is to come across a listing that is an outlier from the other jobs, a position with unique requirements that I meet. The trouble is anything I'm qualified for in the least is going to attract the attention of dozens of more candidates who have been out in the workforce before I learned to read and write, or even before I was born. It's hard to see a way through it all. The world of the unemployed truly is a dark tunnel with a dim light at the end that flashes on and off.

This is not to say that if someone offers me a job in the DC area that I will snub it or think there is something wrong with them for wanting to hire a person like me. If an employer wants to hire me because they think I have the fine mind they are looking for, I am more than amenable to the proposition. My only real sticking points are health insurance and public transportation, both of which I need to work at all. Without health insurance I can't pay for the drugs that keep my Crohn's in check and without public transportation I can't get to the job in question. It's a fairly sensible deal. If I could forgo either, I would. Indeed, if it wasn't for the Crohn's I would already be abroad, trying to teach in some country where they need people who can provide total English immersion because they don't speak any other language fluently enough to interrupt the flow of Anglo-Saxon.  

The only thing that helps is to know I'm not alone. Millions of people are in my position, not only unemployed, but missing out on the most important part of their career, when they gain the experiences that help them get their foot in the door for better jobs. Falling by the wayside, we are not only competing with older workers who trounce us in the experience category, but against recent graduates who are exactly in the same boat as we are. Do they have any advantages over us? I suppose they have more energy and whatever contacts they have are freshly minted and can be tapped for leads. In time though, all of us younger members of the lumpenintelligentsia  and lumpenproletariat will fall into the same position, left behind.

In the 1920s, Gertrude Stein coined the phrase "the Lost Generation" to describe those who came of age during World War I and whose careers were truncated by the experience, making it difficult for them to adjust back into civilian life. The term could just as well apply to us unemployed members of the Millennial Generation. If the recovery ever comes I wonder how many of us will be able to take advantage of it after having been either unemployed or underemployed for so long. To make matters worse, we are inheriting a country that is in decline, whose political structure cares little for us, and who will force to pay an ever growing share of whatever income we can manage to earn in order to support a generation of Baby Boomers who generally refuse to either die or take proper care of themselves. At least previous generations did not have to deal with such deep infrastructural problems on the horizon. And that is assuming we don't run out of natural resources, something no one in power is prepared to deal with.

Yes, we are Generation Esau, being cheated out of our inheritance one way or another. Those is power will starve us until we agree to the austerity which will make us hunger even more.

What can one do? Try to amuse oneself in the meantime I suppose.. One has to keep their spirits up. I handle rejection on a daily basis as a writer. Just today I got a rejection from a journal of short poetry. No matter. I send my poems back out. Their loss, I tell myself. The same can go for jobs, though editors at least get back to you eventually. They also mean business when they say they are interested in your work. This has not been the case with my job applications. Like anyone applying for work these days, I come across my fair share of job scams. So I try to have fun with them.

Recently I received this response for a entry-level receptionist position:

Our recruitment team viewed your resume published on  (Craigslist) and we are pleased with your qualifications. Your  details as been forward to the senior supervisor (Ms Stephanie Brown ) She would like to conduct an online interview with you  to discuss your duties and pay scale with our company .If you  are interested in this position,set up a screen name with the  yahoo instant messenger(www.messenger.yahoo.com) and add up  this screen name (hiredesk200@yahoo.com) Report online at9:00am (6/25/2011) for an interview.

 Contact Ms Brown via the email  below to let her know if the time frame works for you  hiredesk200@yahoo.com If you got any problems feel free to email   back.

H CLERK.

To which I responded (after doing my research!):

Sure I'm interested, if you can explain this story: http://cyanidefish.livejournal.com/214035.html

A Mr. Jon Williams (not the composer) sent this to me:

Your resume was received and it has been reviewed, I did appreciate it. it's reasonable and acceptable. So I will give this a go.

I'm looking for someone that can be trusted and reliable, someone with good understanding and working skills.

I am Jon Williams , 49 yrs of age, I'm Self employed..I am an importer  by profession and I have been pretty successful in a handful of ventures I get involved in; from the Angel of importing fabrics  to various welfare and community service programs. I most very often get my hands occupied, so it is imperative for me to have a worthy assistant who can monitor and keep me up to date with my activities.This position is home-based and flexible, working with me is basically about instructions and following them. My only fear is that I may come at you impromptu sometimes, so i need someone who can be able to meet up with my irregular timings.

And I responded right back (after doing my research!):

Damn it, stop scamming people on Craigslist. Go do it on Monster.com!


I'm not sure if anyone reads such responses. Anyway there was also this moneymaking opportunity from the United Arab Emirates (I guess they've run out of Nigerian princes to use for scams):


From Mr. James Gamal

Dear God's elect,

This message may come to you as a surprise due to the fact that we have not yet met. I have to say that I have no intentions of causing you any pains so I decided to contact you through this medium.

My name is James Gamal, a 72 years old merchant in Dubai, in the U.A.E. suffering from Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis I am a secret gay supporter because of the part of the world where I come open is a ticket to death if it is displaced open but I have not stop to support gay and lesbian right movement because I lost my only son who was gay and because at that time I was not properly informed that being gay is not the person’s making. I have only about a few months to live according to medical experts.

Though I am very rich, I was never generous, I was always hostile to people and only focus on my business as that was the only thing I cared for. But now I regret all this. I have willed my wealth to various charity in the UAE and abroad. I decided to give alms to charity organizations, as I want this to be one of the last good deeds I do on earth. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself any more. The last of my money which is the huge cash that I deposit in a top security company.

I want you to help me collect this deposit and dispatched it to charity organizations especially for the promotion of gay and lesbian right movement if you have the time and means you can start one such charity organization with this fund if you cannot just distribute to charity.

I am writing this from my laptop computer in my hospital bed where I am receiving palliative care waiting for my time to come. If you are interested to help me I will give you more information about this like the amount that I deposited in the bank and Contact of the bank so you can contact them.

Note that you will take 20% out of the funds and give 80% to the charity organizations. I pray that God uses you to support and assist me with good heart God be with you.

If you can help please respond back to me

Regards.
James Gamal


My reply was simple:


Ewwwww gay! Gayz is bad. Reed yur Bible. 


Well, there's a jobs "boot camp" on Tuesday being hosted by my congressman, Jim Moran. I'm going to go to it. We'll see how it goes. 

See My Trailer on YouTube!

Who says chapbooks of poetry can't make for good video entertainment?

Anti-Manchild Project #3: Get Myself a Job

Well, I'm back from my family trip to Italy, and nothing makes you want to work more like going to Italy. So now it is time to get into full job hunting mode. Probably the real cornerstone, and stumbling block of trying to gain my independence. The irony is that this necessary component to my personal freedom requires approval from someone else (if not an entire organization), in fact, it is totally dependent on it. With other goals there is much more leeway. If I wanted to publish a book of poems on my own, I could have. The details would have been hard to manage, but it has been and can be done. If I want to move out of my parent's home and just live on somebody's couch, I could do that too. If the owner of the couch wanted me out, I could try and find another one. I believe there are now more couches than employers in the United States. If I want to learn a language, it is still all about me. If I want to teach myself how to cook, start salsa dancing, or take road trips, I have a similar degree of flexibility.  The only one of my goals that requires outside approval as much as a job is starting a romantic relationship, though I believe there are still more single women in the United States than employers.

Of course, I don't believe a person is defined completely by their work and that when one is unemployed they have nothing whatsoever to contribute towards society. But economic reality remains and work helps fill up the hours. People who say life is short have never spent a long time single and unemployed. I have been trying to fill my free time with as much productive use as possible since coming home at the end of March. I have been writing, submitting, and studying Italian too. I interviewed for one job, connected with friends, returned to dancing, and did some reading. In addition there have been a few odd jobs, such as working as a test proctor at my old high school, Yorktown. It was an interesting experience, walking back and forth to spy on the students like a German commandant while reading Sophie's Choice during breaks. I'm still waiting for my check...

Anyway, back to the job search. It's hard to say what I am looking for, times have made me flexible. The current economic situation began almost as soon as a graduated from New York University (magna cum laude). Originally I had hoped to work in publishing, since that was where my interests and skills were. I wasn't trained to do much by NYU and what work experience I had involved summer camp counseling. Extracurricularly though, I had an internship at Folio Literary Management and was poetry editor for this publication. Unfortunately, the publishing industry imploded, in no small part because of the incompetence of its leaders, but that is another story. With my main prospect for a job derailed, I went looking for work elsewhere: temp agencies, doctor's offices, website writing, but was unable to find anything. Finally I got a series of small breaks. I worked as a data entry manager for a get-out-the-vote campaign and then had a brief paid internship for election security analysis. They were interesting, compensated experiences but nothing long-term enough to allow me to stay in New York City.

If the recession (and I don't care what the economists say, it's still a recession for most of us) has taught me anything, it is not to take employment for granted and to be willing to change career paths and industries with ease. I went from publishing, to data entry, to political analysis, and then settled on a job that kept me busy from late 2008 to October of 2010, writing questions and answers for Answers Encyclopedia.  It was good enough money for me while it lasted and I got to read a lot of interesting material. The job involved going through encyclopedia articles and finding bits of information people might want to know. I then wrote possible questions that these bits could be answers to. This way people searching for the facts could get them without searching a whole article. It was complicated to explain to other people (I hope I have done a decent enough job of it here) without looking like I was involved in some scam, but the company sent me checks that cleared, so in the end that was all that mattered.

The interesting thing about that job was that I worked from home and never saw my co-workers or my boss. I have no idea what any of the people I dealt with looked like. It was another lesson I learned from our new economy, working without an office, motivating myself, and putting faith in the Internet to connect people and get things done. For the older generation, the idea of work meant getting up, leaving the house, and going to an office, store, or factory. I know my parents more or less had this idea and convincing them I was, in fact, employed took some time. But now things have changed and workers today have to abolish all preconceived notions of what work is. The only thing that remains central to employment is that is involves getting paid, or it should. However the worrying rise of unpaid internships threatens even this basic notion. This is one change that can and should be fought.

But my job ended and because I was an independent contractor adrift in the new economy, I had no benefits from being laid off. I admit, and maybe it's just the American Protestant inside each and every one of us, that I initially felt more depressed at being laid off than when I heard my grandmother had died. I suspect in this country, that's not too rare. Without a job you tend to feel untethered and wonder what your real worth is. At this point I was in Montclair, New Jersey, living with the Book Doctors. In exchange for a room and a renewed sense of independence, I helped them with a variety of needs. These ranged from developing their social networking, publishing blog posts, entering contact information, and editing manuscripts. So I became an assistant in the trenches of the ever-changing publishing industry. It was a good gig, except it was unsustainable in the long run, since I was only being paid in housing and consultation.

So it was back to DC for me, because unlike Thomas Wolfe said, you always can go home again. Now with my family vacation and my brother's graduation out of the way, I have a long, clear, and empty schedule ahead of me that needs filling up with a job. Preferably something with set hours, near a subway line, and that doesn't involve sales. I can do a lot of things, but sales isn't one of them.

First Great Success! Anti-Manchild Project #1 finished!

You see this? You see whose name is on it? Well, my first project is now completed. I have a very real and very beautiful chapbook published, all thanks to the very lovely Jessi Graustein and the rest of Folded Word Press. They have decided to put out one of my collections: Common Symptoms of an Enduring Chill Explained. It is an exploration on the relationship between a physical and spiritual breakdown and the effect of both on one's language. See, sometimes dreams do come true. Cue the Disney music. Anyway, the important stuff to check out:

Here is the link to buy it.

Here is a link for updates on Folded Word's blog.

Here are some cool pictures that show the chapbook's making.

There will be further updates about the chapbook later. It's interesting to see me name on the cover. I know that is not the total goal of writing, or the only reason to do it (it's really all about the chicks, man). It's still nice though and seeing a work published makes me feel like Zeus after his headache and seeing Athena emerge. Or something like that. I guess this means I am really published and everything. The next step, of course, is to get a book through, either one of poetry, short stories, or even a novel. Ideally, all three. But for now, one of my major artistic aims has been met and I can cross off one of the many goals I have set up for me to achieve. How many Manchildren can say they've been published?