Saturday, February 7, 2009

Wear a chicken suit

This is my life- the last time I needed a full time job with benefits-(I had gotten out of the military, had a tiny baby and my husband enrolled in college-yes, I know, stupid... I supported him through college-Any whooo...)

The last time I needed a full time job-badly- the economy tanked. There was a recession and I had recruiters tell me to go back to the Air Force. No one wanted to hire a female electronics tech- I might have a baby and who would they get to cover my maternity leave? and I quote, "We can't just go out and get a kelly girl to cover like we can with the office girls." I gave them a raspberry and took the first job offered, which turned out to be a nasty bit of business where my boss hired me to sit in his office and pay him attention.

I swore I would not be that desperate this time... It's been fourteen months. Over that time the economy has truly tanked... Millions of jobs lost. People now stand in line for days for job fairs. Seriously they had them camping out in Florida. There was a picture of a teacher's fair and of a teacher wearing a chicken suit. They said he got good reactions- people remembered him.

The Careerbuilder advises-to rework the resume- I do that for each job, tailoring it to the ad. Then they say-call, squeaky wheel gets the grease, etc. Meanwhile the ads all have in big bold type-"DO NOT CALL US- WE'LL CALL YOU." or "Due to the high volume of applications, we'll ocntact you only if you're a fit."

They advise to try other industries- I've applied for everything from photographer to editor to press manager to marketing exec to public information manager for a library. No calls. No calls since the disaster in November where I drove a thousand miles for an interview that garnered me an invitation to lunch....sigh.

I look out my window and a small voice asks- what will you do if you're still sitting here this time next year? Guess I'll buy a chicken suit.

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