None of my interviews are getting me anywhere. I find myself mired in a crummy job market. While current conditions and circumstances are definitely poisoning my ‘job-seeker’ attitude, my ‘overall’ spirit feels just fine.
I could do homeless. First of all, I have family and friends who would demand that I come live with them if they found out I was sleeping in my car (my car is paid off, it’s mine mine mine, nobody can take it).
Friends and family would search for me and drag me back home with them by force.
But . . . I could do homeless:
- Labor Ready – I’m pretty sure if I showed up at four o’clock in the morning, and I got in line, I could get a day’s labor and a day’s pay . . . now and then. The pay would be low, maybe fifty or seventy-five bucks, but it would be cash. It would not be enough cash to hold down a home – at least, not a home I would want to live in – but it would be enough for food and car insurance and data and gas.
- Health club membership – I could go there to take showers. I could go there to kill huge chunks of time. A YMCA membership might be possible with whatever cash I manage to scrape together from labor jobs.
- Free wifi everywhere.
- Libraries – Kill time. Gather info.
- Malls – Kill time.
- PO Box? For an address? To write on job applications. Too much expense? . . .or, sister’s address?
- Walmart – to kill time, to camp out in the parkin lot, to get cheap stuff.
- Parking lots of apartment complexes and motels — where I’d park if I had to sleep in the Corolla Camper Conversion.
- The woods. Live like Rambo. Lots of cheapo camping gear at Walmart.
Man, why do I find myself in this situation? I worked my ass off at that last job . . . overtime, weekends, holidays sometimes. I learned some awesome skills, I thought. Those fuckers pushed me out. Why am I in this position at this time in my life? I work hard but I don’t work smart I guess. I have another person to consider in all this too. I have enough in savings to make it for quite a while, but, man, what the…
who cares 
8 replies on “Will we end up homeless?”
Make some small compromises…make some sacrifices….it does suck. Most states have an employment agency (free) they have some good leads. Don’t be afraid to look a little “left” or “right” in the line of work you want to do. We all been there. I can’t delete the 996 emails in my job search last year. Even then, it was friend who told me about this damn job….network with friends and family…
Yeah, I might have to run pretty far out of my comfort zone, what I’m used to. My sister almost had me hooked up with a route delivery job, that would have been something.
I knew it was bad. Worst economy since the Great Depression and all. I thought we were coming out of it though. I wonder what will happen now that two big things happening: 1. Jobs report tomorrow. This seems to shake things up. At least, that’s what I’ve read in the news. 2. Republican party’s big win. Who knows.
I might swallow some pride and pick at some coworkers who I thought I never would ask a favor…
I’m not super worried. I’m more worried for my girlfriend here. I really don’t want her to go through any kind of madness that I would subject myself to. We’re in it together. She was thinking she had something, but it looks like they were yanking her.
That’s the one scary thing: the attitude of prospective employers – the way they can treat you when there’s such a glut of candidates out there.
It is a brutal gauntlet to run. Is your resume’ customized to each job? Sometime a simple cut and paste in a different order is all you need. Have someone look it over and hit it with the Red Pen of Death.
It’s great you are with someone and this is a shared experience. (it would suck to be alone and chase a job…)
The resume tweaking is a pain, just make sure you label it correctly so you don’t send the wrong version to someone. I had at least 6 different versions targeting certain career fields. (related, but slightly different) I am not a job hunting expert…just been through the grinder a few times.
Do you search with Indeed.com? I like how it grabs multiple job search engines…
Good luck to you.
I have two versions right now. My girlfriend really did an overhaul on it. Her mom was in HR a while, so between them, they know their stuff. Also, one of the agency guys, an I.T. V.P., he gave me some suggestions and tweaks too.
I probably should create a few more versions and really tailor them to other types of jobs.
And, yeah, right on with indeed. I got the app and I completed a profile in there with resume. You can really hit the postings rapid-fire in that way.
One thing I did a while back that surprisingly worked well: I emailed an outfit that did not have a posting that fit me – but I could tell they use the same system as I had admin access in – it’s like a cms/ams/crm…whole nine yards all in one deal – I emailed her and got some part time work out of it. I just emailed them and said I was interested in their organization, and I worked for a similar organization and so on. I kind of went in a back door. Stuff like that – trying routes that usually aren’t taken might help.
Homeless sucks in the winter. Your Corolla is not insulated. You’d need all the cash for gas or go to the woods in a cabin or dug-out. And Rambo-style in the woods – oh dear, I’m too old for such shit, really.
I have two different versions for applications letters & two cvs, but if I am really interested in something and have the feeling that I could really deliver what they want I write it basically new and then throw in other well-formulated parts from the standard letter. I looked at some job-offer-collectors like “monster.de” and such, but you see I’m over fifty, I am an academic with a degree in a “Fach” that basically does not exist anymore, and what I did freelance over the last years was pretty specialised. Am Ende ist’s für’n Arsch. Sorry, don’t repeat this in civilised German speaking company. My only chance – if there is one – is to re-build some customer-connection, but this takes time. It’s a matter of trust after all.
I was working in other jobs to stay afloat and now try to land a part time job, perhaps as driver – at least they were friendly when I handed in my application and waited with the laughing ’til I was out the door. Would pay bills and cost only some hours a week.
I am glad that I’m alone in this, could not stand to be in a some way responsible for another person or family, feed them yadayada. Thank God for having no children.
As you describe it – simply asking for a job or contract work at a company that you are interested in, can be successful. In fact some of these actions were more successful for me than others over the years, it brought me two small jobs / contracts and at least one interview – that is more than all the regular writing / phoning / mailing.
BTW I can not hear that stupid bla about “job wonder”, “super economy” and all this stuff – we have the highest un-employment rates here since ages, larger parts of society are already slipping beyond the official poverty line (which is bad enough), we have damn poor old people and young people without the chance to learn a profession – who ever tells you Germany would be a super economy and an example for what is good – look who’s paying him.
Okay, long rant over.
In that movie, The Perfect Mind, game theory was talked about. I am dumbing it down in a big way, and I’m not sure I fully understand, but the thing I took away from it was: Don’t try to compete where there’s too much competition. Take an alternate route. Choose a battle on a field that nobody else is choosing. If you’re in there competing shoulder to shoulder with a thousand other people who came in through the exact same ‘portal’ or ‘pipeline’ as you did – your chances are greatly diminished. Surprise an employer with an unexpected approach (whatever that means).
The one work that I went after, they had no job that matched my skills at all. I just emailed them and expressed an admiration for their organization – I tried to relate to them “I work on the same type of system as you…in an organization that is similar to yours…” (without being corny about it) and I was able to strike up a conversation with the person there. And she was a VP. I was lucky, because she was VP of finance – and she oversees the funding of the department I wanted to work with. It’s like you said: building a customer connection – a relationship.
If your field of expertise phased out, did elements of it emerge in some other field? That in itself is a great conversation starter maybe. You could strike up a conversation maybe with the practitioners that are in the field that emerged from the phase out of your field – or the alternate field.
I also thought about driving in order to get some cash coming in to pay bills. That actually has been a ‘retirement plan’ of sorts for some people here in the states. There was a story in the news, I wish I could find the link, a guy had run out of funds in retirement – the mortgage disaster destroyed his retirement portfolio – and he became a truck driver. Apparently, it’s a pretty popular thing to do. A lot of people are getting into truck driving. I mean: here in US, we don’t make anything anymore. We just ship and truck things around that were made in other places.
I think it is pretty much to the point what you say about that “game theory” – I have only heared about this. What I can say from having worked in different environments on different levels is – decisions are not made as we think they are made. Like : You send in the perfect matching application and – bamm – you are in.
At an institute I worked for some years people came in because they were talking to the head, sometimes funny, sometimes qualified, sometimes it was just crap – but that is how they got their chances, whether they used it or not is different.
I came to a very good job (lasted for over a year, gave me good money & satisfaction) because I knew someone who who knew someone who was in a position to hire someone (me) for an idea he had, a dream if you want. (BTW I know that I will have a follow-up contract, but only in 2016 earliest, due to financial things.[Yep, I’m costly darling.] )
But the fact is, I helped a man to do something he was dreaming about, and I only came in because I knew someone who knew him and shared the idea, and knew that I was capable of actually doing what he wants. (It’s nothing sordid, just paradise, an old library, figure 🙂 )
This was an absolute exception. There is no way of generalisating (does this word exist ?, do you know what I mean ?) – in the end its gamble.
Always.
A “human resources”-person once told me: Wer macht, was alle machen – der kriegt, was alle kriegen. Roughly: Who does what everybody does, gets the result everybody gets. You want something different – do something different.
And it works only by building a relationship. Then you are not just another “application” with a nice letter showing a person (persona is originally only a mask, something where you “sound-through” – per-sonare in Latin – what you hold in front of yer face), but you are an individual (something whole, that is not dividable), you have a name, a memory is connected with you – you are a memory.
I am a Volkskundler – a bastard field between Germanistic Studies, sociology, history and history of art. My institute went bang, our old head is nearly ninety and cursing anything called university – we love him and that is that..
I do not lick arse, & I am an idiot. So, sorry to say, no : I am not in a position to strike up a conversation with practioners in the field that phased out from my fucking filed. It is a German specialty, has a lot to do with “1989” – and no – it’s not only the Eastern state that vanished, a whole lot of what we had in the West vanished too. I am not crying or whimpering – I am terribly Angry.
The driving job would be nice, it’s only local – they have a lot of applications.
What do you mean with “We don’t make anything anymore” ? May sound silly, but seriously, you should have booming industries, factories ‘n stuff – ? !
I mean – money needs something of value against it, things, products – the world is full of dollares, so America should be full of 19th century -like factories … did I miss something ?
Yeah, it seems like the only stuff we make here is houses and buildings. Any kind of manufactured item is imported. There are exceptions, but it’s declining so much. America was full of bad mortgages, and it wrecked the whole world’s economy. America should have its credit cards taken away, ha.