Day 17: Homework

Yesterday was Day 17, a Saturday.

Recommended for job hunters is diversifying the methods used. At one time, many years ago, whenever I would look for a job I used monster.com or newspaper classified ads. Neither of these methods are great options today, IMO.

monster's a shadow of what it used to be. Not sure when that happened, although the eruption of competitive job-search sites surely hurt. Use as many as you can find. It can be tiring. People don't get how hard it is to wade through these sites. For me, you start with the search, but then you need to research the company a bit, find out if it is a good fit. I briefly worked for a company that had as its corporate persona a strongly religious stance. It was challenging for me because I believe that a person's religious views are a private matter. The job itself was OK, the people were nice enough, but this overwhelming presence seemed to me to be a potential problem.

Unless you're selling God, if you're a religious-heavy business, aren't you automatically threatening your business success? Are you able to reach customers who don't share those views? That, to me, is the capitalist's strongest argument for keeping religion out of the workplace. It's not good business.

But I digress.

The job search *is* work. You can carpet-bomb possible employers with resumes, but if the fit isn't a good one, you're wasting their time. Worse, you're wasting *yours.* So I always try and look a little deeper into a company and see whether or not the marriage has potential.

And I look at a lot of different sites. I still look at monster. I rarely look at classifieds any more, because unless you do so online, that's an expense (albeit a small one) for a newspaper. I spent most of my life in Failed DinoMedia and it hurts that they're failing so hugely.

I also use Career Builder, Indeed, Yahoo HotJobs, LinkedIn. I've used TheLadders. It's also a good idea to look at the career opportunities online of local businesses that are good fits. Here in Gawd's country, that means Walmart and the UofArkansas. There are others here, but those two are the top employers.

Saturday, however, I spent doing household chores. Menial things, like washing windows, vacuuming, dusting, Furminating the dogs, and several loads of laundry. Sometimes you need to do things to stop the ennui. It was productive.

And actually, the day turned out revenue-positive: the state's tax refund check arrived. $245.

To celebrate, I had a snow cone. Got the discounted special for $2.50. Livin' large!

Saturday's timesheet: 6 hours.

Researching jobs/prospects: 1.5 hours.

Jobs applied for: 0. Did see Indeed posts for dogsitter and babysitter. Think I'd prefer the dogs.

Other productive activities: Serious housecleaning. 4.5 hours.

Nonproductive activities: Watched half of "Hoffa" on DVR, Web time suckage, 2.5 hours.

Song for today: "Clean Up Woman" by Betty Wright. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0ssMVL9I1Q