Honestly, it's just too much to manage. Since I started the job search in earnest back in early June, I have applied for close to 90 jobs. I know this because of the above-mentioned spreadsheet, which, like all of technology these days, is supposed to make things easier but somehow can't be simplified enough to actually account for all the chaotic complexity that literally every task seems to require. Like how cars used to be carburators and dipsticks and now they're basically an IT department's worth of problems with wheels attached. My car is fully electric and I'm not exaggerating when I say any time I have to take it the dealership service department* they react with fear and surprise at the sight of it. I've never described an issue that I'm having and then been met with any level of reassurance; not "mm hmm" of general recognition, not a confident off-the-cuff appraisal of the issue, not a single probling follow-up question, not even the kind of "I'm following what you're saying" head nod they used to give you just before they cut you off in that charmingly condescending way only car people and financial consultants really know how to do. The flash of panic in their eyes catches you by surprise at first, but sometimes you can really feel when you're in the middle of a cultural shift and the people experiencing it are scrambling to catch up. This must have been what it was like back when women were first allowed to get their own credit cards. World turned upside down.
I've talked already about the absurd deterioration of the efficiency of any task, including job searching, as technology becomes more "helpful" to job seekers and prospective employers. I guess it underlines that point in a meta sort of way by overlapping a lot of the same territory with yet another overwritten blogpost, which is definitely what I'm trying to achieve here in my normal clever-clogs mode. It's not that I'm just complaining again about the same shit, over and over and over again. I mean, at best you could hit me with two "over"s.
There's loads of free (and less than free) advice out there about targeting, honing, perfecting and deploying your résumé, couched in whatever half-baked market-speak pseudo-paradigm is pinging its way around the "employment space" at the minute. What I can tell you from this many months in, only securing a response of any kind from seven of the almost 90 places I've applied: the only things that matter are volume and speed.
If you've been around the internet for any amount of time, one of its truest constants, an axiomatic known-knowable against which one could calibrate atomic clocks, is that if there is a comment section for the thing posted, SOMEone will, within 1-to-4 seconds of it being put up for public view, will comment "First!" Of course all of us know that in the time it took them to type that out, at least two other people will have posted a comment, so the "First!" comment, by understood and stipulated internet rule, cannot appear earlier than the third comment under a post or video, with no lower limit known.
What we didn't know is that impulse that makes people stupid in the sort of public way where people can see what you thought was a good idea to type, that's exactly and only the one strategy that will work to get a response when job hunting. It's FIRST! or nothing.
Helpfully, job sites will tell you a) when the job posting was first listed and b) roughtly how many responses it has garnered, up to "100+." The reason why it stops at 100 is that all these sites know that by the time you hit triple digits, your chances of even being seen--let alone considered--rest at zero, the same way the OceanGate Titan rests on the ocean floor. The people in that thing had a better chance at swimming to the surface than you do of getting a job that has "100+" applicants listed or has been posted for more than three days.
Grim metaphor, sure, but this is grim stuff. The only traction I've gotten for any applications has been because I stumbled across a posting soon after it went up. But it doesn't really get less bleak than that once you've (improbably!) cleared the first hurdle. So far I've had only one interview, with a "virtual AI assistant" bot about a week ago and from whom I have not yet heard anything back. Feels great. I haven't been ghosted by a bot since I was on the dating apps, so I appreciate the notalgia hit.
I had an interview scheduled for this morning, but the person never called, never responded to any attempted follow-up. Not my favorite experience, but you know what, the managing of the volume happens on their end as well. Just like with the dating apps, I can get pretty quickly to some kind of empathy for the other half of the equation. That's also a safe coping mechanism to recontextualize rejection by giving them a built in excuse, only in this case it has to be "well, they can't really get to everyone..." rather than "she was wearing that Sailor Moon shirt in her profile, she's probably not really that into guys actually." You have to adapt, obviously.
The answer is to, as the cliché goes, make finding a job as much like having a job as possible, which is to say: tedious and disheartening and getting in your way of playing more Baldur's Gate III.
No snoozing, literally, so I'm up with an alarm now. First thing I do is dig into my email and start sorting through the zillion messages I've gotten from the 6-12 active job sites (some I actively applied through and some who just... found me) I'm using and determine whether or not I can make any applications that day. I do it in 2-3 hour chunks a few times a day, right up until the the boulders of hopelessness avalanche through my soul and I have to take a break to let it re-inflate with the right amount of delusional optimism (about 5 parts per billion). I'm committed to getting this done.
And by "this" I mean "maintain continuity of health care so I don't have to pay for my statin pills out of my own pocket." Dystopias are dark things to live in, but you can't say they're not chock full of motivation.
---
*I'm not a financial masochist, it's just that it's still under warranty.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment