Sunday, August 25, 2013

Getting A Job Was Supposed To Be The Easy Part!

Day 1: I'm home and have nothing at all I have to do! This is so great!
Day 3: There's food everywhere and I don't even have to do laundry?! I should just live here
Day 5: Okay, I'm starting to remember why I could never live here. The boredom. It's all consuming.
Day 7: Funemployment continues. I fear it will soon cease to be fun.
Day 7.5: Unemployment has begun. Get me out.

Maybe it's the whole living with my parents thing or maybe it's the fact that I swore on everything I held sacred that I would never move back home. Don't get me wrong, it's great seeing all my high school classmates who decided to graze in this tiny town like a herd of cattle, but I need to escape Alcatraz. Whatever the reason for my dismay, I need a job and I need it now.

As I plodded through my college career, there was one fact which I knew to be true and took for absolute granted: With a B.S in Computer Science, I would never fail to find a job. While my business and history major compatriots would search fruitlessly, I'd be sitting in a plush office chair with my feet on the desk and pockets bursting with gold and/or money. Probably money, but maybe a combo if I got into collecting jewelry. Oh and you know how the market fluctuates, gold might be safe. But man, it's so heavy and then I'd be all worried about like theft and stuff. So yeah probably mostly money, but back to my point. Job assurance. I'd be in demand while many of my fellow graduates would not.

However, to my dismay I'm finding that development jobs all seem to suffer from the same infuriating problem: The companies that hire for these positions are as hard to talk to as the stereotypical Computer Science student is. For example, recently I've become an avid user of an awesome site called AngelList. What they do is put you directly in touch with startups looking for new hires, all you do is browse their job directory, click on jobs you're interested in, and if the company clicked is also interested in you, the site sends both you and the company an email introducing the two parties to each other. Simple, right? Wrong. Having used the site now for about 2 weeks, I've had 11 of these introductions. Of those 11, I emailed three of my "matches," was emailed by five of my matches, and no communication was established between the remaining three matches. Okay, everything seems pretty much kosher so far. Moving on, of the five matches who emailed me, three responded to my reply email asking about next steps and only two set up a phone interview with me. Wtf? Why would a company email me about my interest then fail to respond when I'm interested? Rude, stupid, and infuriating, the trifecta. Anyways, to summarize, of the five who emailed me, only two resulted in any real outcome. Back to the three I emailed first. Not one answered my email. Not a single company out of the three. Literally do not have the words to express how aggravating this was/is. If you could see my face right now, you'd understand. All in all, this means of 11 introductions, only two amounted to any sort of tangible result. *facepalm*

So I lumber on down the road of unemployment. Flickers of opportunity drift in from off the path but slowly fade back into darkness. I will persevere. I will continue on. I won't stop until I have my 60k salary and my fully stocked fridge with Friday night outings and a stellar 401k. I will have my customized laptop and my foosball table and my own scooter which I'll use to ride freely through the office, hair blowing wildly behind me. I will have a job and I will move out, I must!


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