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When interviewing with a bunch of folk who make their living looking people up on the internet, it’s a good idea to remember that they’ll probably look you up on the internet, too.

And discover that you’ve been blogging about them.

Not the most kosher career move on my part, perhaps, but I have been giggling about it ever since, anyway.  

It was my own online people-tracking skills that enabled me to catch them at it, too, so we’ve sort of got a “Spy V Spy” scenario going on here.  And Damn, We’re Good!

photo: Terry Shaw, special to Knoxville News Sentinel

What a coincidence. The Knoxville News-Sentinel printed an article today about Knoxville’s Career Closet , thus doing almost all of my planned blogging work for me.

A couple of weeks ago, I helped my friend and colleague Andy take his deceased wife’s hundreds of beautiful and contemporary career clothes to the Career Closet so that they could be used by unemployed women who are interviewing for jobs.

In fact, that’s Joy’s red blazer hanging on the rack to the right.

To be eligible for an outfit or two from the Career Closet, women must first complete a basic job training course through an organization such as the Tennessee Career Center.

Donating to the Career Closet was a win-win-win. Andy and his son now know that Joy’s clothes will be deeply appreciated and used. A couple dozen women (at least) will have gorgeous new business outfits to wear to their interviews. A number of retired folks who work at the Career Closet will see their own efforts benefitting more people. Andy will have a large tax deduction this year which will help off-set the sudden loss of his wife’s income stream. And I was able to do one small but useful thing to help this family that I love.

A quick Google search shows that Knoxville is not the only city with a “Career Closet” program that provides women with business attire and other assistance in landing a much-needed job.

How about cleaning your own closet this weekend, and giving another woman a career hands-up when you do?

Speaking of being freaky, a big hat-tip to Kathy, who sent me a link to an article published yesterday by CNN, Weird tactics can sometimes get you the job.  The article is terrific, but not as terrific as Kathy, who notes:

This reminded me of my sister who interviewed three times for vet school, failing the first two times because her interview went poorly. She came to Joe and me for a mock interview; my first question was, “Why do you want to be a vet?” She mumbled about loving animals. True but trite. I suggested she consider saying, “The last time I had my arm up a cow butt (she did do this as a veterinary asst.), I realized that not everyone would love this, but I did.”  She got in.

Is this guy you?

~The first part of this post can be found here.~

Everywhere I turn, I find advice for the job-seeker. Revamp the resume. Write a killer cover letter. Hire an interviewing coach. In short, it’s all about how fabulous every job applicant must be.

Why isn’t anyone telling employers that they need to be fabulous, too?

If there is a recession going on, and so long as we insist upon using dire, Darwinian terms with job applicants, we ought to be giving the same talk to businesses, as well. 

HR writers, though, seem only to take two approaches.  If not cajoling employees (and potential employees) to behave themselves, they are chuckling with their fellows about how dumb employees are, particularly when the latter expect that “good enough” ever really is.

Meanwhile, I am reviewing potential employers who address me like this:

“Applications submitted without salary history will not be considered.”

Oh, don’t worry, is my knee-jerk reaction. Applications allowing you to decide in advance how cheap you can be will not be submitted, either!

Nevertheless, this also translates into another lost job opportunity, and I’m not sure how many more of those I can afford.

“Submit application along with contact information for three references.”

References up front? No sir. My references are an extremely valuable commodity. As a courtesy to them, and for my own sake as well, I need to prep my references every time I invoke their names, and I’d rather not spend that vocational capital unless I know there’s at least some chance of a return on my investment. I should not be asked for them until I am interviewed, and that used to be the rule. References, once given, can be “spent” by a potential employer at any time, and some lazy employers routinely plow through any number of contact calls quite early on, before they’ve even decided on their pool of finalists.

What if I’m forced to prep my contacts so many times that they themselves begin to doubt my employability? What if a contact is also a current employer, who didn’t know I was applying for a job? This topic of references, alone, is worth several more posts on its own.  I’ve been burned, and I have issues.

In any case, an intelligent employer should do his or her own evaluation before trusting an applicant’s obviously- biased list of references. It’s okay to sniff around. I don’t mind. I’d be honored to work for a smart employer who cares that much about doing a good job search. It’s right there on my resume, so how about contacting my *previous* employer on your own? How about talking to someone you trust who might know me? How about (here’s an idea) actually reviewing my online portfolio and making your own decision about whether my work is good or not? Everyone uses web analytics now, so I can tell when you haven’t!

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Related Posts:
Employers: It’s Your Turn to be Fabulous  (part 1 of this series)
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or Just Bad? (part 3 of this series)

Creative Commons image by Luna Park

Except for a few very good friends, I am currently ignoring online career advice columnists.  It’s not that their advice is bad.  The real problem with such advice, or any advice for that matter, is that it so often fails in the particulars. 

If I had parented my children strictly according to other people’s advice,  they would be sociopaths and I would be institutionalized by now.  Human relationships just don’t work that way. 

It’s not that I don’t seek advice. I have read lots of parenting books, and with one child entering her teens and another becoming a young adult, I’ve just gone out and bought several more; nevertheless, I don’t ever assume there is anyone out there with more expertise about my particular child than I have myself.  And the same goes with my current job search.

Bloggers, and advice-giving bloggers, walk an especially dangerous road.  We can pontificate for as long as we like without interuption, without editors, and more often than not without even getting much feedback. 

We can get a little weird. 

And every so often, I also get a tiny bit cranky, and find myself reminding HR bloggers, much to their great misfortune, that the employer is only one half of the job search equation, even though the employer’s perspective is virtually always presented as if it were the only one with any legitimacy.  Though employers are, of course, the people with the power to hire,  I submit that the actual power ratio of the employer/employee equation is considerably more complicated than that.  Employment is, by definition, a two-party system.  While it’s fine to keep harping on the one hundred and forty seven rules employees must follow in order to be fabulous, the quality of a company depends just as much on the fabulousness of the employERS.  

Management guru Peter Drucker insists that personnel decisions are the most important ones a company can make.  A clumsy recruiter’s own failure to be fabulous will be reflected in the quality of candidate he hires, either because he may not make the best choices, or because he may not attract the best candidates in the first place.  And that sort of failure is far from minor.  It is, instead, a systemic failure that shall effect (or infect) the quality of the entire company.

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Related posts:
Un-Fabulous Employers: Asking for Too Much Upfront (Next post in this series)
Blind Box Ads: Bad-Ass, or just Bad? (final post in this series)

Last year, it was a terrific party.  The fireflies came out after we’d done picking berries, and we ate and talked and sat around until we filled the country farm house and sun porch and spilled out into the yard where we sat on creaking lawn chairs.  Kids shot off fireworks while the adults sampled jars of genuine Southern moonshine, the origins of which our host couldn’t actually reveal, for legal reasons…

We missed it last night.

It’s complicated.   The Husband got stuck at a long meeting – yes, on Sunday.  The Son needed to have some staples taken out of his head, also on a Sunday, and subsequently discovered that the Minute Clinic model is, perhaps, misnamed.  The Daughter was very mad to miss the blackberry-picking part, even though last year she got two ticks in the process. 

The Mother just pulled out some pork chops, warmed up the grill, and sighed.

Even though her mother is very maddening, I’m very glad that my daughter is willing to load the dishwasher anyway.

I have received three job rejection letters in two weeks.  However,  I met an author at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival who has already received thirty-six rejection letters for one of his manuscripts, and he cheerfully plans to go for an even one hundred. 

I have some catching up to do.

My amazing brother faithfully reads this blog, and has been very helpful with some of the technical problems I run into from time to time. 

He also periodically sends this English major a quick note when I’ve misspelled something.  Thank you, *dearest* brother. ;0)  

Since I also now have completed my most recent set of interviews, and was not offered that particular job, I can now go ahead and post a response to this post about handling rejection by friend Peggy of the Career Encouragement Blog.  

Stay tuned.. 

The world recordholder for number of extended-play rejections for jobs at The Institution Which Shall Not Be Named? That would be me.

“You’ve been to your interview, you’ve waited patiently, but you haven’t heard from the interviewer. You need to make the follow-up call.” – Carolyn Silvey, VP, Staffing Solutions

Careerbuilder.com suggests waiting a week to 10 days before following up, giving the company time to complete any other interviews and wrap up other business related to the hiring situation. If one hasn’t heard from the company after that, so the reasoning goes, it is time to make contact (by phone or email) to indicate one is still interested in the job and to determine if the position has already been filled. At the same time, one is also supposed not to be intrusive or annoying.

In my opinion? Any phone call initiated by a candidate at this point will probably be both intrusive and annoying.

Whether the company hasn’t been able, or hasn’t bothered to call a candidate after an extended period of time, (e.g., THREE WEEKS) it’s a good bet that either someone else got the job, or else something has gone wrong. And if the latter, it’s hard to imagine that it could be in the candidate’s best interest to inject herself or himself into the mix. If the problem is at the company’s end, for instance, it may be that

· Other overwhelming or urgent business, possibly unexpected, has forced the search committee to put this particular item of company business on a slower time table.

· If a company is heavily bureaucratic or politicized, or where finances are tight, the hiring process itself may have become enmired in complications and extensions. (Can you say “UNIVERSITY?”)

If, on the other hand, there is nothing wrong at the company’s end (other than appallingly bad manners!), and provided they haven’t already filled the position with someone else, the only logical possibility that remains is that they haven’t seen their ideal candidate yet. And if that is the case, either

· Everything (and everyone) has been put on hold while waiting to see if that Spectacular Someone (S.S.) will show up… and only if S.S. does not will one of the lesser candidates be called up out of the bullpen. -or-

· All candidates, whether they knew it or not, have been participating in a single-elimination contest with no decisive end in view, save that unknown future point when the S.S. shows up, a hire is finally made, and the search is officially declared “closed.”

In my own case — and you knew this was all about me, right? — I really can’t make heads or tails of it, and it’s officially been three weeks since my interview, with all offers and negotiating to have been done, hopefully, so that the job could begin by August 1.

If this were any other organization, I’d assume my chances at this point were nil. But this isn’t any other organization. This is The Institution Which Shall Not Be Named, which follows no rules I’ve ever heard about, ever, anywhere. And the August 1st date was presented to me as the most optimistic, and would have been so even had they offered the job to me on the spot three weeks ago. This being the T.I.T.S.N.B, after all.

However, another (though much less lucrative) job possibility has come up this week. Therefore, it would be nice to know where I stand this time ’round with T.I.T.S.N.B., and as they never have followed any of the standard business conventions, and likely never will, it looks like I’ll have to improvise a little.

We have to leave town in less than 24 hours for our two-week vacation.  Much as I tried to get a jump on everything in advance (arranging a pet & garden sitter, buying all the tickets, renting the car, paying the bills…) things come crashing in, nonetheless.  My colleagues decide to move all our websites to a new server, TODAY.  All of the animals need new flea & heartworm stuff from the vet TODAY.  Both kids (BOTH!) have to go to the doctor TODAY.  One child has a friend who needs a ride from one end of town, the other child left her shorts at the other end of town, and both the friend and shorts are required here, in our house.  TODAY.   I’ve got several vitally-important things to get in the mail.  My new cell phone needs to be  set up.   My laptop keys are all sticking again, and this is the computer I have to take with me on the plane.

And.  Just now, a few minutes ago, I got a Phone Call.  From The Institution That Shall Not be Named.  From someone who did NOT hire me several months ago.  Turns out they have a new position, still have my resume on file, and want me to go for an interview.  TOMORROW MORNING.   I’ve long since stopped looking at their job listings.  Never again did I intend to go through the wringer with these folks.   But I’m going to do it, and I’m going to do it cold, because I don’t have any time to do it any other way.  Well, I might take a shower first… 

(and guys?  this is exactly one of those reasons to be gracious after being rejected for a job!!! )

One of the reasons I married a professor is that I never quite understood anything in college, and hoped he’d fix that.   I never understood, for instance, what an 18 year old person could possibly say about Shakespeare that hadn’t already been said, and much better, by several thousand other people. 

And I wish someone had explained a little more about historiography: how to think about history.  Who even knew that there was a “great man” theory?  For me, history was always just a bunch of trees.  I mean, I totally got what a thesis statement was.  And I totally got that “facts” didn’t mean much just by themselves.  But I never knew how to put them together, not really.  And I always knew I didn’t know.  Argh!

Even now,  I still find myself very confused by things that don’t seem to give anyone else a bit of pause. 

Maybe I should ask the professor’s mother for a refund?

I had a four-hour long interview yesterday, at the same place where I’d already had a 2-hour long interview the week before (which would have been even longer, had not my daughter’s school called…)   And I’m very confused. 

The only next-thing-to-do is make cookies. Obviously.  Even if it is practically the middle of the night.  And also to find the least complicated and yet most delicious recipe I can.  So, Tada!  Here it is, only three ingredients, and these are truly

The Best Peanut Butter Cookies Ever

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg

Mix.  Drop on greased sheet, do the criss-cross fork thing, and bake at 350 degrees for 13-15 minutes.

If one insists on complicating even this, one can double the recipe.  Use crunchy instead of creamy.  Use only ¾ cup sugar.  Add a tsp of vanilla, or soda (both utterly unnecessary, I assure you)

((Next up:  How (not) to self-medicate with food!!))

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Related Posts:
How (not) to interview for a job (this story begins)
Nope (this story concludes)
Hanging in, and blonder too (reflection)