For those of you who read my last diary about my battles with unemployment, and how I am trying to see the simple blessings in life...
...and for those who didn't; I want to let you know that I am still* unemployed. I won't be able to respond until later tonight (I set this for autopub this AM). Please leave comments, and please check out my book.
What I have encountered is a world where I have not used one postage stamp in my entire job search and resume blitz, a world of indeeds and lists of craig and monsters. Man, the monsters...they're the worst.
Seriously, this is a dehumanizing experience, one of rejection and great voids, and also immense frustration as there are jobs that you know are perfect for you if you only could get in front of somebody, look them in the eye, and tell them about yourself.
It is a world where it is professionally acceptable to not call people back, to not acknowledge people, to not respond after they have been rejected and want feedback on their interview performance. It is the classic manifestation of the coldness of business, where that legal line dictates no exposure of liability for the company in dealing with job applicants. And yet, they will give you a required e-form to tell them - well before they even start considering your application in the slightest - if you are a man or woman, a vet, disabled, or recently on SNAP or some other PA.
I copy n' paste the email address, craft wisely, append, and thus apply again to a listing to discover that, once again, my resume isn't sufficient, and I have to spend 20 minutes again entering everything that is on my resume into tiny boxes. Then comes the psych assessment, whose questions I know so well already, that purports to judge how you are as a teammate, if you are violent, or whateverthefuck they wanna think you are or might become in your unholy future.
I click through to apply to another listing to discover that they want my social security number and pretty much all of my personal information except my bank account.
My bank account is what I was asked to supply for purposes of direct deposit of course, after I was supposedly hired as a QA Manager sight unseen with nary an interview by some outfit in Colorado that was gonna send me 1300 a month to inspect and reship boxes of electronic equipment at home. I didn't, and they never sent me a check or anything to inspect. Just a contract and an NDA.
An NDA is what I was forced to sign when I was signed up by this other guy who wanted MBA's. I did get great practice on participating in conference calls, and meeting deadlines and using Dropbox. Not to mention practice at writing business plans. I was really using my MBA for the first time in many years!! Of course I am still waiting for the promised paycheck for that work.
I fill out one application and am asked for seventyfive bucks to be allowed to view their job listings.
I fill out some other application with all of my personal information thinking I am applying to teach management and leadership at an online unversity...only to have my tv watching interrupted for the next few days by telemarketers who think that I want to enroll at an online university. And to add insult to audacity, the telemarketers work some third-party independent firm. Not even the fucking school.
That is a pretty good description of the last 5 months of my life, sans my interview experiences. I am getting damn good at interviewing, if I do say so myself. If anyone is interested, I would like to post a diary about interview tips in the near future. I am hardly a professional job-seeking advisor, but I do have a degree in psych and english, and an MBA...and lots of experience on both sides of the interview desk.
*I actually was hired by a wholesaling firm in NYC with 8 locations (approx 70 employees), who hired me ostensibly to be their operations manager and lead the teams at each of their locations...and then fucking let go after 11 working days because the owner decided they didn't need that new position they had created after all. (He didn't like the management paychecks that were newly going out each week, I guess. And I had already mentored one new employee for 2 hours, teaching him what little I'd learned, and letting him know he had a support system there.)
So yes, I am still unemployed. And my unemployment runs out in a couple weeks. I am looking for 10 bux an hour jobs here.
Am I bitter??? Eh.
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE check out my latest novel,CORPORADEUS, available on amazon.com, and at finer establishments everywhere. Corporadeus is corporate and political satire and, believe me, it fights our fights!
(From the back cover)
They opened the new arena and mall downtown, and wiped out your old Brooklyn neighborhood. They just broke ground for some giant megamart on the Boulevard, and your little business can’t compete. Nobody’s can. They’re the largest goddamned Corporation in the world. Local wages are already nosediving, from the power of the market. They also own a thousand charter schools, and they’re taking over the world’s largest public school system. My God, they’re just getting started, but they already kicked your special needs kid to the curb. They just took your house in a legal reverse mortgage scheme. You’re on the verge of bankruptcy. Their payday loans are eating your guts from the inside, and they hold your checking account in an iron fist. And there’s nothing you can do about it.
Well, maybe there is a little something…