I can’t believe I haven’t posted a blog on this thing in almost 4 month. As I have said before, I knew I was going to suck at this, but I am really outdoing myself now. I would say sorry but a good friend of mine told me a few weeks ago how boring it is to read about “Blogger’s Remorse” so I will spare you all my excuses. You can read it or not. I won’t be offended.
Anyway, the last few months have been pretty crazy in the life of this 24 year old. The last time I posted I was on my way down to Austin, TX to help with the Severe Flooding relief. I would without a doubt say that it was one of the crazier experiences of my life. I sat out in a hurricane and registered disaster survivors for FEMA assistance, I sorted through almost 250 survivor cases to make sure those affected were actually getting the help they need, I even wrote a press release that was picked up by the State of Texas and published in newspapers across the state. Yea, I was pretty busy.
But here I am in round 3 of my year in FEMA Corps in San Diego, California. It is hard to believe that within the next 2-3 months my year of service will be over and I will be launched back into reality where I live in a room by myself as opposed to sharing a bed and living with 3 other people. I will be able to drive my small compact car rather than the 15 passenger van I have been maneuvering the country in. I will be able to walk to the store or meet up with a friend without having to tell my roommate and supervisor where I am going, who I will be with, what time I will be back, how I am getting there, what I will be doing, what I am wearing, how I am getting there, what I will be eating, the temperature of the place I will be at…. This is an exaggeration but you get the point. It is going to be weird to be back in a world that isn’t always revolving around other people.
As many of you know, this year hasn’t been all rainbows, glitter and butterflies. We have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations that have made a pretty good amount of my corps mates actually leave the program. But as much as I have complained and stressed even considered leaving myself, there is one single life activity that kept me from jumping off the ledge and staying sage in the AmeriCorps bubble. That activity of course…. Is job hunting.
Job hunting really might be one of the most exhausting and quite honestly daunting processes people of all ages have to go through. Whether you are 19 or 59, picking apart every little job, internship, program activity you have been a part of and then putting it on display in hopes that SOMEONE finds it appealing enough to actually provide you with a salary and maybe, just maybe some benefits is in my opinion one of the more unpleasant tasks we have to perform as so called grownups.
You sit down and take a whack at tweaking your resume about 35 different times. Maybe try a different font? Would this look weird in navy blue rather than black? Is it bad if it goes over a page? Is it bad if it is under a page? Should I use bullets? Should I write in a paragraph? Should I attach a picture of my dog or a funny meme so it catches the potential employers’ attention? There is never a right answer, right?
Then there is the god forsaken cover letter. Do people even read that anymore? A friend and I discussed this last night and we are convinced that employers probably just glance over your resume and hit up your Facebook to see how many poor life choices they can dig up on you and pick the person that seems the least likely to be a liability. Not to mention, everyone knows they have made the mistake at least once where they had a standard letter they always use, send it out to a job they REALLY wanted, only to realize they missed editing one paragraph and sent their resume to “Get Ready to Sell Your Soul, Inc.” instead of “You’ll Be Working Here Until You Die” Enterprises.
After you have basically broken your entire professional life down into 1-2 pages of cheesy descriptions and organized a somewhat informative standard cover letter, you get to head on over to the millions of job searching sites that are sure to leave you in tears by the time your search is over. I know for at least myself and many others in the 24-26 year old range, reading those job descriptions often feels like a reminder of all the opportunities you didn’t take when you were younger.
You can’t get an internship because you’re not in college anymore. But you can’t get a better job because you didn’t pursue a better internship opportunity when the position actually applied to you. You have enough life experience at this point that you aren’t looking for an Entry Level job and have enough bills and obligations where you will need a higher salary than what is being offered. But then you see that “Must have 3+ years of experience in the field” and think “Jeeze, 3 years ago I was sitting in my boyfriend’s apartment eating Oreos for dinner and wasting 5 hours at a time catching up on The Walking Dead”. Maybe that’s just applicable to me… but you get the point. So then you have to apply for the entry level positions and hope to god that you don’t end up working for some younger, pompous know it all who thinks sailing on their daddy’s boat gave them the life experience they need to excel in anything work could throw at them.
(Just as a writer’s note: I worked my ass off in college and sincerely deserved those Oreo dinners. I’m just saying I probably could have found opportunities that didn’t lead to that being a weekly ritual).
But as I said before, job hunting is just as daunting for older generations. They have so many more professional experiences to sort through and have to hope that they featured the right ones on this sheet of paper that will more than likely just end up in a pile of papers of buried deep in an email box just waiting to be graced by a potential employers eyes. Essentially, young or old… job hunting is one sure fire say to send you into a life crisis (quarter life or midlife respectively).
I usually try to leave some sort of advice in my blogs but to be completely honest, I am fresh out when it comes to this topic. But what I do hope to gain from this post is that maybe it will land on the laptop of another stressed out, Mid 20-something young professional experiencing the same struggle I am currently facing so that I can tell them… YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Sometimes just knowing that other people in the world find the process of searching for employment absolutely repulsing makes you feel a little less bad about your own job search and for feeling that way yourself.
So to whoever reading this that feels it applies to their current situation… I wish you the best of luck in your job hunting expedition. May you find a job full of fun co-workers, decent salary, good benefits and plenty of vacations days. But when you do, do me a favor and send it my way.
Anyway, the last few months have been pretty crazy in the life of this 24 year old. The last time I posted I was on my way down to Austin, TX to help with the Severe Flooding relief. I would without a doubt say that it was one of the crazier experiences of my life. I sat out in a hurricane and registered disaster survivors for FEMA assistance, I sorted through almost 250 survivor cases to make sure those affected were actually getting the help they need, I even wrote a press release that was picked up by the State of Texas and published in newspapers across the state. Yea, I was pretty busy.
But here I am in round 3 of my year in FEMA Corps in San Diego, California. It is hard to believe that within the next 2-3 months my year of service will be over and I will be launched back into reality where I live in a room by myself as opposed to sharing a bed and living with 3 other people. I will be able to drive my small compact car rather than the 15 passenger van I have been maneuvering the country in. I will be able to walk to the store or meet up with a friend without having to tell my roommate and supervisor where I am going, who I will be with, what time I will be back, how I am getting there, what I will be doing, what I am wearing, how I am getting there, what I will be eating, the temperature of the place I will be at…. This is an exaggeration but you get the point. It is going to be weird to be back in a world that isn’t always revolving around other people.
As many of you know, this year hasn’t been all rainbows, glitter and butterflies. We have gone through a lot of trials and tribulations that have made a pretty good amount of my corps mates actually leave the program. But as much as I have complained and stressed even considered leaving myself, there is one single life activity that kept me from jumping off the ledge and staying sage in the AmeriCorps bubble. That activity of course…. Is job hunting.
Job hunting really might be one of the most exhausting and quite honestly daunting processes people of all ages have to go through. Whether you are 19 or 59, picking apart every little job, internship, program activity you have been a part of and then putting it on display in hopes that SOMEONE finds it appealing enough to actually provide you with a salary and maybe, just maybe some benefits is in my opinion one of the more unpleasant tasks we have to perform as so called grownups.
You sit down and take a whack at tweaking your resume about 35 different times. Maybe try a different font? Would this look weird in navy blue rather than black? Is it bad if it goes over a page? Is it bad if it is under a page? Should I use bullets? Should I write in a paragraph? Should I attach a picture of my dog or a funny meme so it catches the potential employers’ attention? There is never a right answer, right?
Then there is the god forsaken cover letter. Do people even read that anymore? A friend and I discussed this last night and we are convinced that employers probably just glance over your resume and hit up your Facebook to see how many poor life choices they can dig up on you and pick the person that seems the least likely to be a liability. Not to mention, everyone knows they have made the mistake at least once where they had a standard letter they always use, send it out to a job they REALLY wanted, only to realize they missed editing one paragraph and sent their resume to “Get Ready to Sell Your Soul, Inc.” instead of “You’ll Be Working Here Until You Die” Enterprises.
After you have basically broken your entire professional life down into 1-2 pages of cheesy descriptions and organized a somewhat informative standard cover letter, you get to head on over to the millions of job searching sites that are sure to leave you in tears by the time your search is over. I know for at least myself and many others in the 24-26 year old range, reading those job descriptions often feels like a reminder of all the opportunities you didn’t take when you were younger.
You can’t get an internship because you’re not in college anymore. But you can’t get a better job because you didn’t pursue a better internship opportunity when the position actually applied to you. You have enough life experience at this point that you aren’t looking for an Entry Level job and have enough bills and obligations where you will need a higher salary than what is being offered. But then you see that “Must have 3+ years of experience in the field” and think “Jeeze, 3 years ago I was sitting in my boyfriend’s apartment eating Oreos for dinner and wasting 5 hours at a time catching up on The Walking Dead”. Maybe that’s just applicable to me… but you get the point. So then you have to apply for the entry level positions and hope to god that you don’t end up working for some younger, pompous know it all who thinks sailing on their daddy’s boat gave them the life experience they need to excel in anything work could throw at them.
(Just as a writer’s note: I worked my ass off in college and sincerely deserved those Oreo dinners. I’m just saying I probably could have found opportunities that didn’t lead to that being a weekly ritual).
But as I said before, job hunting is just as daunting for older generations. They have so many more professional experiences to sort through and have to hope that they featured the right ones on this sheet of paper that will more than likely just end up in a pile of papers of buried deep in an email box just waiting to be graced by a potential employers eyes. Essentially, young or old… job hunting is one sure fire say to send you into a life crisis (quarter life or midlife respectively).
I usually try to leave some sort of advice in my blogs but to be completely honest, I am fresh out when it comes to this topic. But what I do hope to gain from this post is that maybe it will land on the laptop of another stressed out, Mid 20-something young professional experiencing the same struggle I am currently facing so that I can tell them… YOU ARE NOT ALONE. Sometimes just knowing that other people in the world find the process of searching for employment absolutely repulsing makes you feel a little less bad about your own job search and for feeling that way yourself.
So to whoever reading this that feels it applies to their current situation… I wish you the best of luck in your job hunting expedition. May you find a job full of fun co-workers, decent salary, good benefits and plenty of vacations days. But when you do, do me a favor and send it my way.
