Landing a Job When the Ads Are Gone

Not so long ago, or maybe now it was a lifetime ago, I never had trouble finding a job.

I was a speedy typist (95+ wpm) on an IBM Selectric II and as computers came onto the stage, I became a whiz at WordPerfect. I could do anything in WordPerfect in 1991. I could even do a little DOS programming if I had to.

Work was something I did because I felt I should, and while I didn't exactly know what I wanted to be - (a novelist, I always thought, though apparently not) - I had marketable skills that meant nearly very time I sent out a resume to a blind box advertisement in the jobs section of the newspaper, I at least merited an interview, if not the job.

My health caused me to change jobs more frequently than I liked. Unfortunately employers aren't very understanding when you need to take six weeks to recover from unexpected abdominal surgery, and that cut into my longevity with bosses a few times.

But I never worried about it. I took out the ol' job section, put a red circle around the openings that looked interesting to me, and sent off a resume. I was never out of work long.

Then the migraines came in the mid-1990s, and I realized after a while that I was not able to stay in a prolonged employment situation because let's face it, you can't do a decent job if you're sick three days out of every week. That was how frequently I was having migraines, and for how long. Three days. I would work through the headaches as much as I could, but I made mistakes when I felt bad, and I obviously wasn't able to give my best - well, I always gave my best at the time, but that "best" certainly couldn't measure up to the "best" before the migraines.

So I switched to freelancing for the local newspaper and other publications. It did not pay well, but it kept me busy. I could work when I felt like it and shut the blinds when I could no longer stand the light, and I was a good reporter. I wrote my little heart out and invested my soul in my words and in making educating the people via my sentences my life's work.

Then stuff happened. I'd put most of my effort into one basket, and that basket was bought and sold and it went bankrupt, and while it stayed afloat I lost that basket as a client. I wrote for other local publications for a while to fill the void but the economy was tanking and journalists locally were losing work and the competition became stiffer and I discovered I disliked writing for publications that were slanted a certain way. I also discovered that some local publications would just as soon steal your work and send you on your way than pay you.

I went back to college and earned my masters degree. I thought I'd teach at the college level, and I started out doing some adult learning programs and they were going along fine. Then I had another surgery.

Five years out I'm still not well. I have good days though, and on those days I think about going back to work. I think about freelancing, and the landscape looks even worse than it did in 2010, with fewer publications and many more that are slanted and not objective. I'm an objective journalist, or I was, anyway, and I find the slant eats at my soul. I want to keep my soul intact, thank you very much, so if I am going to hang on to my scruples I either need to take my freelancing to a more national level (which is a scary-as-hell thought, especially since I don't know how well I'd hold up under the strain of a major publication deadline) to find the more objective publications or I need to find a part-time job doing something to fill the time and help pay the cellphone bill.

Finding something part-time sounds easiest, but you know what? I don't know how to find a job anymore. There aren't any jobs in the local newspaper. Well, the newspaper advertises jobs for itself, if you want to be a circulation manage (which I don't), but if I wanted to know if there was a part-time job at some insurance company in Daleville, at the moment the only way I know to find out is to walk in the place and ask.

Looking for work is a whole new ballgame in our brave new world. Now you do it all online and you have to figure out which company is the best fit for you, not the other way around, although you still have to offer the company something that benefits them. It feels backwards from the way it used to be, when I could go to an interview and say, "I am an earnest worker, I always do my best, I type 95 wpm with 99% accuracy, I have a nice telephone voice, and I would like to help your company move forward." That is no longer good enough.

Now you interview the company first, sort of, online, to see if you want to work there, and then you send in an application (online) and hope to hear from somebody.

So here I sit with a masters degree and a sometimes desire to work that maybe could turn into a full-time desire if I actually found something part-time, but I don't know how to even begin the job search. Heck, resumes aren't even what they used to be. Which reminds me, I need a new one. Better add that to my "to do" list.

If you type in "how to find a job" you don't get a lot of help. There's no method to searching for work anymore, especially if you're, ahem, in the elder age brackets. Maybe things are different if you're jumping right of college where there are job assistance programs and such.

Finding a part-time work is actually a lot like freelancing. You send out queries when you freelance until you find the right editor who wants your work. Same now with resumes. You send one out until you find the right person.

But it sure seemed easier when all I had to do was put a red circle around the advertisement in the newspaper, address an envelope, slip in my resume, and wait for the response.