I Hope You're Sticking Around...

Just trying to adjust to having a full time day job again. Of course, the real test comes in when I get paid. I'm not about to have a repeat performance of the scam artistry of last November. I won't be working unpaid for 3 months this time.

Realized that I have some links I really should go & comment on:

* Legalities aside, I & every sane person in this country have been wanting this to happen for years. It's time to start following the example of other countries & treating citizenship with the importance that it deserves instead of letting illegals cash in on everything.


* A few comments on this:

First off, honesty is a total misnomer in a job interview. It IS, seriously. You walk in there wearing clothes you don't normally wear, rehearsing your answers ahead of time & telling an employer precisely what they want to hear. Personal style & creativity is generally frowned upon as is not being a robot. A smart interviewer knows that there is a degree of dishonesty in any job interview. I would even go so far as to say that a job interview is the ultimate act of dishonesty, especially when competition for a job is fierce & lots of people are desperate.

Second, I'm glad that some of my methods are things that one should do such as dealing w/overqualification right away. Thankfully, my current position didn't come w/that problem. I'm still learning but at least it's in the title of attorney.

Also glad to see that this person despises the practice of not doing a follow-up after giving someone an interview. I hate that & it's a true pet peeve of mine.

Third, employers should also not rely on candidates filling a position. They may have other interviews & get better offers or people who are more proactive than Potential Employer #1.

A few more comments: checking references off list could lead to potential lawsuits. What if someone said "do not contact X person?" There could be defamation issues so we might want to tread carefully there.

We're also not addressing the catch-22 of "no experience w/out a job; no job w/out experience." You can't volunteer everywhere & for every single field. It's actually a terrible idea to volunteer at a library in order to work as a librarian; my husband found out that it will harm you if you pursue that area.

Also not smart to do it as a lawyer unless you're in law school; if you've graduated, you should already have gotten internships or done something in the legal industry to learn how to practice law. Otherwise, you end up stuck as a permanent volunteer/unpaid worker & never get the respect from anyone to move forward. You end up devaluing your own skills & no one takes you seriously if you're doing it years after getting admitted. I've seen many lawyers not take up & comers seriously but simply exploit them for free labor.

For the record, legal aid & other similar groups have requirements for volunteers; I know Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts requires 7 years of legal experience before you can work w/them. Now my situation has not been on a volunteer basis but is a result of how the entertainment industry works.

Oh, and personality not fitting the corporate culture: what if someone's personality is repugnant to everyone? What if you're in an occupation where you're supposed to be less than happy flowers & sunshine to people, where in fact such behavior would cause those you had to get things from to brush you aside? Somewhere, I'm sure there are people whose personalities & general inner being are offensive to everyone in the room; what then?

Finally, be honest but don't talk about a bad boss? Hmmm.... can we say "be a liar?" I don't think that when your former position was a scam enterprise that you help yourself by defending the scam, especially when you have ethical duties to the general public under a professional license. I also think you have a right to talk about the lack of advancement opportunities if people who don't even interact w/you on a frequent basis are the ones making the decisions while ignoring anyone who does spend time w/you (including your immediate boss) & says you deserve to move upward.

Honestly, I think I did much better in interviews when I wasn't worried about making someone like me & simply approached it like a business transaction.

Two big problems w/this one:

First, if I were still dating I prefer not wasting my time w/an animal hater or a two bit scumbag who's just like an ex. I had no qualms talking about pets or exes & used such conversation to determine whether I needed to bother getting to know this person any further. One doesn't need to be the crazy cat lady or mega-obsessed on something but I certainly think it's pertinent to share stories on these topics to implicitly tell someone just what will happen if THEY try doing to me what X in the story did.

Second, you can use that stuff for bonding. My husband & I bonded over bad ex stories. It became a question of whose exes are worse. We declared it a tie.

Oh, and readers? If you try to seek me out aside from this blog, know that I am a very suspicious & paranoid person. Life & general reality has made me this way.

If you have a complaint about that, then take it up w/all the people who have wronged me in some way. Ask nicely & I'll give you a list.