Look Like a Witch?

If you are receiving unemployment benefits, you know that when something comes in the mail from NYSDOL you had best open it right away to see what they want.

So imagine my pleasant surprise when what came in today's mail contained zero threat of loss or reduction of benefits even in the fine print.

Instead, it was the delightful October 2009 issue of Oswego County Workforce New York's "Connect for Success" newsletter featuring a fantastically hilarious Halloween-themed take on job-searching!

Here's the header & lede:

"Spooked By the Thought of Job Searching?

Fall is here and Halloween is fast
approaching. Do you enjoy trick or treating
but the thought of job searching scares you
to death? The “treat” part of job searching
is when you get the job! However, there
are some “tricks” to job searching so let’s
review those."

And here's my favorite ""treat"" bullet from their ""trick"" list:

"Look Like a Witch? Before you
frighten potential employers away,
check your appearance. The trick to an
appropriate job search look is not to
overdress or underdress. Neat and
clean will never be out of style. Jeans
with holes in them, t-shirts and
sneakers may be appropriate for trick
or treating but not for job searching.
Neatly styled hair and no perfumes or
after shaves will be the trick to getting
the employer to ask you to join their
team."

HA HA HA HA HA! I love it when my tax dollars are not only workin for me but doing so charmingly and entertainingly!

Here's the link again to download the pdf. Don't miss this Halloween """treat!"""

Email Angst

Besides stressing the finances, feeling like a shiftless loser and wishing I had chosen a different profession, the worst thing for me about being unemployed is not knowing what to do every day.

When I was working I knew exactly what I needed to do each day, and the first thing I would do is check email. There would be lots of them, most emails I had sent yesterday would have replies by this morning, and one might even contain some really big news for me to jump on immediately. Before my first cup of coffee was finished I would be totally involved in my productive, salary-earning day, and if I was on deadline as usual, your email to me that was unsolicited or not urgent might need to wait until later for a reply.

I still check email first thing but doing so is now fraught with angstful issues. Today I happen to be hoping for a reply to an email I sent yesterday following up on a job I applied for last week, so just watching my mail load is pretty trepidatious because what if there's no reply, or worse, what if there is a reply but it's rejection? Or possibly worse, a good-news/bad-news reply, like an offer of less than half your former salary?

There's no reply.

But as I write this, new emails do trickle in every few minutes to top off the angst tank.

I have some friends, some of whom still have jobs, who are keeping an eye out for work leads they might forward to me, and I also belong to several professional associations (a couple of which have dues coming due that I need to worry about paying) that have email job postings.

So if a job posting actually arrives that looks potentially appropriate for me, I can swiftly switch gears to angsting over how I can compete for the position with my simultaneously-terminated colleagues who are better geographically situated, who I need to know at the employer to get my resume noticed, and what the odds are that it even likely pays a fair salary. Then it's on to fretfully composing a cover letter about my least favorite topic-- myself-- knowing full well that there is no chance in hell that my writing on that topic could possibly reflect my science news writing and producing abilities. That best-case scenario is extremely rare these days-- it's happened exactly once since I lost my job.

More frequent but still rare, a posting or lead comes in for which I am apparently over-qualified. In that case I first spend a while and some excess energy deliberating my desperation level before proceeding to the above procedure. That has happened a couple of times in the 3 months I've been unemployed.

More frequent than that is more evidence that it's not just my job and not just my career but my entire profession that's vanishing, like this in my inbox yesterday:
"Research Penn State's Web magazine, www.rps.psu.edu, is looking for a
freelancer to write an article for its column Probing Question.
http://www.rps.psu.edu/probing/more.html Approx. 500 words on a timely
question with mainstream appeal, quoting a relevant Penn State expert.
We pay $200 per article. Please send a couple writing samples or links
to..."

$200 for 500 words. The "going rate" for freelance reporters paid by actual journalism outlets used to be $1 a word, and you would be able to charge more than that for "PR" work, not way less.

The idea of voluntarily contributing to that devaluation along with the prospect of having to wonder when and if you will actually be paid anything at all makes the thought of becoming desperate enough to even consider freelancing enough to trigger some serious nicotine craving.

And by far most common lately is this moment's situation, that being no new leads at all.

That task completed, I can get back to stressing the finances, feeling like a shiftless loser, wishing I had chosen a different profession, and praying that God will let me know load & clear when he opens that window.

Ready, Set... Ready?

I am starting this blog hoping not to continue it for very long. In fact, the reason I didn't start it in the first place was that I didn't plan to be unemployed for any sort of duration, so of course I wouldn't have the time to commit to it.

I also figured if I were to blog I would end up publicly revealing that I have opinions which I am not supposed to have being a journalist looking for work. As well as publicly revealing other weaknesses or un-self-confident-appearing things that don't help one find a job, like that being unemployed is stressful, depressing and hurts one's self-confidence.

But a writer is what I am, my sister thinks it might help other members of the swollen ranks of America's jobless if I share my experiences, and I have now been on the unemployment roll for 13 weeks with no end in sight.

That's long enough for the NYSDOL to send me a letter scheduling me for the mandatory "Ready Set Go" Re-employment Services Workshop, which I attended yesterday afternoon along with 20-some other Oswego County job seekers.

The instructor (not sure what to call him, but picture a classroom) said that when the workshop was begun several years ago, he named it "Ready Set Go" because it was an efficient summary of local employers and professions that were hiring that could turn folks loose on appropriate openings in a hurry. But at the moment, he admitted, nobody is hiring.

Still, he went through his Smartboard slides, pointing out here and there when something was out of date-- an expected plant expansion that didn't, a newly-opened business that's no longer, and actually several restaurants recently closed for nonpayment of taxes.

At the end we all had to sign a form showing we had attended and choosing 3 other workshops we would like to be mandated to attend in order of preference by writing 1, 2 or 3 in the boxes next to the titles-- even though I had to do this when I first registered for unemployment and I know for sure I didn't select anything with as basic-sounding a name as Ready Set Go as any of my choices 12 weeks ago. Generating the depressing vision of being scheduled for a resume writing workshop in another 8 weeks or so.

Coincidentally, in the meantime I had already signed up for an overview of funding opportunities for re-training, tuition, etc. That session was yesterday morning, and it was interesting that they emphasized that their funding comes from DSS not DOL. After it we got to meet individually with a counselor, who told me that it was very unlikely with my college degrees and transferable skills that they would pay to help send me to tractor-trailer school even though that has traditionally been a dependable occupation in our county. I told her I expected as much since I had recently gotten a new puppy who turns out to get car-sick on any ride longer than 10 minutes so I figured God was trying to tell me something.

She offered me a password for a free skills-proving and -upgrading website called Metrix Learning and I'm going to give that a tryout. Will let you know how it goes.

PS, my other "trying-to-guess-what-God's-trying-to-tell-me" message I have taken so far from this experience is that it's really, really, really time to quit smoking because no matter how addicted I am, I can't justify spending any money on smokes while worrying about paying the mortgage. I am now on day 24 of no smoking.