today i read an article in the onion entitled, “report: women increasingly choosing dead-end careers over dead-end relationships.”
i recommend reading the entire piece (which isn’t long), but here are my favorite parts:
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According to a report published Monday in The Journal Of Gender Studies, many American women are bucking centuries of traditional gender roles by placing stunted, emotionally unfulfilling relationships on hold in order to pursue mind-numbing careers devoid of any upward mobility.
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“Technical and repair professions with zero prospects for advancement are no longer viewed solely as the realm of males,” Detweiller said. “Women have proved that they are just as adept as men at frittering their lives away in soul-crushing vocations.”
While the number of women entering moribund, male-dominated careers continues to approach parity, the longtime wage gap between men and women has been slower to catch up.
“Women still average a 7 percent more abysmal salary than the already pathetic income of their male counterparts,” Detweiller said.
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Lillian Taylor, a recent graduate of SUNY- Purchase in New York, said that without her undergraduate business administration degree, she would never have been able to entrap herself in a go-nowhere human resources position instead of a love-bereft relationship.
“So many of my friends ended up centering their lives around uncaring deadbeats,” Taylor said. “I’m not saying that I won’t date a series of emotionally distant men in the future, but for right now, I prefer to focus on carving out a solid career rut for myself.”
“No one is going to hold me back except for me,” Taylor added.
***
first of all, this article is hysterically awesome.
and you know, those sneaky onion writers actually made me THINK (after i stopped spraying my keyboard with laughter spit). and i continued to THINK as i read this article in the ny times, about how job seekers are growing increasingly desperate in their attempts to get the attention of future employers.
and since i’m feeling generous, here’s ANOTHER excerpt! for free! lucky you!
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The posting jumped out from the thousands of others in the résumé section of Craigslist/New York City.
“I will give you more than a million dollars for a well-paid sales job,” it all but screamed. I clicked on that and read more. “If you are willing to employ me in a position in Manhattan with a strong salary, I am willing to draw up a legal document making you my sole heir when I die.”
The writer (who turns out to be a real estate salesman named James Kellogg) told me that he owns an Upper East Side apartment worth “slightly more than $1 million” in addition to “more than $800,000 in cash.” And suppose the taker of this deal dies first? No worries. “If I outlive you,” Mr. Kellogg explained reassuringly, “my assets can be left to your family.”
Desperate times make for creative measures, and in the current job market a melee of electronic job boards, résumés sent by e-mail and lots of applicants for limited openings, work comes to those who scream loudest.
***
so, neither of these articles are the kind of thing a girl wants to read when she’s looking for jobs.
i mean, there’s a guy in the times article that makes his business cards look like pizza and then, on the back, offers a free pizza to the first company who contacts him for an interview.
WHAAAAAAAAA
well, people DO like pizza. including me. i wish i had one right now!!! dude, i’ll interview you!
so, if i don’t have a million dollar house, and i don’t really want to make pizza business cards, what can i do to avoid a future of dead-end jobs?
yeah, that’s a dramatic question, and i’m half kidding. i think?!
but i *am* seriously asking: “how am i holding myself back?”
i’m pretty sure i don’t have enough ambition, but then again, it’s probably cos ambition comes from passion, and my passion is kind of all over the place. i also wonder if i need to get a little more business savvy, like maybe i need a pair of networking pants. but… um… those pants are FUGLY.
i think back to how i’ve landed other jobs, and at least half the time, it’s been through people i know.
so come on, guys. what are you waiting for? GET ME A JOB!
ha ha that would be awesome if you guys actually did. then my story could be an addendum to the times piece: “girl finds job via personal blog about food and squee.”
seriously, though, how have you guys gotten jobs in the past? if you have a job you like, how did you land it?
it can’t be as bad as the summer in high school when i walked around downtown houston with jennifer (and keriann? leanna? who else was there?), clutching my pansy resume and walking cold turkey into monotone offices to ask, “will you hire a high school kid who looks like she’s 13? i mean, hey, she’s an honor student! and she’s the president of drama club! FUTURE EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR, right here!”
it’s funny how, even with a masters degree, some feelings just haven’t changed.
LINKS
this piece about the patricia field payless party cheered me right up after all of this job gloominess. metallic heels! trannies! partricia field’s loft! and the jezebels even went home via wheelchair, which, as meredith knows, is the sign of a good party.
squee of the day: a doggie mama and her baby bunnies!!!!
interesting article about how portland is trying to educate people about the effects of gentrification.
jezebel reviews the j. peterman catalog. which is actually real. REAL AWESOME.
I can relate to the job angst. I was angsting in a little procrastination driven bit of Instant Messanger pity at my desk this morning. My wife and I are hoping to move to Austin sometime after the first of the year and I’ve been starting to dig for design jobs. Even if I know that my portfolio is decent and that I have design skills that are pretty good there’s still this fear that no one will ever hire me again. (irrational right? I wish my brain knew that. heh)
All of the jobs I’ve had (except for the month I worked at Old Navy) have basically been found through relationships. It’s certainly easier being able to head to an interview and know that there’s some sort of connection already there.
I guess I’d just say to work it as hard as you can. Find people that can tear your resume apart as much as they can and build it back up into a really amazing document. You could always start a separate blog that deals with what your masters is in and start trying to build up a community of people through that. Build something up big enough and gain enough notoriety and it certainly couldn’t hurt your career aspirations.
In the Poshdeluxe Bookclub category, I just got done listening to an audio book on my way back and forth from work called The Power of Nice. Might be worth grabbing from the library. There was some helpful business/job stuff in it.
If we only knew in high school what we know now. Can you imagine the laughs we got after we left? Funny thing is that my mom thinks you can actually still get a job by dropping off your resume in person!
Things certainly have changed!
Up until my last two jobs, every job I’ve ever gotten has been because I know someone who got me an interview. But hey, *I* mastered the interview, so there’s nothing wrong with that, right?
I got the Theatre & Dance job by utterly scouring the UT job search website and adjusting my cover letter and resume to apply for about 50 jobs. Most of which paid in the upper 30s, and the only one that interviewed and then hired me paid $24k. But I got to meet you, Sarah, and that’s worth its weight in reasonable compensation!
My job at the museum was a total fluke. I’d been in Houston a couple of weeks and decided to work some temp jobs while I did my “real” job searching. I told the temp agency I was interested in arts administration, they called me the day after I signed up with them to tell me there was an opening in the director’s office at the MFAH, I was here two days and they hired me in a permanent capacity. Kismet!
Ah, cold turkey CV-schlepping…
My best (most fun, anyway) job was at Magma books in Manchester. When I first moved there I was unemployed for TWO MONTHS, the only job I had was hanging out at the Chinese Arts Centre on Sundays. For twenty pounds sterling. I was living on twenty pounds sterling a week.
I just couldn’t get a break with the Chinese stuff. I looked online, I went in and talked directly to people whose job it is to find young professionals jobs, I walked into stores in Chinatown and made an eejit of myself speaking in Mandarin to teenagers who only spoke English and Cantonese.
When I walked into Magma I didn’t even know it was a bookshop but it looked cool… I had abandoned Chinese language work but hadn’t got to the stage where I would work in a Wetherspoons. I went in, handed in my CV, and had a nice chat with two people, one of whom turned out to be the co-owner. He was minutes away from putting up a help wanted sign when I walked in.
I still had to interview but I got the job. In fact, they offered me a higher position in London, which would have been awesome. So, there you go. It was a mix of luck and perseverance, but crucially, it took forever dude.
There. I wasn’t being completely self-indulgent I hope!
this is kind of funny: i had a dream last night that i was in some place… i don’t remember what kind of place or anything. something about college. anyway, i remember thinking, i need to call sarah. she would love working here. i also thought, wow, sarah would be such an asset to this place.
it was pretty weird and hilarious.
try being a female preacher who looks 13 years old. it only gets worse.
i got my job cuz my friend got a job at a church in austin and i moved to austin cuz it seemed cool and i was bored. then i started going to that church and that church met in the building of another church and somehow i met that pastor…
relationships are good. both ones that land you jobs and ones that land you love. unfortunately, on both ends, they are few and far between. but keep on keepin’ on cuz if you don’t get a job, it’s the relationships you have that will get you through it.
and eventually you’ll find an organization that knows an organization and the rest of that will be history too.
This is so funny. I was having coffee in Zabar’s (!!) earlier this week and saw a woman reading a hardcopy of The Onion with that headline. I thought about it for maybe 2.4 seconds and then returned to the very important matter of my cherry danish.
that onion article is awesome. i found my current job through a friend of a friend, kinda; or really, someone i’d met in sri lanka briefly, didn’t remember well (drinking does that), met for coffee in london, mentioned where i was doing my internship, and she invited me to apply for a closed-application job here. which is a cool job, but i’m not sure it’s perfect (what ever is), and now i want to move to nyc or beirut.
anyway. i think most people get jobs through people they know, and that’s fine because to get that job, you’re competing with other people who might be there because of contacts they have, too. you still have to do the app, make a cv, do the interview, etc. etc.
but it’s really annoying to try to find a new job, but i also think it’s a time of immense hope. like picking out classes for a new semester, except those classes have to like you back. or something.