I hear so much about jobs, and am so obsessed myself with the subject lately, that I decided to spend some time pondering who is working where and how that’s working out for them. And what better day to do that than hump day?
Me, I have two jobs, but am so underemployed I’ve been working approximately 12-20 hours a week since late last October. That’s because at my primary job we lost some pivotal state contracts. We didn’t lose them to another contractor, we lost them because the services we provide were line-itemed out of a budget. States are broke.
In a way we were lucky – for at least the last year while we were working steadily I was encountering consultants in our line who were baffled that we had work. The answer was simple, like our colleagues we were working in municipalities but unlike the, we were working for states, and the municipalities starting cutting back first. So we had a year’s grace period before fetching up against the wall of “no work out there” that so many had already hit.
Meh. It was late October, not much chance of picking up any contracts going into the holidays, but we had a big RFP or two we were responding to, with decisions coming down in January, so there didn’t seem to be anything more logical to do than sit tight, hope we were awarded one of them, and fall back on my part-time job at the local library.
Don’t know about anyone else’s financial situation, but falling back on a job that offers 12 hours a week at approximately a third of my full time job’s pay rate was pretty disastrous. Since I was often able to pick up some extra hours (but never, ever more than 20 per week – thank you IMRF!) it paid the rent – barely – but absolutely nothing more, not food, not debts, not utilities, nothing. And there were absolutely zero hours available at my full time job.
But early on I just kept looking forward to January – we had interviews, one of them for a contract that would have kept all of us in work for a year, so I struggled through. And in January…we were awarded nothing.
It became clear at this point that I had to look for full-time work, so I started doing so aggressively. Very, very aggressively.
And that’s when I started getting an education in how bad the job market really is. I spruced up my resume and since I already knew more unemployed non-profit and consultant types than I could shake a stick at and knew that the non-profit world is bleeding jobs something firece, I started haunting the online job resources, applying for corporate America jobs. My daughter, who works in HR for a very large corporation stepped in and offered advice.
First up, “cut your resume to the last ten years of experience, otherwise you look old.” She took a look at that resume and shook her head. “Well, this is bad, your last ten years of experience is either as a not-for-profit director or worse, consulting for not-for-profits – so at the top of that field, which is like the kiss of death.”
“Why is that bad?” I asked.
“Well, if we post a job we get a hundred resumes, and in that stack are ten or twenty resumes for people who’ve been doing exactly the job we posted – so we wouldn’t look at someone who is trying to re-imagine themselves in the for-profit world. And worse, you are a consultant in the non-profit world, so almost by definition, not just established in the field, but at the top of the food chain, so our assumption would be that the minute an opportunity presents itself, you’d be right back to it. We’d be better off hiring a recent grad and hoping to get them established in whatever job we are posting. But again, why would we? We can hire someone experienced in any position we post.”
The upshot of her advice being that I could try corporate America, but I’d be better off focusing on finding a job in the non-profit field I’m already in, or at least in some non-profit field.
And in the end I tried both. I’m still trying both. Meanwhile, back at my place, I am still making enough to (barely) pay rent (in a good month) and since people also require things like food and utilities, however much you scale back, I was forced to take in a roommate – which is turning into a bit of a nightmare, but that’s another tale, and I am not paying my creditors.
I’ve been looking for a job since January, it’s now July, and I’ve managed to snag exactly two interviews, one for a job that is definitely in my field, but which ended up not being filled at all. The other for a full-time library job, a rare posting that I was thrilled just to get an interview for. Full-time library jobs are generally in reference, requiring a masters in library science, which I have not. This one was in circulation management, and since I have both circulation experience and some depth of management experience in non-profit fields, a kinda-sorta-fit. But it proved my HR daughter’s point: an employer can get an exact match for any position in this economy. And the library in question did: a person with direct circulation management experience.
So here I am, still doing my 12-20 hours a week at the local library and still looking. After seven months of looking at and applying for anything and everything, I’ve made a decision to accept the fact that spending literally 40 or 50 hours a week obsessively reading and re-reading every job posting board I can find, generating ever different versions of my resume and sending them off, and going door to door and filling out applications, I am wasting one hell of a lot of time – mine and employers. So much for the blanket approach – I give up. Oh, I’ll keep looking, but I’m going to restrain myself to jobs in areas that are the best match for my experience.
I accept that I am just going to get by, barely paying my rent and utilities, and fielding a lot of calls from debt collectors, and focusing the rest of my energy on volunteering and writing. Like spending 40 or 50 hours a week looking for a job, it’s a lot of effort for no pay, but at least I may accomplish something for someone.
The job market is what it is.
Tags: economy, Hump Day Jobs Report, jobs
