Year of the Dog's Weblog

I’ve been searching for a job for about two months now. I haven’t been getting up at 7am and hitting the pavement until dusk, but I’ve been searching. I put in applications and resumes in the double digits. I’ve had some results, none too good.

First I tried kgb_. You might have seen their commercials on TV. You text them on your cell phone and for 99 cents they’ll answer your question. Who needs this kind of service? People with cell phones who don’t have phones with internet search capabilities or access to a computer with internets pre-installed. For each question an “agent” answers they get 10 cents. Sounds great huh? It’s not. I worked for kgb_ for an hour and earned maybe 45 cents. I didn’t work a second hour. I wouldn’t even recommend this job to starving orphans in China. They’d make more money sewing sneakers for Nike or clothes for Kathy Lee.

So I put my resume in online. Within a day I got all sorts of offers from different scams saying that they reviewed my resume and that I’m a perfect candidate for their job selling innovative products or marketing for a premier advertising agency. So I do a little research on these companies and BAM! I see a million listing on pages like ripoff report and other scam busting sites. It was a let-down because some of them had me curious, which is how they get people.

Next I went to a staffing agency and took their little computer tests and had a quick 2 minute interview where the consultant asked me the normal bullshit interview questions. “Give me three words to describe yourself?” Nobody is going to say something bad about themselves like, “Slow-learner, Incompetent, and Procrastinator” I think my gems were, “Creative, Organized, and Punctual” Are you supposed to spell out and acronym for them to give them a clue about what kind of work you should be doing? I told them I wanted clerical work. They haven’t found anything for me and I’ve called them every week since. I went there and even went down there again and asked how I could increase my chances of getting a job. They had no advice. They just gave me excuses about how they are focusing on industrial jobs now. They could have told me that before hand or the other times I called. I asked if they had any entry-level industrial jobs and of course the answer was “No.”

Yesterday I got a reply form a company that I applied to called Reynolds & Reynolds. They had an opening for an entry-level technical writer. I took their online personality/psychological profiling test. Then I went to their office for an aptitude test which more than half consisted of algebra word problems. I haven’t done algebra in over seven years. I tried preparing for the test, but I just couldn’t do the problems when it came time to the test. It’s sad, because I was an A student in all my math courses. You don’t use it, you lose it. After the test I was expecting an interview, but the receptionist at the recruiting office just sent me on my way saying, “A recruiter will contact you in 3-5 business days if they’re interested.” This is all code for, “Don’t make a scene. You didn’t get the job. Go home and have a nice day, loser.”

Today I got a call from a different recruiting company that saw my resume. It looks legit. I did a little searching and didn’t find any complaints, so I’m going to call and see what they want to offer me.