In a bit of a pickle..

I clearly have been watching way too much baseball lately with all the baseball lingo I have been throwing around lately. Go Phillies!

Anyways, I'm in a pickle because I just don't know what to do about this whole job search thing. I'm still doing my internship once a week. Except now I'm not technically the intern and I'm getting paid. I can't even tell you how much I love this job. I wish they were able to hire me full time. For once I feel so content with a job and feel so passionately about it. I feel as though I'm able to integrate what I love doing with what I'm good at and I'm learning so much about a field that I never knew much about before. I just love it! I'm trying to work hard and prove myself so that maybe they will see the value in hiring somebody on full time or even part time..just more than once a week!

The problem is the fact that I don't have a sugar daddy or rich parents to allow this lifestyle of only working one day a week. I do not want to leave this job to get a full time job that I probably won't love. I love this job too much. But I have plans of grad school, traveling, getting married in the near future (and not to mention I am notorious for blowing all my money on clothes and books) that just won't happen on the salary of someone working one day a week.

I sucked it up and got a babysitting job for a few months before I went to LA so I could just make some money. It bores me. I want to be doing what I went to school for. I babysat for all of middle school, high school, and college. I need a break from kids before I start popping them out myself.

So what to do, gentle reader? Do I suck it up and try to babysit until maybe they can hire me (even though there is no guarantee) or do I just move on and find a full time job? Ah..maybe I'll dust off the old Magic 8-ball and see if that has the answer..

On a brighter note..my trip to Los Angeles was AMAZING. So much fun and I'm not totally broke. I decided it might not be a good idea to spend all my money on Rodeo Drive and come home with credit card debt. Here's a little taste of LA from me to you..

Extremely Antsy & Incredibly Broke

I am on a marathon job search for a part time job and I feel like I'm at the point where I'm losing momentum and hope of ever crossing that finish line.

I've been aggressively looking for a part time job these past few weeks because I'm broke and needing money to eat, and oh yeah, go to Los Angeles. I've given up looking for a full time job until May because I'm really loving my internship that I'm doing 1 day a week for 8 hours and I feel as though the experience is well worth it.

I haven't been paid for the past 2 months that I've been there but starting next week I'll be getting paid. It's not a lot of money, clearly, because I'm only working 8 hours but it's something. It does, however, prevent me from finding a job that won't make me work Tuesdays. I'm trying to stay away from retail and from dragging myself back to my previous place of employment to get my job back. I've been looking for anything--administrative assistant, babysitting, etc. but NO luck.

I'm giving myself until the end of this week and then I will submit to being a retail slave once again.

Dear employment gods, please oh please be nice to me this week!

Hiatus

So, I've been on a little bit of a hiatus for personal reasons but I'm back now!

Since February I've been working for a magazine doing marketing/social networking. It's been great so far but it's unpaid so I'm really struggling moneywise. I'm trying to at least find a babysitting job to do on the other days of the week that I don't have the internship just to be bringing some money in but I'm striking out in that way as well.

So, I'm starting again, full speed ahead, with the job search.

A little more about my past and my future goals..

So what is it that I actually want to do?

I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I went to college, like most people I'm sure. I picked Business because it seemed that you could do anything with it. I became bored with Business and didn't see myself in that environment UNTIL I took my first marketing class. I fell in love with marketing, advertising, promotion, and event planning. I thrived on writing marketing plans and business plans for classes. I was so excited with a side of business that could let me be creative and use the skills that I'm naturally good at! I didn't know what "area" I really wanted to do with marketing/advertising but I've always known that it was what I wanted to do. Too bad that everybody wants to do marketing. haha. Then I started thinking that I love fashion and I love books so I wouldn't mind being in either one of those industries. I'm passionate and knowledgeable about them. I've come to realize though that, for now, I'm really fine with doing any sort of marketing/advertising. I just want to learn and I just want to be happy doing what I'm doing in a setting where my skills are important to the business. That being said, I can't really say as of yet, what I'd like to see myself doing in 10 years or what my ultimate career goals are. I haven't even started a career. I just want to get hands on experience in any setting doing marketing or advertising!

The problem with getting a job, for me, has been my resume. It's not the actual format of the resume or anything. It's that it really does not have much on it that shows a company my experience and what I can do and nobody seems to care that I graduated college with a high GPA! Here's my annotated version of my resume (you know..all the things I can't say in an actual resume but want to brag about).

From 2003 and then all throughout college, I was a nanny for an autistic boy and then his younger brother was born with Aspberger's and I was his nanny too. It was a high school nannying job and it was great. I learned so much and during the summers in college I would work for the family 40 hours a week. I've remained close with them and help out whenever I can. This has been a downfall in my career because nobody cares that I was a nanny (although if you worked there you would see it was more than that) for all those years. Yes, I probably should have done something more relevant but I LOVED what I did and I've always been the type to do what I'm passionate about. (TRANSLATION: I'm EXTREMELY loyal, able to multi task like you wouldn't believe, have the utmost patience, and I like a challenge!)

Then I had to do an internship for school in order to graduate. I ended up at a professional photography company and it was wonderful! I was a customer service intern but because it was such a small company I was able to get to learn alot about the marketing and the sales. I did your typical customer service type thing and really excelled. I loved the competitions for signing people up for our yearly service. I just loved learning everything! I would have loved to stay on and move over to marketing (Things I wish I could say on my resume: I was so fabulous that the hired me on full time but due to having a semester left in school I wasn't able to do the 40 hrs/week that they needed me. Then when I graduated they didn't have any positions left..they were actually laying people off!)

Then, upon graduation, out of desperation, I took a job in retail hell. I won't say the name but it is a trendy teen-20's store that is CRAZY busy all the time. It was my first job in retail. The 3rd job I ever held. This job should have been a job I had in high school. It might have been fun then. It was horrible! I went in there to do a job with a very high work ethic and a mentality to do my best! I realized that hard work wasn't really rewarded. Girls who had worked there for YEARS were never promoted because they were "too young" even though a manager that is there was just the same age. Sometimes the girls were promised a position in the future and then they go and hire from OUTSIDE. It was crazy. The hours were crappy along with the pay but worse than that it was a job where you felt like you weren't taken serious and people just liked to make you miserable. The store manager was a JOKE. (My interactions with the other managers and the District Manager were really great though!) She didn't really care about much and was way too lax and didn't hold the standards that needed to be met. She had a horrible leadership style that wasn't effective. I couldn't stand being in an environment where people didn't value hard work and that girls were telling their managers off if they were asked to do something and somehow nobody EVER got fired?! It was insanity! I quit after 8 months..so it is by my own doing that I am not employed essentially. However, sometimes you just have to do what is best for you and I didn't want to be there any longer. It was hard because I'm not a quitter in normal circumstances but I wasn't growing or learning there anymore. There was no value in being there to me. (Things I wish I could point out on my resume: I was offered the manager position there after 6 months but I turned it down due to the fact I really could not handle working with that particular store manager anymore. I couldn't work somewhere that did not value hard work and a place where everything was just a joke. It's unfortunate because I really could have seen myself doing well in that company at the corporate level or even doing visual merchandising since I was always doing things for the visuals anyways..)

Anyways, that's where I'm coming from. I'm not some person that had a good job and got laid off. I know I have to start from the bottom but I want to start from the right place on the bottom. Working jobs that aren't going to get me on the path to my career goals are just not something I'm looking for right now. Everyone has their own standards but those are mine! :)

Just another fish in the unemployed sea..

except that I am pretty fabulous..and these potential employers are going to find that out! :)

I would have never in my life imagined that after graduating from college I would have been where I am now-unemployed and being rejected day after day for jobs I know that I could do very well. No call backs, no interviews, not even a chance. I also never imagined that I would graduate smack dab in the middle of a really bad recession where the job market is the worst it has been in a long while. I guess I didn't sense the impending doom in the voice of our graduation speaker that day. I remember he talked about hard times in the job market but I didn't think that I applied to me.

I thought it would pretty much go down like this- I graduate from college. I take a little time off to travel. This would entail "finding myself", becoming more of a cultured individual, become free from the shackles of conventional university learning, and just altogether enjoy the merriment of frolicking around Europe as a young, ambitious 23 year old.

I would return from my great adventure relaxed and ready to have some structure again and perhaps a lot more broke than I was before I left. I would start sending my resume out and then the phone calls would come. They would call and request an interview with me and be very excited about what I could bring to the table. I would be overwhelmed at the job offers I received and I would go back and forth on who I would choose. I would eventually choose the one that suited me the most and could become the start to a successful career. It was a wonderful daydream.

But here I am. A year later--unemployed, jaded, feeling like a failure, ready to give up, and deflated to umpteenth power. I was ready to concede. I was. But I realized I have a lot more fight left in me. Thus sparked my mission to land myself a great job in 2010 and to record it as a way to keep myself accountable and to possibly give encouragement to others in the same situation.

What is your story?