This is from Bob Lefsetz’s letter he sends via email, and he was kind enough to let me reprint it. Lengthy, but awesome and great writing. Dude is legit, with a wikipedia page and he has actual ideas that he is dedicated to, which is a crazy, crazy notion these days (says my internal grandma). He has been known to piss of douchebags like Kid Rock and Gene Simmons from that band Smooch. Absorb his internet existence at lefsetz.com. Proceed at your own risk, baby.
Freelancing: it’s a real thing, and nothing to be ashamed of. It scares the shit out of some people (I’m talking to you, mom, even though you don’t read my website), but it turns out it’s doable. Even profitable. And to some, preferable.
I thought of freelancing, at first, as a consolation prize for not getting a job. But then I realized freelancing IS a job, and it can provide you with a living. Everyone needs creatives, it turns out, it’s just that no one wants them in their offices cramping their suit-y style more than once per week. Which works just fine for us. Read the rest of this entry »
There are so many crappy cover letter “examples” on the internet. I think some sort of internet authority should come through with a giant internet eraser and remove any sort of job advice that was posted prior to 2009. Maybe cache it for historical reasons. Oh wait. I think I’m talking about how China does things. My bad. But, without further adieu, here is an actual cover letter that I have actually used to actually get a job.
I have a suspicion that the traditional style of cover letter writing doesn’t work anymore, and therefore, like irony after 9/11 and God after basically every day, I declare the cover letter dead. RIP, cover letter. You served us well when the economy wasn’t so crappy.
This is a co-post. This time with my under/unemployment club cohost, Whitney. She provided her experiences, and to conceal her identity and the identity of the organization she applied for, I summarized her answers into basic instructions on how to answer the questions.
“Before my interview a couple weeks ago, I made this cheat sheet. Sometimes, in the heat of the moment, I forget my qualifications, the questions I want to ask, etc. Having this in front of me was a big help. If you have an in-person interview, make one of these and have a friend/SO/pet/parent ask you surprise questions and use a list of questions like this as a study guide. It really boosts confidence. She asked me more/different questions but they all were pretty close.
Read the rest of this entry »
My friend Stephanie was kind enough to write a guest post about why what font you use matters in your cover letter and resume. I don’t know about you guys, but I always send my resume as a PDF unless they ask for something else. I did have a smart-looking, neatly designed resume with a lot of white space in a sans serif font before, but sans-serifs go against everything I know about guiding the reader’s eye, and also, because many of these higher education/ larger companies are asking for word docs, I’ve put the fancy design on the back-burner and have been sending out my traditional snooze-a-roo resume to various joints.
Sometimes when you’re unemployed you feel like a bag of crap, sitting around, blogging about unemployment, seeking refuge at the library because you don’t have air conditioning, and then feeling guilty that your cats are alone in the house for no good reason except that you’re a baby and can’t handle the heat. Oh wait, no, those aren’t the reasons you feel like crap. You feel like crap because your life lacks structure and you can’t keep track of what you’ve been doing. “Where do the days go?” is an actual question you actually ask yourself with sincerity. Boy, you have developed a relationship with sincerity as an unemployed person, haven’t you?
Holy crap do I have a sunburn. Luckily, my apartment is not impossibly hot today, and my Sarna lotion (which my husband says smells like nursing homes (it does)), does not have to compete with my sweat.
A story from my friend Stephanie about her trials with resume-writing.
“Before landing this job, I quit my full-time freelance gig not really realizing how harsh it was out there (but I shouldn’t have been there as long as I was). Anywho, I honestly was only offered interviews from people I knew, through people they knew–and that was a very small number.