Hunting for the rare and elusive Job
Carrie posted in Rants on October 21st, 2008
Job hunting has become annoying at best. Frustrating and annoying. Frustration because of complicating systems that are incredibly difficult to break into, and annoying because of the number of people who say to me “How can you be unemployed in this city?” To the latter comment I reply, “Because I don’t want to be a check-out girl, a coffee barista, or sales person at Shopper’s Drugmart.” As Ryan put it, there’s lots of work just not a lot of jobs.
The other problem is that many of the job postings right now are for senior level positions. Managers, supervisors, directors etc, all of whom want applicants to have at least X number of years of experience in that field. Without many junior level positions, internships, assistant-whatever position it’s hard to break into a field with just an education and no field experience. And so I’ve resorted to applying for administrative assistant positions and student works possibilities just to get a foot in the door. Then I’m faced with a similar problem as the managerial positions, “You have a Master’s degree and you’re applying to be a secretary?”
It’s like I’m stuck in the no man’s land of eligibility. Over-qualified for helper positions and yet with inadequate experience to step into management jobs. They sure don’t cover this stage in those stupid high school “Careers” courses.
The final and most unpenetrable blockage on my road to successful career building is the bizarre systems set up by the governments to provide equitable employment opportunities yet still be able to narrow down the field. For example, I had an interview with YTG last week in which I had one hour to prepare a written response on the computer to an essay questions regarding “What I would do if…” then 15 minutes to read over 7 standard questions that they ask all candidates. I figured they would use the questions as a base and then spread out from there asking me a bit more about my experience and qualifications etc. Nope. Two women came in and read the questions word-for-word then put their heads down and copied out everything I said. They could have saved a lot of time if I had just continued to answer these questions when I was at the computer writing my essay. They didn’t look at me, ask further questions, or even nod disagreement or encouragement. It was like an oral exam!
The federal government is not much better though I haven’t even gotten as far as an interview. You have to fill out all these online forms regarding your background, education, transcripts, etc and then click match and the system tries to line you up with different available positions. I could tell that this worked really well when nursing jobs continued to come up as matching my qualifications. That was sarcasm in case you couldn’t pick it out against the whining tone of this entry. If and when you are matched to a job that is remotely related to your interests/qualifications then you still have to go through these online forms “Do you have experience working with data processing systems? If yes, describe using concrete examples.” Followed by the next question “Do you have experience working systems such as Excel? If yes, describe using concrete examples.” And there are half a dozen more questions just like that nearly asking the same thing, only not. If you have the patience and resolution to actually fill out these questions and make it to the next stage you have to register for these random intelligence tests at the nearest major city centre. I don’t know what’s after that because I’m so annoyed and tired of the whole process I’ve given up. To effort required to break into the government jobs is just one more reason that you don’t want to work for the government.
My job hunt has turned from a carefree wander, casually looking here and there for different possibilities and turning my nose up at retail and waitressing jobs, to a silent resolution and defeatist approach to whatever possibilities are remotely close to my interests.
I’m not saying I’m prepared to do anything at this point but this housewife thing is getting old. The question is, how desperate am I? Is it time to put my 3 university degrees to good use in a seriously awesome moccachino? Or do I exercise some more patience and wait for something golden. The only question then is, how long?
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