Surpassing 100 Unsuccessful Job Applications

I just received another letter telling me I did not make the cut for a job recently advertised. The job was communications director of the junior college and vocational system in the state.

I guess I should not had been surprised. After all, all I had going for me was a journalism degree, 16 years as a newspaper reporter, 22 years in public relations, a child who was a student in the system and few awards for past efforts. Naturally it would make sense to pass over me.

After all I am 60. I have a speech impediment and I have been unemployed for a year--certainly not a good risk. I had promised to work up to five or six more years, but that was not enough. I have applied for 94 state jobs--four more and I hit the 100 mark and also applied for about 40 jobs in the private sector.

My regret is that I have not saved all of the rejection letters that I have received over the past year. I never was one for keeping scrapbooks. I guess the term scrap has always bother me. Scraps are things we use to feed the dog, before we learned that was a bad idea. Scraps are the pieces of material grandmothers use to make clothes for their grandchildren, which are not always in style.

I guess that might explain my employment situation. I am not in style anymore--never claimed to be in style--always avoided fashion trends. I never owned a Nauru Jacket. I did own leisure suits, but only because they was man's first revolt to the necktie.

I am not seeking sympathy. I do not have to work--it would be good if I could for a few more years, but our house is paid for and we will not go hungry..

I have been out of work for 13 months in that time and since then we had to replace the dishwasher, two toilets and the refrigerator is starting to give us trouble. So far everything has been paid for and we have managed to keep from accumulating a credit card debt.

But getting back to jobs, there is something I would like for you to do if you are working and especially if you have been working on the same job for a long time. Go through the classified ads and see if you can find a job for which you meet all the qualifications. I think you might be surprised.

When I was much younger, the classified section of the local newspaper carried jobs for "Male Help Wanted" and "Female Help Wanted." It would then get into general help and miscellaneous.

You cannot do that any more and some terms are now obsolete. For instance, no one is or has a secretary. They have an administrative assistant. The pay is not any better, but it sounds like a better title. I see lots of ads for Administrative Assistants, which call for people proficient in Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint. Can assist the president with preparing presentations and other matters. So far, everything is good. Then the ad goes on to say the person must have excellent verbal and written communication skills, outstanding telephone skills as well as a pleasant and outgoing personality and can follow directions.

They are looking for a woman. It is not fair to women or men to disguise the ad that way. But ads include certain words that signifies if it is for a man or woman. Congenial or pleasant personality, good telephone skills and able to follow directions is an ad for a woman. The ads that call for a team player, who can take charge, and has no mention of telephone skills, is an ad for a man.

I get hit on the excellent oral and written communication skills. Some people say I am a decent writer, but I do make a lot of spelling errors. I have been working on trying to correct that. In fact if you have Word 10 on your computer, there is a small utility that you can move to the line where the other frequently use commands are located and use this utility to read your copy back to you. I usually, copy my hub from the edit mode, paste it into Word, run the grammar and spell check and recently started using the read utility. It has cut down on the errors, but I am digressing.

Jobs are also demanding more. Read those classified ads and you quickly learn that most employers are not interested in providing you any training. If you have not been using the exact software they use, you may be out of work. The ad includes a lists of required skills that would send most people running into that dark night.

If you are applying for a government job, the situation is worse. In most civil service systems, if a person is laid off for budgetary reasons, he can bump an employee with less seniority. If you are applying for a job at an university, more than likely they already know who they are going to hire, but have to go through the motions of advertising.

No one but the professional resume writers on the internet can write a resume. Do not dare to use a Word template. It is said that resumes are scanned by a computer program and if certain key words are not found, the resume is thrown out. If that is the case, let the computer reject me all he wants. I do not want to work for a company that depends on certain power words being in the resume. My resume gives you my experience, by abilities, my awards and associations and the usual opening paragraph about your objective. You have to be creative to find new ways of saying "hey, I want a job."

My wife is a teacher. Her skills are more marketable than mind, because she is certified as a teacher. Who is going to certified a writer or PR person. Even if you belong to every writing and public relations association in America, you are still not certified by a governing agency like a teacher, lawyer, CPA, engineer and florist (in Louisiana you have to be certified by a board composed of other florists in order to call yourself a florist.)

I am certified as being unemployed, since I am now receiving unemployment compensation checks each week and seriously, they are a big help.

Of course I am a picky person. I am not going to sell insurance. I did accept one offer, but they insisted that all the calls be made in person in the late afternoon and early evening when both spouses would be home. As some of you may know, I have cataracts on both eyes that are too small to remove but make night driving dangerous--for everyone, so the insurance company withdrew its offer. I have said I might try selling cars. Car salesmen are not bad people. It is the guy in the back room, who tells you what your note should be and then tells you that you must by the extended warranty because the car the salesman just bragged about endlessly, may fall apart when you leave the lot. Once this person told me "you would have to be crazy not to buy this." It is not wise to make me angry. I stood up with the lease in hand and was preparing to tear it in half, when my wife asked me not too. I told the finance person he needed to change his approach. My wife has been driving that cars for about seven years with no major problems.

But again I digress.

The final thing about looking for a job is that you have to be willing to do different things. I was looking at the jobs section for a local hospital--hoping to find a PR position. There were none, but there was an opening in housekeeping, that pay a decent salary. The hospital was close to the house. I have mopped floors, change sheets, emptied bedpans. I thought I had this made. Unfortunately it required two years of hospital housekeeping experience. We have three major hospitals in my home city. I do not know if any of them offer a internship in hospital housekeeping.

Today is Sunday, the best day to search the classified ads. The pickings were rather slim today. I will look again and will apply. I have to apply for something each week to get my unemployment checks. No one checks on that, but I try to follow the rules.

I am not in a position to relocate, so the e-mail I get promising to send my resume to 10,000 head hunters around the country, does not offer much appeal. I called one of those companies and asked how many would be sent to headhunters handling the Baton Rouge, LA area. He could not give me an answer and would not give me a discount. I explained to him that when you are unemployed, you have to be careful how you spend your money. I declined his offer.

Fortunately, I have a very supportive wife and son. We did save through my 401K. There are possibilities that we are pursuing, But while there may be a final stop on this trip down the unemployment highways, it is apparent that the employment highway is in need of repair.