Tonight for the first time (in this chapter) I feel like I have my shit in one sock.

I've completed two weeks worth of unemployment claims, though I haven't been paid for any of them, so I feel like I have a little rhythm for that process. And I have seventeen postings to apply for first thing in the morning. I have a cover letter I've been happy with in the past, updated with current dates and details.

And importantly I've successfully bludgeoned my twin demons of perfectionism and completism into submission. I can, I HAVE, submitted applications that were imperfect and incomplete, so fuck you self destructive inner voice!

I will crank out some more in the morning, and improve on the product ON THE WAY, AS I GO..

Yes, I shout at myself sometimes.

Don't forget the winter you danced for Chippendales in your resume, it will make them curious and you seem exotic. :yesnod:

There's a boy! Keep after it.

Oh, and deck building skills. :thumb2:

You're thinking of Chris Farley--he used to be mistaken for me a lot. Love the energy though.

GO TEAM CELLAR GO!


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Tomorrow will be my last day. Ready to move on but ugh

Power to the people!

Stick it to The Man!

Go BigV!

That's what their employers said. :(

sorry

It's never too soon to take a long hard look at the fuckery going on all around us.
And as long as I'm being the heretic, pointing a finger at no one here, there's this.

You could always do a parody of it, like Weird Al Yankovic does with songs, maybe something like Our burps and farts are with you.

At least it wouldn't be threadbare and trite.

I know for a fact that prayer works. When I gave my soul to Jesus I was physically moved the most intense body rush I have ever experienced. And I hadn't smoked or drank anything in a week. I was clean and sober, and everything just opened up I now have peace in my life, and my life is awesome. And I owe it all to regular prayer.

^^^
this was Monday.



:brikwall:
^^^
this was Tuesday.

Today was *one* application submitted. Computer problems, o so many computer problems, just... eliminated my momentum.

But! I have now overcome (this most recent wave of) them, so tomorrow... we'll see. Of the previously noted seventeen, I eliminated three off the top--really not qualified. And in another spasm of seeking found another fourteen, one of which has been:



Good night all.

Good luck all.

It can feel like a roller coaster ride but keep after it. You got dis!

First reply!


Booked!

Remember the plague of computer problems I complained about?

It's shit like this:

Thanks Google. :eyebrow:

Did you do anything unusual? How many places did you send your resume
to in one shot?

Also, please consider consulting the most recent edition of "What color is your parachute". It has changed A LOT in the past few years, and pretty much covers everything my career counselor told me

phone interview in five minutes.

Good Luck Sir.

get it!

they stood me up, no call. phone works, SonofV called at 10:03. disappointing.

Well, shit.

Should you call them?

They don't have their shit together. Or at least the HR department doesn't. Now you know something about them. I know you want a job, but you want to work for a place that keeps promises.

Glassdoor.com now offers reviews of interviews. You could well go in and give them a 1 star. Which is why they should pay attention to details like this.

You can call them to see if they got the date wrong, something came up, they lost your number/resume...etc.; but, call only once to give them a chance to reschedule. If they give you the runaround in any way, shape or form and won't confirm another appointment while you've got them on the line, just move on. A lot of places will see how many hoops they can get you to jump through which tells them how badly you need a job and how little they can get away with offering. Most won't bother calling to let you know if they've already filled the position either.

There's this *one* job I really, really want. I'm laboring over the letter of interest now (compulsory). Ironically, I'm kinda stuck on the bullet point about what a great communicator I am.

#richwithirony

I'm determined to get it completed before dinner... or before bedtime.

sorry I'm probably too late, but...

1) never really, really want a job ;)
2) (convert to industry speak) As a whateveryourjobtitlewas I was responsible for coordinating end-user needs and ground level software creation. I also blog my home improvement projects which have a following of (whatever cellar membership is)

...not necessarily intended to be a verbatim answer, but maybe a writer's block plunger?

Letter complete..

Will submit tomorrow.

Yo Bro, you got a job,
I want that fucker,
lets dance. Capisce?

Exactly.

Good work.

I have submitted my application after a couple minor edits to the required letter of interest and having Twil proofread it again. There were about twenty-five questions in the web-application, all completed. I wasn't able to answer all of them with the best answer--I don't have all the certifications they asked about. This is an area where I can improve, though I am certain I can do the work. Some people find the certification/diploma etc a placeholder for competence. Fair enough, if you're not competent, the work won't get done of course. But being certified isn't a doesn't get the work done either. aaaaanyway, I don't want to whine about the sour grapes.

This particular job is with the state and the application process is ... involved. Fortunately, the state has numerous openings and the bulk of the involved application process is (almost) automatically duplicated for the next job I apply for. Naturally, the job specific details change, and I'm answering *those* questions now.

This effect, the "mass production" of applications can be applied to some extent for all the job posting platforms. And compared to the early years of this decade, there are many more platforms. This has led to an unexpected side effect, a much larger administrative burden of keeping track of all the places I look for and apply for a job.

I have an actual list of internet sites for job leads, each one requires an account and tracking all those sets of credentials is non-trivial (well, it could be made trivial, email address + same password = bad idea). Again, not crying about how sour those grapes probably are... waaaaaahh.... Just noting that there's work to do to keep track of all this work and the pay is... deferred indefinitely.

Speaking of which, still no $$$ from my unemployment insurance claims. Apparently they're still being researched/investigated/lost behind that really heavy filing cabinet. This will transform from weird to inconvenient to hey we got a problem here to brother can you spare a dime. Right now, it's on the border between weird and inconvenient, but that slopes downhill... I don't want to have to recover any more altitude than I have to.

I am relieved to have completed that application. And my efforts and those of my collaborators have produced a cover letter that can be reused--will be reused. Anyhow, victory lap is over, time to submit another application. Thanks everyone.

Does your state have a null period for unemployment compensation? In some, you don't get compensated for the first couple weeks of unemployment. Some also withhold compensation for a period equivalent to the number of days of PTO/vacation pay that you received upon separation.

quick update

I have had my UI claim approved. Been paid. Yes, there's a waiting week at the outset. I .... "did" my waiting week and then did it again when I restarted my claim, what a stupid option on the website. don't care at this point.

I've completed yet another week's worth of applications, it's ... it's tiring. Each posting seems to come with it's own site/login/application/webapp/requirements, not to mention their own questions. Some of which are required, some not. For the record, I have gone to High School. I did graduate. I don't know or care what my GPA was in high school. Thank goodness that particular one was not "required". And references. I had one app be considered incomplete and not submittable until at least two of my references answered the system-generated email to complete the questionnaire about me. That was stressful since I found the posting only five hours before the deadline. Yes, I did wake people up asking for them to RUN TO YOUR COMPUTER AND OPEN YOUR EMAIL AND CLICK ON THE LINK AND COMPLETE THE QUESTIONNAIRE. mighta burned a bridge there.....

And I have an interview scheduled for next week. The person who called me did schedule it and send me an email with the details and also included five more documents for me to complete by Monday and requested three references. I'll deal with that one in the morning.

My list of sites that I have login credentials for is growing, .... maybe twenty or so now. Some are direct hire specific, like one of the local school districts. Some are "just" job sites, like Monster.com or LinkedIn.com, mentioned elsewhere. I'm a fan, since they can help me for modest input on my part. And even better let me have the chance to submit an application with some saved credentials/materials. Unlike say, the local school district. They're really only going to have one job I want. No economies of scale for my form filling inputs.

and the lady who called me for an phone interview did follow up with me via email asking wtf, wanna try again. I replied within a couple hours yes, definitely, let's do it... .then MORE CRICKETS. I think maybe * I * am on her spam list. I can hear from her... she may not be getting my messages. Oh well.


Alrighty... good night, see you all tomorrow.

In person interview in one hour

Leaving now

...:fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx::fingerx:

Hope it went well

same

yay! :D

*BOOM!*

Right on!

Further update:

Remember that time when the lady who scheduled phone interview with me stood me up instead? No, not that time, the time after that. Yeah. Well, we exchanged emails again and she called me this afternoon (just twenty minutes late, but who's counting?).

Another excellent interview. She's a recruiter for a big consulting outfit and they're looking to add an engineer to a team that does work in my town, right down the road at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. She decided to forward my application to "the team" and they'll decide if they want to interview me. That second interview will likely be a phone interview since the team has members from San Diego to Puget Sound to Tokyo. If they like what they hear in that second interview, the recruiter said they'd be willing to make an offer based on the second phone interview.

Some of the details were ones I had to say no to, unfortunately. For example, the opening requirement is a Secret clearance, which I do not have. We talked about it and she said if "I'm the job" (gah--don't get me started on the level of biz-speak... level-set, SME, show you my cards, etc etc) meaning they really like me, that they'd give me work in the non classified areas while my clearance was being ... cleared? created? validated?

Anyhow, the money's right, the location's right, I'm stoked!

Two home runs in one day!

Yay BigV!!!

Fingers crossed!

Looking good BigV! :thumb:

Not surprising, companies are looking for gems like you every day. In their defence it ain't easy winnowing out the chaff, and making a mistake can be very costly. So they are cautious which works in your favor at this point, in that if they hear an answer they don't really like they'll take the time to ask another one to be sure.
You're on your way. :thumb:

First second interview has been scheduled for this Friday!

Again, nervous and excited. This will be an hour long conference call phone interview with the principals of the team with which I'll be working, should they offer and I accept.

Yay!

Good luck, V. Hope you and it are what you and they are looking for.

:cheerldr:

oh great news! Good Luck!

Nice, good luck bro.

J.F.C.

You know how I've moaned here about how hard it is to produce these documents, how I agonize over them, wanting them to be *perfect*? I'm the king of overthinking and I've caused myself undue stress in the process. I've had other people proof my work. I've tried to lower my neuroticism standards and just get the stuff out the door. I might have overshot on this effort having just discovered a typographical error on my RESUME. No biggie.... just my phone number.

#facepalm

LOL. Oh, man..

That's brutal.

Yes.

I got what I got, though. Onward.

The error has been corrected, but for my local copies only. Now I have re-upload this resume, which has already been distributed to probably....forty applications? Nothing to be done about those. But I have to put the corrected copy on all the sites where I have a presence. Here's a quick list:

LIST OF SITES WHERE I HAVE LOGINS
AND RECEIVE JOB LEADS IN EMAIL
LOGIN NAME VARIES
LOGIN EMAIL VARIES
** ** ** ** ** **

https://www.indeed.com
https://www.linkedin.com
https://www.dice.com
https://lensa.com
https://seeker.worksourcewa.com
https://jobs.kitsapsun.com
https://www.kitsapgov.com
https://www.civicplus.com
https://www.bremertonwa.gov
https://www.careeronestop.org
metroseattlejobs.com (not secure)
https://www.resume-library.com
bah.wd1.myworkdayjobs.com
https://careers.boozallen.com
https://www.glassdoor.com
http://www.careers.wa.gov
https://www.usajobs.gov
https://www.governmentjobs.com
schooljobs.com and governmentjobs.com (Equivalent domains)
https://www.ziprecruiter.com
https://www.onetonline.org
http://localjobbulletin.com
https://www.monster.com