So I detailed in the first installment of how to naively job hunt what I learned applying to retail jobs and on job boards online. 1) Career Assessments suck and are, in the end, mostly time you’re required to waste. I suggest you listen to your favorite music while you do it, so that you can say, “At least I spent time listening to my favorite music”—much like time required commuting. 2) Resumes are like your breath: they must be clear and musn’t stink; they must be warm but not creepy; and they must somehow inoffensively state your presence. And 3) Leaving empty the box for your cover letter speaks volumes about what a lazy ignoramus you must be. Clearly you don’t value the job. Oh, you’re just not good at writing? Learn, because the word “optional” is a trap. 

It took me two months to learn all this. The first month, my resume was pitifully simple. The first six weeks, I didn’t write a single cover letter (seriously, how did I mentally skim over the call for a cover letter all those times, except that my ignorance makes me blind?). Those last two weeks, there weren’t many jobs to apply to. I’d already applied to what was available, and High Point is not exactly a job-infested place. And not having a car limited my range. So I sat and twiddled my thumbs and blinked like a baby while my husband cracked under a mountain of financial pressure. 

“You really need to get another job,” he said. 

“I’m trying my best,” I whined. “I can’t help it if no one is calling me back.”

“It’s not your best,” he shot back. “Have you looked on craigslist? Have you gone to Home Depot and Lowes and CVS and introduced yourself to the manager, just to make an impression? Have you looked for writing jobs? Have you taken the time to learn something that would make you more valuable, like accounts payable/receivable? There’s a lot more you can do. You’re gonna have to get creative if you’re gonna get something. You may have to swallow your pride and humble yourself to get something. And we NEED you to get something.” 

And I stood there, blinking some more. I did a lot of blinking. How am I so naïve that none of those things even occurred to me? Why had I *never* thought of craigslist, or writing? Introducing myself felt like a stroke of genius, because it put me in the mind of the person ultimately looking at the applications, even if I couldn’t actually ask about my application. And so there I was at Home Depot, awkwardly shaking the hand of the manager. It was definitely a swallow of my pride but if it would put me in an orange vest, it was worth it (guess who called a week ago?). 

And through Steve’s suggestion, I began delving into the world of freelance writing. It is yet again a fantastic example of how inexperienced and naïve I am, but it’s nothing a little time can’t fix. What can I write about? The two most popular areas in need of good writing: law and business? Nope. Health and beauty? I’m thirty and I’ve only just found the joys of zit cream and cuticle softener. But GUESS WHAT? It’s not stuff I can’t learn. Yes, it will take me four hours to write my first article, because I’m determined to find an area I’m interested in and read everything I can about it. But enough time and I’ll know what I need to know to write for $8 an hour, $10, $15—because my writing sample already yielded 4 stars. I can write, even if I have nothing relevant to say!

*So where did I end up? Stay tuned; I will share the Happily Ever After of this sad tale.

In February, it was decided that it would be best if I looked for another job. I love my job at the crepe café, but the place is so small and only fills up for a few hours at lunch. My previous job had ended in November, and the hours at the café weren’t enough to justify my continuing to work there without looking for something else. And so the job hunt began. 

The last time I actively looked for a job was almost eight years ago. Steve and I had just gotten married and moved to Winston-Salem. There was no Waldenbooks there to transfer into and so the hunt for a new job began. There were online job boards then, certainly. Monster was as prevalent then as it was now. And so I used them, along with my experience purging medical records, to try to land an entry-level office job of some kind. I wanted to try something that wasn’t retail.

After posting what I now know was a laughingly amateurish resume, I got in with a staffing agency that placed me in the office of a commercial dishwasher company. And so transpired my glorious four-month career working for Champion Industries. The job was a temp job that I’d taken because it was the first thing made available. After it was over, we were troubled to find that none of the jobs the staffing agency offered were jobs I wanted to take or companies I wanted to work for. And so back to retail I went. 

Eight years ago, many retail places still used paper applications. Not once did I have to spend time with a required Career Assessment questionnaire. Within a week, I’d landed a job at Lifeway Christian Store, a job I held for over a year and only quit doing because Steve was starting his own business and it made sense for me to make myself available for all the help he would need. (By “made sense,” I mean to my twenty-four-year-old self. I would never now advise a family to give up a steady income stream when starting a business.) 

It was shortly after I quit Lifeway that my under-the-table, couple-times-a-month job I’d gotten through Steve turned serious. I was officially hired and given more and more responsibility over the next three years. Last fall, a conversation with Steve resulted in my being hired at the crepe café. And so maybe now you can see how in thirty years, I have never in my life really struggled to find a job.

Enter in the Great Job Hunt of Early 2014. I started with retail. There was a summer job working on an organic farm that was promising, but we really needed something to bridge the gap until May. I felt bad turning to retail for a throwaway job, but the turnover in retail is high and at least it’s expected. I stopped inquiring in person because all the places I was interested in asked me to fill in an application online. And guess what? Each application came with a 30-90 minute required Career Assessment. “Is retail right for you??” After work at the crepe café, I would spend my entire evening filling out between one and three applications, start to finish, including every required assessment. Applying to retail became a second job! Home Depot required restarting four times because their assessment kept timing out on me. CVS was by far the longest and most horrible. Two hours, total, applying to a company that may or may not call you back (they never did). Application follow-ups were discouraged or just not possible. 

Nobody called me. Nobody. Almost five years’ retail experience and all I got was crickets. My phone rang but all the strange numbers were still the legal companies trying to track down not one, but two women who previously had my number and are now being sued. And so I went back to the online job boards to try my hand with my three years’ experience working in an office. And this is what I learned about the current, 2014 job board world:

Resumes are everything. There is no more personal presentation, no more human interaction that gives an initial impression as you ask for a job. Your resume must be concise, yet possess the ability to effectively communicate not only what your previous work entailed but what you brought to the table while you were there. It must be creative but professional, clear but compact, and with some final, elusive “edge” that will set it apart from the hundreds of other resumes trying to stand out. I somehow managed not to know any of this for the first month I applied on job boards. My resume was pitifully simple—much like the woman it was written about.

Cover letters are not optional. The word “optional” is used concurrently with the words “cover letter,” but if you don’t bother to write one to each company you’re applying to, you are seen as lazy and as someone who wants the job less than the person who writes one, and therefore, someone who values the job less. I’m not sure how you effectively write a cover letter to a company whose entire job description from start to finish is only three sentences and very vague, but let me tell you, I sure tried it those last two weeks I applied online. 

Yes, I said two weeks. Because guess who didn’t know that cover letters really weren’t optional? After all the research I did on resumes, probabilities converged so that it was never explicitly stated in any of the information I read that cover letters should be written even if they were optional. Googling “how to write a resume” or “the best resumes” circumvents the sister concept of the cover letter. And so I only wrote cover letters for the last two weeks before Phase Two of Naïve Job Hunting began, to be detailed in “Job Hunting Kirstenite-style, Chapter Two”! Seriously, stay tuned. It's much funnier, and comes with an awesome picture. 

AAAAAAaaaaaaah!! I think I'm finally ready! The blog elements are rudimentary, but that only means there is room to develop it. Like watching a child, I will see this thing grow. . . .

Yeah, that wasn't creepy at all.

There is so much to come! For me, 2014 has so far been a year of discovery--not so much the good kind, like finding powdered peanut butter:

I bought this today

or the local musician that is so enjoyable to watch:

Shane Key, one-man-band extraordinaire

--no, the discoveries have been of the icky kind, like a swift kick to the family jewels of my self-esteem. I have come to realize that for a thirty-year-old, I am startlingly naive and ignorant about many of the things many people already know just by being out in the world. 

This discovery is not altogether a bad thing. I am made with a positive outlook and a stubborn streak of hope. I've learned so much the last few months--about myself, about the world, about people--and while not all of it is savory, I absolutely love learning and the learning has felt nice. I feel more complete as an adult and a human being. It's important to me that I'm now capable of more relevant conversation with people, not only because the perception of a connection is achieved by the perception of relevance, but because a smooth conversation is less stressful than an awkward one.

And so I will continue to learn in 2014. I will write and I will submit. I will open this bike shop with my husband. I will take each day as it comes, and look forward while doing it because there is so much to come! 

I realize that this post is horrifically vague. All I can tell you is to come again, because I have every intention of articulating in more detail the discoveries, the changes, and all the good things to come. And now I will leave you with an illustrative example of my naivete.

After hearing an awesome cover of a familiar song:

Steve: That's an album I need to get for the shop.
Me: You can if you want, but I don't like him.
Steve: What? He's amazing!
Me: *surprised shrug* I stand by what I said.
Steve: I can't believe you don't like David Bowie. 

Me: David Bowie?! I thought that was Vanilla Ice! 

And also, here's a picture of my dog: