Surfing (F)un-employment

You can lose yourself in the job search. After the umpteeth delicately-tweaked cover letter, painstakingly curated resume and well-written introductory email, you begin to feel like you're faking it. So I created the resume for who I actually am. Here we go: SELECTED EXPERIENCE MahEars, Philadelphia, PA Music Curator and Sonic Aesthetician 1989 - Present Develop classic rock, sixties girl groups and sundry genres into bizarre yet pleasing playlists Retain a disturbing amount of recording trivia and factoids gained from late-night Wikipedia rabbit trails Alienate coworkers and friends with anachronistic song lyric quotes Disturb fellow commuters on the Schuylkill Expressway with morning drive-dancing MahBrain, Philadelphia, PA Smartass in Residence 1986 -  Present Create charmingly/alarmingly specific to-do lists and goals Actively collect strange facts to develop obscure jokes and stories Despises the patriar...

Myriad keystrokes have been devoted to email etiquette, but in last few weeks I've found annoying emails reaching a critical mass in my inbox. If you're job-searching and are guilty of these grievances, you might want to rethink your employment strategy. Infractions that make me want to chew glass: Reconfirming appointments multiple times even though you use Gmail and can see the entire conversation. Google calendar. Use it. Extremely long signature lines with favorite quotes, apologies for clumsy iPhone usage, or "funny" job titles. Color fonts , weird fonts , overused bold , italic or the cardinal sin, ALL CAPS THAT SCREAM I WANT MY PRUNE JUICE NOW, WHIPPERSNAPPER. I usually just hit delete rather than read. Smoke signals would be more effective communication. Forwards of any sort. If you sent me an email about our meeting, don't send me a follow up on how Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton use the blood of unicorns to condition their hair. Waxing philo...

One of my favorite parts about working for the county newspaper in college was getting to interview many different kinds of people. Whether it was making a rural borough council member sweat with rapid-fire questions about millage rates, or profiling an Iraq War vet documenting his experiences, each interview spawned more stories than from the interviewee alone. So it is with job interviews: I've come to value interviewers who step out of the "where do you see yourself in five years" line of questioning. The better candidate also needs to offer more than just generic questions. For me, it helps to think like a journalist. What questions would help draw out a good story? Of course, we can't have all good interviewers and interviewees, but that's why these comics from The Oatmeal exist. They're old posts, but classic. My favorite bad interviewee is the mute, only because I like nachos. What's the best question you've asked/have been asked in an i...

I graduated college with 20K in student loans and not a whole lot of comprehension about education. In contrast, some of the smartest people I know didn't even graduate high school. One colleague - I call him Programmer 1 - dropped out of school after seventh grade. Yet he can worm his way around higher mathematic concepts, program in at least eight languages, and is at least bilingual (he gleefully refuses to speak anything other than English around me, so I can't confirm the third language). How did he manage this? The other classroom. You know, where folks go after they leave work for the evening. They go home, pull up the laptop or book and start learning for their own benefit. One of my bosses told me about this classroom, and I initially dismissed it. Whatever happened to work/life balance? But it's not education solely for work -- it may be learning for the rest of your life. A few years ago I had the opportunity to delve into information assurance. I didn't ...

I have a confession to make. Although I identify myself as a writer, I HATE cover letters. Reading them, writing them -- doesn't matter. There's too much of a tightrope walk between bragging about your accomplishments (eloquently!) and trying not to seem too desperate as you plead your case for job competency. Some people agree with me. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem as if the cover letter plus resume culture will completely fade. Unfortunately, I don't have a surefire way to construct a cover letter to guarantee it'll get read by recruiters. Some like a story. Some prefer a terse, businesslike recounting of your most interesting accomplishments. Others - who knows. I haven't cracked it yet. I recently thumbed through Knock 'em Dead Cover Letters for the umpteenth time. I'll be honest. The book itself is boring, the examples providing inspiration on the level of an eighth grade remedial English class. If you're not a writer, it could provide some...

In the late summer of 2008, I returned to the United States from Spain (at least we Americans don't have a 25 percent unemployment rate, eh?) and found the job market a vast wasteland. Like so many of my journalism brethren before me, I turned to retail. I worked at an independent pharmacy and gift shop until October 2009, when I was laid off. So I have little sympathy for Caitlin Kelly, author of Malled: My Unintentional Career in Retail . She takes a stab at exposing the plight of the proletariat, but Upton Sinclair she is not. For starters, her "career" in retail was two, then reduced to one day a week stints at The North Face in a New York suburb. When I read career, I think 40 hours a week. She complains about climbing like a monkey in the dark, dirty stock room, I raise her a stock room that occasionally flooded with raw sewage. It brought another perspective to the phrase "crappy job." I can, however, commiserate with her chapter on customers from hell,...

I know, I know, I promised to have the second part of Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0 reviewed by now. But I have a really fantastic excuse. I've been representing these people and these guys , and I've been swamped. I've found that crafting material to pitch to a reporter is much different than being a reporter. I even brought my AP Stylebook to work one day because I thought it'd make my desk more homey. I tried to get my boss to invest in a crackly, ancient police scanner to complete the ambiance, but no dice. Don't fret: the next part of the Guerrilla Marketing review shall be completed soon. Another teaser: I'm also working on the first draft for my SEPTA narrative. Just in time for all the fare changes ! But unlike SEPTA, I'll actually deliver on my promises before the decade is out.