Senioritis: The Job Hunt

By Jenni

I spend 83% of my day deleting e-mails from my career center. It seems they spend 100% of their day sending out e-mails with job tips, career fair, and networking seminars. Every time I report one as spam, five more pop up in its place.

And the most frustrating thing is that their language is all so misleading.

Job Hunting makes the process sound so adventurous. I’m immediately thinking back to shooting oxen (too many pounds to carry back!) on the Oregon Trail. Instead it’s scrolling through databases and filling out applications. I went to the resume building workshop. I assumed that we would be physically stacking up our resumes to build some sort of post-modern card house that would look awesome while also giving some insight into resume writing. Instead, it’s listening to all the things I should have on my resume instead of babysitting jobs from the 7th grade.

And don’t even get me started about the words career FAIR. I walked in with a bib over my pants suit ready to munch on a giant turkey leg while talking about jobs with a company representative in a ferris wheel. Instead I found a bunch of tables manned by serious adults handing out pamphlets and business cards. If nothing else, can’t they at least put a cotton candy booth in the one corner?

So I’ve abandoned all the “help” the career center gives me and I’ve moved onto bigger and better things. And by bigger and better I mean creepier and sexier – I’ve resorted to Craigslist, the only website on the internet more dangerous than Myspace.

I’ve been using it for years to find a summer job and even though it’s had a 0% success rate so far, it makes me feel so accomplished. And, sure, along the way I’ve learned that not everyone tells the truth. Sometimes when they say “successful production company looking for an intern” they actually mean that it’s one person sitting in their basement with ambitions of not only making a movie, but possibly killing the person that responds to the ad (me!). But that’s OK. I’ve figured out not to return the messages insisting I meet in a park at midnight to go over career options, or the ones saying I would be perfect for the job as long as I don’t mind nannying naked.

My quest on Craigslist isn’t so much about actually finding a job, but more that I can tell people that I applied to 46 jobs that day. They ooo and aww and pat me on the back for being a go-getter. I say thank you and tell them that if they don’t hear from me for a few days it would be wise to contact the police.

But then, even after my days of surfing Craigslist, I’m still left unemployed. And adults always like to cheer me up by saying things like, “Did you know this is the worst year ever to graduate?” and “Everyone’s being laid off. No one’s getting a job this year.”

Is laid off the same thing as getting laid?