An interview, blah blah

This photo is actually relevant to the interview I had.

Yesterday I had my first interview in nearly a month. (Though, in all fairness, I had a sorta-interview with a friend of a friend's place last week. It was an impossible job, that had several misfitting aspects of it. We agreed I wasn't a good fit).

Yesterday's interview was for an... community organization in my hometown. (I don't really want to move back to my hometown, but the thought has come up for reasons I may get into some point later). I'd applied their on a whim and -Holy Cow!- they contacted me pretty soon after for an interview.

I was over-qualified and the pay was on the low-end (but good for the field). But phone interviews -like most interviews- are... weird? Lackluster? Disheartening? Leave much to be desired?

I know I was nervous at first and answered question awkwardly, but I tried engaging her, the interviewer. I'd like to think I was successful in that regard (engaging). I doubt very much I'll go to round two.

SHE ASKED A FEW QUESTIONS that threw me off.  First, "Tell me about yourself". Um, a bit too general. Where do you want me to start? With my birth? Cause that's fascinating. (Aside from the miracle of life, there are other interesting aspects of my birth -mostly, the location- that makes an interesting story, people drop their jaws, and it's almost relative to the position.)

But I didn't start with my birth. I also didn't start with my 18th birthday, or specifically three months later when I flew across the ocean to spend the better part of two years tramping around Asia.

Maybe I should have. Instead I just tried giving a narrative of my "career".

WHICH SEGUED TO AN AWKWARD, LEADING QUESTION, one I fear: "You've done a lot of different things. Why is that? Have you tried changing careers?"

I thought it wasn't far. My professional narrative is clear that Career Path 1 resulted in side projects of Career Path 2, which lead perfectly to my graduate degree. (Shit, woman, if you want to piss an interviewee off, you know how to do it!) I tried underscoring that point. I don't know if I succeeded.

I never know if I've ever succeeded with the minor details of interviewing (like, the part that doesn't land the job).

Which reminds me: I've wanted something for this whole job hunt experience: someone to call up interviewers (after my interviewer, after I've been rejected) and do some QC on my interview. That's really what I want a career counselor to do: forget the theoretical, what about people's actual opinions of my actual interviews?

I'd love to do tit-for-tat with someone in this regard. I'd love this blog to get read enough that I could pose that offer to my readers and the line "if you want to do this, leave a message in the comments" didn't come across as awkward.

You mean I'm not alone?

I have mixed feelings about Gawker's piece on being unemployed.

Yes, I know, lots of people are unemployed. I could be worse off! But... but... I'm sure I speak for EVERYONE who submitted to that project that we're hardly consoled knowing that.

It's a national tragedy. I just want to help people. Shit, come on.

Here's a photo cause people like photos.

This is what 900 resumes looks like

One application off today (a horrible online process for a position I'm waaay over qualified for and I doubt pays over $12/hr), three applications yesterday (slight alterations of the same one; again, not too hopeful) and six other earlier this week and I think I can say I've applied to over 900 positions.

By now, I'm just applying for applying's sake.

And I think that number should bring me more shame than it is.

How did I jump to 900? Why, the way all statistics are done: with subtle manipulation!

Well, sorta.

Though I graduated in June, 2009, according to my handy-dandy job hunt spreadsheet (on which I keep pretty thorough details), my job hunt started in earnest in April. I applied to 11 jobs that month, one of which resulted in an interview (which they never got back to me, and to where I recently applied to another position. Odd.)

My first interview was actually in February, which I think might be an error on my spreadsheet.

Number of applications/interviews per month until I get tired of counting:

2011
Feb:  7/1
Mar:  5/0
Apr:  11/1
May:  6/1
Jun:    27/3* (one place I applied 6/11, but it wasn't until 3/12 that they got back to me for an interview.)
Jul:    42/0 (this is when my girlfriend told me to kick it into high gear)
Aug:  100/5 (this is when I start carpet-bombing, applying to any/every position for which I vaguely qualify)
Sep:  106/7

Ok, you get the point.

Important note: I'd like to think that I'm "90% qualified" for the vast majority of the jobs I apply to. Of the 900 jobs, I'd like to think less than 150 are complete throw-aways.

I also tailor every resume and cover letter to the job (except those throw-aways I mentioned).

If I were better at graphics, I'd design some whitty graphs. Until then, just trust me.

Can I start drinking yet?

WILL WORK FOR FREE

Today's mull-over: "Will work for free"

I'm wondering how it would work to just offer my services for free to a worthy organization, (cause frankly trying to get paid employment isn't working).

"MPA, mulit-lingual, 12 years professional experience, committed to making the world a better place, thrives in diversity, excellent references, etc..."

I realize I have a few caveats: not for profit (cause if it's going to be for a for-profit, they better pay me); limit 20 hours a week (but open to different situations); not long-term (one month? three months?).

Think it would work? And how can I make it work?

I posted this on Facebook. "Volunteer!" Said a friend.

I'm looking at that too. Essentially I'm looking to volunteer extensively and long-term.

What's weird is how difficult that is to do.

First, you gotta verify their reliability and ability. Then you gotta train the person. And if they're really qualified, then why aren't they working?

Meaning, people think you're weird.

I'll let you know how it goes.

Am I doing it all wrong?

I've cranked out 10 resume/applications -all of them tailored to the specific position- in the last three days.

That brings the total to nearly 880 (I'll talk about those number in the next few days).

Which brings me to wonder, am I doing it all wrong?

I almost feel like sometimes I'm just applying to jobs for the sake of applying. Like, I secretly want to brag about the number of resumes I've sent out; I want to boast about how long I've been unemployed; I want to wallow in making poverty wages.

(I really don't want to brag and boast about all that, thus the word "secretly".)

So, am I doing it all wrong?

Should I even bother applying to these places?

Mind you, today I applied to two nearly identical jobs with the city. I'm very qualified for both. The chances of me getting the jobs are probably nil. Or to be more exact, 1 out of 500, which is essentially nil.

So why bother?

Does applying to a job actually get you the job?

I'm beginning to think it doesn't.

Three up, three down.

Follow-up from those interviews I had last week: both emailed me today that they were pursuing other candidates.

To top it off, I actually got a phone call (a Phone Call!) from the job I interviewed for a month ago! (and she said, "wow, it's been nearly a month now...").  The call was just a polite confirmation of what I suspected: they offered the job to someone else.

So that's three -count 'em, 3- rejections in one day!

Wow!

Most people would be bummed by this, but it's all just par for the course.

Just in case you think I'm lazy

For some reason I started reminiscing on my first professional job hunt.

It was 1996. I had just graduated from college and moved to Minneapolis, cause it was the closest big city that I hadn't been to and I wanted to try something new. In fact I had a list of career goals:

• Work in an inner city school
• Work with refugees
• Work with an international organization
• Teach ESL
• Work with non-proft
• Visit 9th and Hennepin, where all the donuts have names that sound like prostitutes*
• And also visit 9th and Euclid, something about a famous dirty bookstore**

Soon after I landed there was an article in the paper. I remember it well, it profiled a recent college grad from a good university, multi-skilled, spoke another language, etc etc. She hoped to go far. Instead said the article, she worked three minimum wage jobs -one at a shoe store- and barely made $20k

There's a lot to unpack in that article and a lot is relevant today. But then I think I blew her off as a whiner. 

Gotta pay your dues!

So I trudged ahead to pay my dues. 

1-       Got a job as a Customer Service Rep at the local cable company through a friend's relative. After two days I realized it fit none of why I'd moved, a fact that made me, so I quit. 

2-       That night I saw an add in the weekly paper. Something about making a difference in the world. I later learned this ad is in the back of every weekly paper in the country. It in itself became a funny story, but the place sucked, lest because the boss didn't disclose the 50 hr work week for a salary of $14k a year. Work gave me strep throat. I quit. 

3-       I quit job #2 because I  had stumbled on to a series of part-time work. I had the following schedule for a few weeks. First I woke up and interned at the internationally minded nonprofit. I ended up volunteering for them for years. 

4-       In the afternoons I drove over to St Paul and work the evening shift at a call center for a non-profit research group. I liked it. 

5-       Then after eating dinner in my car, I worked the graveyard shift at UPS! Teamster! My sup was 19 years old, and he thought I was being a smartass when, during orientation and "what to do in case if a tornado hits the building", I asked if. Tornado had ever hit the building. I was serious. ("No, a tornado has never hit this building".)

6-       On the weekends I worked at St Joe's Home for Children as a residential care worker. It was the first of my career working with abused and at-risk kids. 

7-       After a few wks of this routine, I got a call to work a dream job teaching ESL to immigrants in an inner city school. It was only part time, but there was good chance of going full time in the new year. I quit the UPS job but the call center begged me to stay until the holidays. 

8-       I also somehow snagged a part-time evening job teaching ESL to adults. Like the high school gig, it was initially a sub job with a promise for the next year. 

So I got up at seven in the morning, drove to St Paul to teach for a few hours, then worked at my internship before going to the call center. On Tuesday and Thursday eves I taught adults and the weekends I was at the children's home. 

That's five jobs at once, eight jobs in a year (starting in August).

And I still didn't make over $20k a year. 

* See: "9th and Hennepin"

**See: "Christmas card from a hooker in Minneapolis"

Predicament of the day

Great job that’s been on my radar for a couple weeks but am getting to right now, day before the application is due.

It’s a small non-profit that organizes community sustainability projects, “the perfect meld of my work experience and educational background”. It’s kind of an ideal job, especially since the pay range is $30-70,000 (though I suspect there’s a typo there).

The catch: I interviewed with the place a year and a half ago! And I never heard back from them after the interview. And this position reports to the woman I interviewed with.

It’s a little odd, to say the least.

A fair-sized pet-peeve of mine is when interviewers don’t follow-up after interviews, even a curt but polite “thank you for the interview, we’ve decided to pursue other candidates”.

(Out of all the jobs I’ve interviewed for, nearly a quarter didn’t actually tell me that they didn’t give me the job, I just assume so having not heard from them a week, a month, a year after wards).

I thought I interviewed well* (future topic of post); the woman/interviewer and I are alumni of the same graduate program, and have several mutual friends/colleagues. But she never got back to me after the interview to tell me if that I didn’t get the job.

Which puts me in an awkward situation: it’s a great job, one could say “exactly” what I’m looking for. But I didn’t get the job last time I interviewed, was that because she thought I was bad candidate? Or that there was someone better? Or that the last position was ‘too junior’ (part-time paying $16/hr, I think).

More importantly, the challenge will be finessing a cover letter that acknowledges that we met and I interviewed with her before, and projects positively my aspirations for this job, while not making it so obvious that I’ve been unemployed since then.

Oh, the joys of job hunting...

State of the Job Hunt, January 2013

Today I applied for job #865 since graduating in June, 2011.
Yesterday was job #864; I applied to one more over the holidays, but otherwise the last three weeks have been slow.

Yesterday I also had interviews #63 and 64.

Let's do some number crunching:

Official Job Hunt Start*: June, 2011
Number of Jobs Applied to as of Jan 4th, 2013: 865
Number of interviews: 65
Number of job offers**: 6
Number of jobs/internships accepted***: 3
Current primary forms of employment: soccer referee, "consultant", blogger (click on those ads, folks!)

*Though I graduated mid-June, 2011, I started my job hunt before that. My first interview was in February, though the applications didn't really start until April. If you start in April, I've applied to an additional 18 other jobs, 3 of which resulted in interviews.

**I'll have to write about these job offers later.

***Same with jobs accepted, worth it's own post.

Don't you hate it when...

...you discover a minor typo in the resume that you've been using for the last two months? 


And that the misspelled word was inserted there by a "professional career counselor" who reviewed your resume and made changes so it'd look more 'professional' and get you a job?


(Ok, it's ultimately my fault. I should've caught the error. I'm just trying to diffuse the blame).


And that since the word was in ALL CAPS, MS Word spell check -which routine marks your name as misspelled- doesn't catch the typo?


Yeah, I hate when that happens.


The typo was in the header of the last section of the resume:


TECHNOLGY AND LANGUAGE SKILLS


Ugh.


Which makes me wonder if any recruiter or HR or hiring lead caught the error and immediately threw out my resume.  

(That's what my girlfriend says she does, automatically, no matter how slight).


(Thump Thump Thump. Head->Wall)


By my rough count, this typo was on at least 32 different applications sent out since late October. Aside from the professional, probably at least four other friends reviewed my resumes since the infection error was discovered. And no one found it.

So, recruiters, hiring managers, and other people in power: if you see a resume with One Tiny Flaw but is otherwise stellar, do you throw it out?

(Luckily, I kinda know the answer: sometimes. IF I made it to the top 10 resumes out of 200, IF no one sees it... it's just one of many factors.)

(Not that that's comforting, but I'll stop banging my head against the wall).

Phone Interview, Jan 3, 2013

I also had an initial phone screening interview today for a good job in the field of my graduate degree at a local hospital and for which I meet all the desired requirements.

The interview was with the recruiter. It started out with lots of background noise, like she was on a speaker phone and shuffling papers. (I've had worse interviews on speaker phones, HORRIBLE interviews with the interviewers on speaker phones. Please, interviewers, if you're using a speaker phone, be courteous and ask the interviewee if the connection is OK, cause it puts us in a weird situation by forcing us to say "I'm sorry, your speaker phone SUCKS).

But I digress...

The speaker phone today wasn't bad, but the trouble with recruiters is that they know very little about the job and no way reflect the culture and personality; in fact, the personality of the recruiter may very well be the complete opposite of that of the people you'll be working with.

But again, I digress.

More unsettling than the speak phone and perhaps an aspect of the recruiter: she spoke like a sparrow darting across a large field picking off insects to snack on. I wanted to say, "um, could you slow down a little bit?" but I wasn't given much opportunity to utter a sound.

I was like this job more than the other one I applied for. I prepared for the interview more, and answered questions before she asked them. But still, it was over within 15 minutes, though in the email she said it'd take 30. She didn't ask if I had any questions.

I have no idea what to make of it.

Interview Summary, Jan 3rd

It was a small office that worked  in public private partnerships in renewable energy and a couple other traits that I feature prominently on my Resume, Template B: energy systems peon. 

First, there's a principle: better to be surprised than disappointed. 

Expect the worst, pray for the best. 

Etc, etc.

Having said that, it wasn't a worse case scenario, but close. 

I didnt do enough research. 

Didn't have good questions. 

I was advised to get a leather bound folder and use it to take notes, but haven't done that yet. 

I hadn't had any coffee. 

My shirt had a stain. 

My socks are too thin. 

The car wouldn't start. 

I just got back from vacation yesterday and haven't adjusted. 

My mouth was dry and when the receptionist asked if I wanted water, she gave me a small plastic bottle. 

I hate plastic. Plastic water bottles are a cancer. What kind if office in this city, in the year 2013 uses plastic water bottles? 

So instead I sat parched, thinking "my prospects aren't any good to begin with, let's see how much more challenging I can make them."

He hadn't shaved in a few days but was respectful and polite. 

She was drop-dead beautiful but otherwise didn't say much, except to ask about my last job, speaking Spanish. 

I answered in Spanish which was a mistake cause that has nothing to do with the job I was currently interviewing for. I just fell for those gotcha bilingual questions I often get in the other types of jobs I apply for. 

I talked a lot about myself. 

They asked me about my experience. 

They asked, "why do you want this job". Dammit, the most predictable question and I blew it! I dropped the keywords but not very effectively. 

He asked what the biggest lesson I learned from my Big Project. I was caught off-guard by that one, gave an answer but could've given a better one.

He asked if I had hard skills, and I BSed an answer that well, not really but I learn knew things quickly. 

He asked about my last job, and I could barely remember what it was. 

Then interview was over. 

"Do you have any questions for us?" 

I thought I said something wrong and they pulled the venerable trap door from under me and in a matter of cartoonish seconds I disappear with a puff of smoke like Wiley Coyote leaving  behind nothing but a hand painted sign saying "drats. Not again. "

I struggled to ask something and manged to get a "good question!" response. 

Then I hurried out. It was obvious I was hurrying. 

Then I passed the next interviewee in the hallway. Obviously taller and nervouser than I.