Career Advice from the Unemployed - Part 2

Here’s a continuation of my sagacious snippets of career wisdom, from me, a trusted source. My outsider’s perspective on this one is key, peering as I am at the prospect of employment from a comfortable distance.

      4. Look Busy, Your Boss (or Jesus) is Coming
       One day at a job I had once, I thought I would be an “energetic, independent self-starter” by “manning the phones” (such a sexist term, I know). Someone had to be close enough to the phones to answer them in a timely manner when a customer called - why shouldn’t that be me? I watched those ugly institutional phones, caked with sweat on the handle and slick with face-grease on the earpiece (is that what you call the part of a corded phone you hold to your head?). Surprisingly enough, it did ring a couple times and I did help the customer. But then there was a lull. A deathly silent void in which my own existence was called into question. I thought I was trapped in a Sartre play. All of a sudden, at the edge of my perception I heard the sound of high heels clicking murderously along the concrete floor, and my brain was screaming at me to get up and do something, that trouble was afoot, but it was as if I was lashed to my chair, forced to bear the burden of answering those phones like Atlas holding up the earth. It was too late. My boss appeared like a flash of malevolent rebuking fire, and I was chastised for just “sitting around”. But the phones! Could she not see the weight of their importance?

At any rate, from this I learned the easy maxim: make sure you just look busy at all times. Do a lap around your office. Pick up a pile of paper from one side of your desk, move it to the other, then move it back. Have a clearly discernible window with your work email client open and just type gibberish. It seems that the only thing worse than bad work is no work at all, so make sure you’re on the right side of that line.

      5. Take Rejection Easy - Blame It on Others
    Ah, rejection. Nothing twangs the heartstrings quite like it. I received an early primer in this most devastating emotion from the scores of girls I had crushes on in elementary and middle school...and high school...(okay fine!) and on into college. And it will happen as you search for an initial position and later as you try to advance your career. Many times, you just aren’t good enough or qualified enough for a position, and you must learn to take this in stride. But remember, it’s not you they’re rejecting, it’s just everything about you.

So how do you cope with such a soul-rattling blow? One great strategy is to blame it on others. God is a popular candidate, but I would avoid such a move, personally. It might come back to bite you (eternally). Instead there are plenty of viable options: Prospective employers who “didn’t even give you a chance to interview” are most definitely missing out on some amazing talent and therefore should definitely be ashamed of their actions. “The Economy” (whatever that is/means) is a super-popular thing to place blame on these days, and will usually bring you the most sympathy from family and friends, who are also getting screwed by “The Economy”. But lastly, never blame yourself. You are awesome, and you didn’t need that stupid job anyways. Keep repeating that until it sounds kinda true.

   6. “Live Like You Were Dying” - Tim McGraw
     This isn’t just great career advice, this is great life advice. If you were dying, would you spend every day at an unfulfilling dead-end job? Hell no, you’d go skydiving and take other needless risks. And as a side benefit you’d become a better person in the process. Note that this only applies to people who aren’t actually dying.


That’s all for now, but hopefully this entirely useful series will continue.

Career Advice from the Unemployed - Part 1

What’s that, you might be thinking? Take career advice from someone who’s unemployed? Who do you think you are, Charlie Sheen? Look, it sounds crazy but I wanted to lay out what I’ve learned from my failed job searching of the past year. Learn from my wisdom. But mostly, just hire me, please?

1. “No One Cares About Your Career But Your Mom...and You” - Carol Bartz (http://academicearth.org/courses/tailoring-products-to-customer-needs-at-autodesk-growing-your-career)

I just recently picked up this little tidbit that helpfully summarized the truth it took me a while to learn. A few months ago I was reading a career book that suggested you should set up networking lunch meetings with people working in the field you’re interested in. What kind of blithely overly optimistic wacky tobacco was that person smoking when they wrote that? Here’s the truth. People are busy. And most people are selfish. Some are openly so, but others are in denial about this. In this economy (ha right it’s getting better?) the people who are established in their field don’t really care about helping others, and those who are becoming established and might want to help don’t because they’re worried about their own jobs and don’t want the competition. So, that pretty much leaves you. And your Mom. I guess the basic lesson I drew from this is: unless a relative’s name appears somewhere in the title of the business/firm/etc. you alone have to make everything happen. Or not. You could play on the internet all day.


    2. “Just Get Your Foot In the Door!” What door?
I’ve heard this one at least 1,196,493 times (the number of Twitter followers @charliesheen has at the time of writing). It’s like everyone is running around with an undiagnosed disease that makes them see doors everywhere. And they all happen to be open just wide enough for a foot to fit in. Here’s the reality: entry level jobs either don’t exist or exist purely to suck you dry and kill your soul. And I’m not talking about this in a pseudo-Jeff Bridges hippie hipster anti-consumerism way, like “yeah man, corporations rule the world, man, man”. I mean it in all seriousness. Starting out, you are totally expendable. You have no training or experience. In short, they don’t need you. By that I mean, they need someone to do whatever menial task is out there, but they don’t need YOU to do it. And being valuable is all about being needed. Without a specialization, without having a niche in such a way that NO ONE ELSE can do something exactly as well as you can, you don’t matter. Your name will fade from water cooler gossip faster than Charlie Sheen wins (sorry can’t help myself!).


    3. “It’s Not What You Know, It’s Who You Know.” Absolutely True.
Saying this as humbly as I can, because I’m just a schmuck like everybody else,  I would say I’m on the more educated side of the spectrum. I’ve had some amazing opportunities to attend some great schools, for which I’m truly grateful. I’m an avid reader of “The New York Times” (a major news publication you might have heard of...sorry of which you might have heard). I would probably do pretty well on Jeopardy and Cash Cab, based on my track record playing from home. But you know what? Nobody cares. Seriously, no one cares about any of the general stuff you know, your familiarity with current events, or your critical thinking skills developed by a liberal arts education. Why doesn’t anyone care? Because knowing the thesis of Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism doesn’t help make anyone money. It might help make me money if I was worried about my salvation, but by itself knowing that fact doesn’t put a dime in anyone’s coffers. Employers don’t really value critical thinking skills because the more people think, as independent thinkers, the more threat there is to the corporate ethos and to management, which is bad for you. In addition, knowing stuff generally doesn’t help when it comes to knowing how to do specific things, which I guess is what a job is. The main point here is, lots of people are smart and work hard, but not a lot of people have the connections necessary to get in on the superb cronyism and nepotism running rampant in corporate America and the government. So get out there and start ingratiating yourself to powerful, important people. If you see a Mercedes in a parking lot, just start washing and waxing it. Whoever owns it will thank you profusely, albeit nervously, right before they call the cops.

Well, that’s all for now, but check back for more posts in this series! Also, get to work you lazy bums! No more government handouts!

Malcolm Gladwell and Being Unemployed

I've been reading a ton of Malcolm Gladwell lately, and although a lot of people already know his work I thought I'd just throw in my two cents. I started with Blink, which I thought was really interesting. My main question is how does one develop the sort of expertise he's talking about so that one's snap decisions are accurate? I guess that's where he goes in Outliers but I haven't got to that one yet. I then read Tipping Point, and I think that when you combine the sorts of insights from that and Blink together, you have a really complex and perceptive way of viewing the world and your place in it. I think they both help develop a sense of awareness and cognizance about the world that is extremely useful in understanding everything from basic social interactions to larger world phenomena. Thinking through what those books suggest, I've been hyper-aware of the littlest things during interacting with other people. Noticing whether people look me in the eye or not when talking. Being aware of when I move my hand or arm in response to the person sitting across the table from me. It's all very interesting.
Next, on being unemployed. It's a very interesting sort of state, of suspended animation. I'm not totally unemployed; I'm substitute teaching every now and then, but not nearly often enough to live on. I understand that this is a great time for reflection, to analyze what is important to me, what kind of job I would love to do, etc. It's just a lot of pressure, feeling like it's make or break, that I need to find something soon or else. I'm not really sure what that "else" is, but it isn't good. I'm just perpetually surprised that I can't find good work, and that is interesting in and of itself. There's no reason why I should. The universe made no pact with me. I think I can be successful, that I have gifts and abilities and a desire to contribute to the world and make it better. I just don't know what it will take. We'll see.