More Fun With Craigslist

Oh goodness me, gentle readers. Obviously they need a smart office manager!

*sigh*

Smart Office Manager (Midtown)
Date: 2009-11-10, 3:56PM EST
Reply to: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX@craigslist.org [Errors when replying to ads?]

we are in business since last 20 years .we are looking for long lorm placement ,

professionals to manage office
who will
deals with interior designers, Retail stores, and manage sales reps nation wide , communication is key of sucess in business .
,please email with expected salary and a picture .

this is not a place for temping

Anniversary Party

Unemployed Brooklyn 1 Year Anniversary!
Thursday, November 12th @ 4PM
t.b.d. bar, 224 Franklin Street, Greenpoint, Brooklyn

Thursday, November 12th is the one year anniversary of my lay off and I invite you, my gentle readers, to join me for Happy Hour at t.b.d Bar in Greenpoint at 4PM. They have a full bar, a ping pong table, loads of room for unemployeds to lounge about and happy hour specials. Meet your fellow unemployed Brooklynites (those who dwell in other boroughs are entirely welcome), share your lay-off stories, get some advice from a few former unemployeds who are now gainfully employed and see if you can put a fresh spin on your search for employment in these dire times.

The more, the merrier, so please come and bring your un(der)employed friends! I look forward to seeing several of you again and meeting many of you for the first time!

If you will be attending, or for further details, please R.S.V.P. to unemployedbrooklyn (at) gmail.com

Milestones

Ah, gentle readers, this time of year makes your MatchGirl quite pensive. This time of year is one of milestones for me - every year because of my birthday and this year specifically because Thursday, November 12th is the one year anniversary of my lay off.

Every year, when my birthday rolls around, I take a long, hard look at my life. I think about where I want to be. I think about things that I have done in the previous year. I re-evaluate relationships. I feel thankful for my closest friends and lucky to have met new ones. I think about where I am going and where I have been.

This year it is doubly true, as I also contemplate all that has occurred in this year of unemployment. All the amazing people I have met (in real life and simply via e-mail), the connections I have made, the great press I have gotten (and so much of it, amazing!) and all of the things I would not have done and people I would not have met had it not been for my current unemployed situation and writing about it on this blog.

Where am I going? I'm not sure. I feel that I could have answered that question more fully six months ago, dear ones. Your MatchGirl is at a crossroads right now, where she needs to make some hard decisions about where her life is going and what her next steps ought to be. I feel that many of you are in a similar space, and I wish I had advice or helpful or soothing words for you. I wish I had them for me.

As I contemplate this past year of unemployment, however, I do not feel sad. Am I disheartened about my job search? Of course. How could I not be. But this year of unemployment has afforded me many opportunities that I would not have been able to take full advantage of were I employed and working 40 to 60 (to more) hours a week. And, most importantly, this year of unemployment has introduced me to all of you. For that, gentle ones, I am very grateful.

Minding One's Ps & Qs

Ah, gentle readers, you may have guessed that your MatchGirl is a fan of Miss Manners. I believe that it's important to be polite in this digital age - please and thank you and have a good day and giving up your seat on the subway for the elderly or pregnant or injured. There is certainly, especially in Gotham, a decline in - dare I say complete lack of - good manners. People live solely in their own heads and own worlds and pay little or no attention to those around them.

I've written a bit about manners in the job search previously, but it's time to discuss it once again.

It seems to me that the onus is only on the applicant in these rough times. When you apply for a job, it is up to you to make the appropriate phone calls. It is up to you to send the "thank you" card/note/e-mail. It is up to you to do all the follow through. The employer, on the other hand, the one doing the hiring, holds all the cards and, it's seems, is not currently held to any standards of etiquette - from keeping you waiting up to 20 minutes for your scheduled interview to never letting you know whether you've gotten the job or not afterward. Honestly, how hard is it to send out an e-mail?

About a month ago your MatchGirl went for an interview with a luxe fashion company. Though I left the interview feeling very unsure of how it went (I was very nervous going in, as it had been a while since I had gone to an interview). The next day I sent a handwritten "thank you" on beautiful stationary. And I got an e-mail a couple of days later asking to be supplied with references. Oh! Good news! It's always a good sign when one is asked for one's references. So I sent them references from my two NYC jobs. And they phoned them. And they kept them on the phone for 45 minutes. Oh! That's a good sign! I was called in for a second interview - an interview which lasted well over an hour - where we talked about specifics of my previous jobs and duties, about my skill set and my quickness of learning. We spoke of the references my previous employers and co-workers had given (good, all of them). We spoke about money. We shook hands and I left feeling pretty good - still a bit unsure, and definitely not wanting to get ahead of myself, but good. They were off to Paris the next day for fashion week and I didn't expect to hear from them until a couple of days after they returned. I sent them a follow up e-mail while they were in Paris, thanking them again for meeting with me and wishing them a successful trip.

And I never heard from them again.

A few days after they returned from Paris, I was doing my usual morning troll of Craigslist and shock! there was the job I had applied for re-listed! But without a word from the company to me. I sent another e-mail, saying I was looking forward to speaking with them further. Nada. Nothing. I was reticent to write about it here earlier in the month, dear ones, as one of the bosses and I had discussed this little site and I wanted to be quite careful about what I was putting out there. But, enough time has passed that, even if they were being exceedingly careful in vetting the appropriate person, it is quite clear that I did not get the job. I can't say why. I know I wanted the high end of their pay scale. I know that my Illustrator skills are a bit less than they wanted. And that's all well and good. If I wasn't the person for the job, I wasn't the person for the job - it's a small company and fit most certainly matters. But how hard is it to send an e-mail and tell me that you have gone with someone else?

I most certainly don't understand.

In a recent conversation with a fellow unemployed gal, we were drawing parallels between being on the hunt for a job and the dating life of a single girl in NYC. She said that when she didn't get a call back after an interview, it was just like dating. I totally agree. You go on that first date with that cute guy. You have dinner or a couple of drinks. You're wearing a great outfit. The conversation sparkles. he walks you to the subway or your door or opens the car door for you. You have a chaste good night kiss (or maybe one that's a little hotter) and you go home and to bed with a smile on your face, thinking how wonderful the night was and how you can't wait to hear from him again. And the night was wonderful. And you never hear from him again. And you have absolutely no idea why.

Right now, job hunting is exactly the same. You don't know what happened. You thought you connected. You thought it was all good. You thought, at the very least that they had enough respect for you to reply to an e-mail or tell you that they didn't think it was going to work out.

The decline of manners has long been on my mind, dear readers. It's so very sad how little we respect one another in this city (and probably in the rest of the country, as well). But, honestly, in the business world? Please. Even though we're unemployed, we're still people deserving of respect.

How hard is it to be a little polite?

Retail Therapy - Clothing and Accessories Edition

Ah, gentle readers, your MatchGirl has been giving a lot of thought these days to all the fabulous things she would buy if she had a job. Though I am a frugal girl, and I get along OK, this is my absolute favorite time of year - the leaves are changing colors and there's cashmere in the stores. The Fall wardrobe is the absolute best of the wardrobes. And walking by the stores, and reading the fashion blogs and magazines is taking its toll on me.

So here are a (very) few things that I would like to buy. And, to be very honest, the list could go on and on. But here the big ones.
Sigh.

new jeans from APC


the perfect black cashmere cardigan


the amazing "Arbus" dress by Hayden Harnett


cognac knee high boots (and some classic pumps, too)

more ink by Myles Karr

Recovery

For the past couple of days, the radio has been telling me that the recession is over.

Gentle readers, this is news to me. A (near) year of unemployment. My savings dwindling down. No real idea as to what will happen in the next few months. The countdown to my unemployment running out is on.

But the recession is over.

The government has launched a website called recovery.gov where you can see where all the stimulus money is going. You can even search the country by zip code - cool for New York, as you can really see how it's affecting your neighborhood - but. But. But.

The radio also keeps telling me that this will be a jobless recovery. How can we be expected to spend money to stimulate the economy if there are no jobs for us?

It's all well and good that they are trying to create jobs. Wonderful. But they are only in a few sectors, and, unfortunately, in New York City they are not necessarily in the sectors that are hurting.

During the Great Depression, FDR created the WPA, which stimulated the economy by creating real jobs. In fact, pretty much everyone who was unemployed was eligible for some kind of job under this bill - they restored old buildings, artists created giant murals, the pool at McCarren park was built during this time and it even eventually offered job training. The thing that the WPA did that our current stimulus program is not really doing was offer relief to white-collar workers. I think it's great to offer training to people who previously didn't have that kind of education and building infrastructure through construction jobs is important, too. I'm not really knocking the current stimulus. But, for an already educated person, living in NYC, it doesn't really do anything to help me in my job hunt.

The fact of the matter is that a lot of jobs lost in NYC were jobs in the fashion industry and the arts and on Wall Street - and not the high paid jobs, but the assistant designers and the secretaries and the office managers and event organizers - and those are the people that are currently being overlooked (those are the people whose jobs are being turned into internships). That's the kind of job I had. That's the kind of job that I know a lot of people who read my blog and follow me on Twitter and are a fan on Facebook were laid off from and are currently looking for. But it's not the kind of job that's being helped by the current stimulus. There is a lot of talk about the rich Wall Street people that lost jobs. And there is a lot of talk about people who were living below the poverty line who lost there jobs. And every now and then you see something about the middle class. But not much. And, in my opinion, those are the people who are going to be out of work the longest, because there is just not that much that is being done to help them.

But, ring the bells and throw a freakin' ticker tape parade, dear ones, cos the recession is over.

Resume Revamp

As my year of unemployment looms (keep your eyes out for an anniversary happy hour to come), gentle readers, your MatchGirl has been wondering what she's doing wrong in her job hunt.

Now, I know the economy is terrible right now. And I know several of you have also been unemployed for close to a year, or more than a year. And I know that several of you who are more recently unemployed are very nervous that you, too, could be facing a near-year of unemployment in a few months. We all know the recession is not ending any time in the near future - no matter how many stimulus programs the government starts.

But, dear ones, that does not mean we stop trying. No. And while, yes, perhaps there is nothing that I am doing "wrong" in my job hunt, there is always something more that can be done.

I have spent the last few days doing a total resume revamp. Out with the old, I tell you. In with the new, the modern resume, the tips that others got from hiring managers. I redid the whole thing - with loads of help from a formerly unemployed Brooklynite. (Thanks, D!!!). I changed the mission statement. I added action words. I pointed to achievements and accomplishments instead of simply a laundry list of daily activities and job descriptions. And today I sent a few out. No responses yet, but we'll see what tomorrow brings.

While I have rewritten several parts of my resume over the past year (and about five dozen cover letters), I hadn't really totally made it over - thrown out the whole thing and started, basically, from scratch. And it was one of the hardest things I have done in a long time. Writing a cover letter is tough, but you practice and you tweak it for every job you send it to, and, depending on your career, you can be a little wordy and a little interesting and definitely descriptive. With a resume, especially the old format, not so much. Wrapping my head around the more "modern" format was definitely tricky, but, thanks to good advice, a lot of time on my hands and a very patient proof-reader, I feel pretty good about what I'm putting out there now.

Now, about those jobs to apply for?



In response to some of the comments I've been getting, here is a link to a professional resume writing service - they have good examples of modern resumes and this site has a page with a list of great action verbs on it. If anyone else has any ideas or good resources, please post them in the comments section. I'm sure your fellow unemployeds would be interested to know!

Good luck to all of us!