On Job Hunting (and Why It Sucks)

I know I’ve been pretty quiet lately about how the job hunting has been going, and the short answer is quite simply that it hasn’t been going well. At all.

The longer answer is this: I’ve been looking for new employment for about a year, and have been unemployed for closing in on six months, and for all the jobs I’ve applied for, I’ve only managed to nab maybe three interviews. That’s it! I have a college degree and a job history that includes three years working for a high-profile State agency, and there doesn’t seem to be any place willing to even meet me face-to-face. I cannot tell you how frustrating that is.

Even more frustrating is that in late November I learned about some job openings with the State, including a couple with my old team. I was ecstatic! I took the necessary State exam, qualified, and sent off my application as soon as the jobs were posted online. And then I waited.

A month passed with nary a word about if or when I might receive an interview. In the mean time, I started recieving job inquiries for other State positions based on my high exam scores, so I sent off applications for those jobs as well. But then a letter of a different sort arrived in my mailbox: it was a rejection letter from my old employer, saying that I was not qualified for the positions I applied for and therefore would not receive an interview. I was shocked! I contacted HR and plead my case: how could I not be qualified when I had done the same job before as a Student Assistant and – in fact – trained the person whom I would be replacing?

In the end, my rejection was due to a technicality.

So, as they say, it is back to the drawing board for me. I’m still looking for full-time office positions down in Sacramento, but those are so hard to come by it seems, so I’ve expanded my search to more local part-time work, like retail. I so desperately want to move back to Sacramento, but at this point I have no idea when that might happen. I just need work – not just for money but for my own sanity – and any job is better than no job.