I absolutely abhor applying for jobs.
If you think about it, it is the most absolute ridiculous process ever. Companies are out there, searching for the missing links to their inner workings. They are looking for the precise nuts and bolts to not only sustain their inner machines, but to perfect them. So, to find them, they post these incredibly thorough job applications on the internet that ask questions like, “If you were cheese, which milk would you be derived from? And why?” and “If seven dogs are sitting on the roof of a train, and that train is headed to Albuquerque, but gets derailed in Amarillo, and sixteen cats board it, what color is the house in Pennsylvania?”
Okay. Maybe they don’t ask that exact question. But they might as well.
Then, after you complete their seventy-eight minute application, they ask for you to upload your resume.
Sure. No problem. I click browse, find the resume that I detailed to this particular job, then click upload. I always sit there and think, well that was easy.
But nothing’s that easy.
The screen that follows that is always asking for your most recent employer. It’s at this time that I start pulling my hair out and throwing my mouse across the room. Like, did you not just ask for this exact information? Did I not just upload my entire resume, including my ENTIRE employment history to your website? Oh, I did. That’s right. I forgot. You must have forgotten too, because otherwise asking me for my employment history after already receiving my employment history would be sort of silly.
It bothers me to no end. It’s like they enjoy wasting my time. Sometimes I swear that they just do it to mess with people. Like, this entire process is just a joke to them and that the job that they posted isn’t even real. They just put it up there so they can see how many people can actually get through the entire application.
They probably sit back with a smug grin, look at each other and take bets on how many people actually manage to finish it (with coherent answers). Unfortunately, falling asleep while your face holds down the enter key does not count for a completed application.
The thing is, it gets better. It gets better because not only is this job not real, but they probably create a job for someone to create this application. But they don’t use the Internet to hire someone. No, then we’d have to divide by zero. Instead, they just hire their secretary’s next door neighbor’s cousin who they met once at a company picnic.
Because that’s how you get a job.
You know someone.
People always tell me that they get jobs from applying to places on the internet. I want to call them out on it, and tell them that they’re lying. But the truth is, they were probably hired by the people that create posts on the internet to tell me that they got jobs on the internet, because I can’t think of anything else.
Either that or their in sales.
If you go on Careerbuilder, Indeed, Monster, or any of the other websites, I’d say that it’s a 99% chance that any job that you come across will be a sales position. Even if it says that it isn’t, it is.
“Kindergarten Teacher for Seventeen Year Old Ambidextrous Children?” Sales.
“Snake Charmer in Downtown Phoenix?” Sales
“Zamboni Driver for the Phoenix Suns?” Sales.
You get it. Okay, maybe those jobs don’t exist, but the ones that do? The Academic Success Specialists and Advisors? The Marketing Project Managers?
All sales.
And let’s face it, I don’t want to sell your shitty product. Also, the reason that your ad never leaves Monster.com is because turn around rates are high, because no one else wants to sell your shitty products either.
While this post is obviously a rant because I can’t seem to land employment, it is also a serious query of sorts, because I will never understand Internet applications. In all honesty, I will never understand any real job applications.
I have probably applied for close to a hundred and fifty jobs that I have been qualified for in the past year, and have heard back from, maybe five to ten (depending on how you define call backs).
I’m getting tired of writing the same old cover letters. I’m getting tired of writing and changing my resume. I’m getting tired of all of this stuff, because to me, it doesn’t matter. No cover letter, or resume, or anything for that matter can describe what type of person I am. You’re not going to know how hard I work, or how much I commit myself, or how determined I am to finish a project based on this sophisticated jargon.
Sure, I can make counting money and appeasing customers sound impressive, but who cares? No one. No one cares if I can take basic, every day tasks that anyone can complete, and make them sound like I just built the next wonder of the world. The entire process is pure redundancy.
At the end of the day, who cares what I did before? Who cares what I’ve accomplished? I know that it’s important that I have experience, but really, you’re just going to want me to do things that way that you want them done. Not how my last boss wanted them done, and not how the one before them wanted it done. If there’s anything that I’ve learned from college, it’s that you’re going to tailor your work to the person that gives you a grade (or in this case, your paycheck).
If you like me to write in the second person, you’re goddamn right I’m going to write in the second person. If you want me to end a sentence in a preposition, I’ll do my goddamn best to end a sentence in a preposition. If you want me to write my entire essay in the form of a haiku, well, you get the point. You learn how your teacher grades, and you adjust. It’s how you get by (I also hate the grading system, but that’s another blog).
Clearly, since I’ve managed to get through seven years of college while on the Dean’s list, I’ve managed to at least do what I’m told.
I don’t know.
To me, it seems like the people that end up getting hired are those that can lie the best, or the ones that have some insider information, knowing exactly what a company is looking for. Because let’s face it, there are a thousand people out there that have the same exact resume. They may have a slightly different template from Microsoft Word, but I can assure you, that the content is damn near identical. The work experience isn’t far off, at this point everyone and their mother has a Bachelor’s degree, and everyone has the same brown nosing cover letter.
They all say, “Oh so and so, I want to work for your company over every other one in the world because I always dreamed that some day, I could work in the in the liver and brussels sprouts industry.”
Come on, no one wants to work in the liver and brussells sprouts industry, not even the people that like those things.
At this point in my life, it seems like I went to college, just to be in debt for the rest of my life. I am no closer to knowing what I want to do. I am no closer to finding that out, and in the mean time, I can’t find something that I wouldn’t hate doing. If I need to get a job selling Oversized Mexican Jumping Beans to Eskimos in Jamaica, I’ll do it.
I just want to want to do something.
It would make life so much more pleasant, but until then, I’ll be here, editing, rewriting, applying and ripping my hair out, a strand at a time, trying to do what seems to be the impossible these days, land a job post college graduation.
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