Context and Cocktails

Resumes out, calls, phone interviews, getting jerked around by HR departments. On the one hand, I am relieved that I am getting a response to my resume. One of the reasons I went to business school was that I was living the cliche of the post-bubble bay area. I had a fabulous upward career path, made more money than I ever had before, and then faster then you can say "bust" it was gone. I could barely find places to send my resume, and when I did, it was like a large sucking vacuum into a void. So actually having people RESPOND made me feel optimistic. On the other hand, I was really running out of money, fast. It was nice to get a response, but I did not have a lot time to come up with cash and even the temp jobs were requiring interviews and all kinds of other crap beyond the basic temp agency screening. But of course while living on the edge of poverty, I am staying in my haven of modern zen serenity, with a housekeeper once a week who does my laundry. The amazing thing about the laundry is not only does it get done, but it gets folded, into the flattest, neatest piles. I continued to be mystified how she achieves this. Clearly, it is the work of a professional. But I digress.

The reality of my economic situation pops up when I interact with the outside world. I am aware of every dollar I spend because it seems like as soon as I step out the door money evaporates, and I am having a serious drought. I hate this state of mind. A wise woman once told me that you never want to have your hand so tightly closed around your money that your hand has no room to receive money. I believe these are words to live by. But in August 2005, I am finding it challenging to fully embrace that.

Veronica, aka Roni Sue, aka Fab Black Woman, and one of my favorite people, is coming to town for the weekend. She lives on the east coast. I cannot make the dinner party on Saturday night and I simply must see her. We are going to meet for drinks some where in the mission. I do not really have money for drinks, but if one of your favorite people fly from the east coast for 48hrs and you have leave town with within 12 of those hours, you absolutely must have drinks with them.

It was my job to pick the bar. I have not really been out in the city since the bust and I know a lot of places have closed, so I got to citysearch.com to see what is still around and what might be intriguing. I settle on the Latin American club. I have not been there but some of my girlz from Mills liked drinking there and its the mission, it can't be too expensive.

That night I head off to the city in the Audi. I am relieved to discover that the car has fastrak and my toll gets paid. I hate myself for caring about $3. The self-hatred passes and I find my way to the bar. I like it immediately. Its a bar's bar. A little crowded but I still manage to score a couple of bar stools together.

The Latin American Club turns out to be a good call. I order a margarita and it arrives on the rocks in a pint class usually reserved for beer or lattes. Veronica shows up and the pint of margarita that only costs $6 lasts the entire evening. I feel far less irresponsible now.

After too quick of an evening I drop her off where she is staying and location of the bash I would be missing because I am going rafting*. It was at that bash where she and our friend Chan bestowed me with the honor of being "unemployed with the most style."

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* I am a volunteer guide with Healing Waters, an awesome organization to give your time and/or money to, so check 'em out.

You can wear Jeans!

I quickly get over Sony. The following Sunday I retrieve a message on my home voicemail. It is a recruiter at Autodesk. She leaves me a desperate message to call her that evening, even if it is late. I did not get the message till 9:30p but she said "even if its late" being naturally nocturnal I think that means midnight, but I know the rest of the time zone is not on my schedule. I decide that 9:30p is still reasonable; I get her voicemail and leave her a message. She does not call back. I guess "late" for her is early. I follow-up Monday morning- voicemail. Wanting to be an persistent and interested candidate, but not a stalker, I give her a couple of days to call me back before trying again. Where is that line?

I know there are zillions of career advice web sites/books/mothers of the unemployed that insist you must be persistent, but on the other hand, when I was a recruiter I got really annoyed by people calling me multiple times a day. One guy who never even interviewed was under the impression he worked for me and did not understand why I would not call him for assignments. But I digress. I never minded smart, polite people calling that I had been meaning to call any way, but I am always cautious not to become the annoying one. If someone makes a business call on a Sunday evening and says you can call them until "late" doesn't that seem like they want to talk to you?

Later in the week, I finally got her on the phone, and she swore she would call me back in 15 minutes, she just could not talk then. The next day I got a poorly automated email that had the job description in it twice and some other garble. I think it was supposed to communicate to me that I was not going to be interviewed after all. Hmmmm.

Autodesk is #84 on Forbes Top 100 Best Companies to Work For. I always wonder what that is supposed to mean. . .

The article list 3 highlights
1. You can dress down
2. You can bring your dog
3. Chats with the CEO.

Those things are all nice, but in 2005 why is a company still getting credit for casual dress? Its hardly a differentiator any more, unless you are on Wall Street. What tech company does not have a casual dress policy? The recruiter who sent me to Sony kept harping on the fact that you could wear jeans to work and that is one of the many reasons I would be sooo lucky to work there. I have worked for several companies, since 1992, and I did not buy a suit(and a casual one at that) until 2000 and that was only because I wanted to dress that way to see clients. Otherwise yes, you could wear anything, even jeans.

Cool Cucumber - Wilted

I enter the Sony building in Foster City. This also seems surreal, or at least dream like. The building is on Foster City Blvd across from Leo Ryan Memorial park. When I was a kid, the park was grass and dirt and the area occupied by buildings that house Sony and Visa International was just raw open space(or maybe water awaiting landfill? Definitely not office buildings.) Leo Ryan was a congressman and still alive, yet to be murdered in Guyana at the Jim Jones Kool-Aid test. My family came to this spot to watch fireworks every fourth of July.

I go to the reception desk, fill out the requisite NDA and slap on my "Guest" security badge and while the receptionist calls the person I am to meet with. I overhear that he is not in yet. Nice. I sit down in the reception area and there is nothing read except video game magazines. Not even a newspaper. Talk about drinking the kool-aid.

After 20 minutes or so, an awkward engineering type comes to come to collect me; this is my interviewer. We go to his office. Before the interview I was informed by the recruiter that they have had trouble finding the "right" person for this position and amongst all the resumes the department had seen, I was the only one they wanted to interview.

During the interview he fidgets, never looks me directly in the eyes, gets up and talks to someone outside the door, takes a phone call. Hmm . . . the luxury of the hiring person. Could you imagine an interviewee behaving like this? Note to hiring managers: The economy will change, and then you will have behave to get someone decent.

I try to find out what the job would entail, and well, there are a lot of things that I potentially could do that no one is doing at the moment, but the most urgent problem was getting his expenses paid. But it is not that urgent, he hopes hire someone in about a month. No wonder they can't find the "right" person. They do not even really know what they want.

This now seems like a complete waste of my time. The position failing the key criteria of immediate cash flow. A month? who knows where I will be then.

Identity Fraud

The haven's comfortable and well-equipped office was the ideal venue to channel my anxiety into productive activity. I write a third resume to temp agencies to emphasize my portable skills, like every imaginable software application and de-emphasize my advanced degree that supposedly would be opening doors to high level positions any second now.

I write impassioned cover letters(well, the passion was built into the template, so really it was more like impassioned copy, paste and edit) to accompany my resume to marketing and management consulting firms. I feel a little schitzoid because one minute I am "pursuing opportunities in marketing management" and the next "my goal is to build a career focused on strategy development." Adding the third resume for temp positions made me feel like I had committed identity fraud on myself. But truthfully, I really am all three of those identities, so I would like to be the one that can make me the most money, but I am going with who can get me money soonest. Alas, the third resume.

I set up appointment with some new temp agencies. I suffered through a year of accounting classes, might as well try and maximize my hourly wage while submitting to hourly wage slavery. Accounting is tedious to learn, but it is easy to apply. My friend from Mills who has an accounting degree gives me the name of two agencies that have kept her consistently working. Elite and Accountants, Inc. She referred me to specific people at those firms who both turned out to be smarter than the average temp recruiter.

The recruiter from Elite is a little unsure about me because of my limited experience in accounting, but then a job comes across her desk at Sony Playstation. Its a project coordinator position that I am overqualified for, but I nonetheless must drive to Foster City to be interviewed. Ok, that sounds bitter. At the time I do not think I minded, but my total experience there has left me a tad bitter. When I went down there for an interview, I think I was feeling upbeat at the possibility of a positive cash flow. Pulling into Sony's parking lot in the aforementioned Audi blasting the air conditioning on a blazing hot day and I was feeling as cool as a cucumber.

Blind Faith

Undaunted by these early missteps I move forward. It is now getting towards the end of June 2005* and it is time for me to house-sit at what I like to refer to as my "haven in the hills." I need to feed the cats, cuddle with them while surfing about every channel imaginable on TV and make sure the hot tub works until the first week of August.

Of course it is also less than 10 days away from paying the rent on my actual residence. I calculate what I have and I am definitely going to be short if something does not happen. Though anxious, I have faith something something will work out. The universe has blessed me in many situations like this, and I am hoping the universe still has my back. It turns out it does. A week later I receive an unexpected $500, the rent is paid and I wonder how I keep getting so lucky. It is,
well . . .surreal.

Fortunately, my "haven in the hills" is well equipped with fast computers and even faster broadband. I sit in a small home office, with a view of the bay framed by pine trees and diligently send out resumes. I also register with a few new temp agencies, because I am going to need a more reliable cash flow than my luck can provide.

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* My friends reading the blog have been asking if I am in Paris now, so I will try to remember mention the actual date of where I am on the timeline through out this exploration of the past.

Time to be serious

I am back home and ready to get to work. I have a suit and some fabulous shoes to finish the look off, a professional haircut, make-up from a make-over at Neiman Marcus and of course that MBA. Looking at me you would never know I have been to near 100 Dead shows,* read The Communist Manifesto. and lived in Barrington Hall

I am ready for these interviews.







The recruiter from Ketchum was very nice. Despite the fact that she works out of the NY office, she was still responsive and timely with phone calls and email. I was pretty psyched about this interview. First of all, because I had not applied, they found my resume on monster.com and contacted me.

As I am getting dressed for the interview, I get a call, the hiring manager is not in the office as planned, can we make it a phone interview? Sure why not. It was kind of a waste of blowing drying my hair and actually using some product, but it beats riding BART into the city.

The phone interview starts off well. I feel upbeat and articulate. The guy is really pressing me on my interest in PR. Hmmm. I am interested because your company expressed an interest in me, and I want to find out what you this opportunity could do for me.

I respond with some answer about marketing becoming more viral, blah blah blah. Then we discuss the job description. Amongst the 20 things listed I have solid experience in 19 of them. He then asks me if I have experience writing press releases and pitching reporters-- not things listed in the job description. I am frank. I have managed a PR firm as my vendor, but I have not executed the tactics myself. He returns the frankness "that's what I need."

I do not bother to mention that if that is what he needs, he should put THAT in the job description, but I do mention that Ketchum Recruiting contacted me and he might want to clarify what he does need with them. At this point I think we are both relieved that we did this as a phone interview instead of in person.

As far as Modem Media, I could not get the recruiter to respond back to me after she initiated contact with me.

At this point I feel the need to mention that I was a recruiter for five years. I completely understand why companies do not respond to every resume. The agency I worked for actually did, but it was time consuming and I do not think our responses could be characterized as prompt. But, when a candidate is responding to a recruiter's inquiry, is it not just common decency to reply to that candidate? Evidently not in the twenty-first century. At this point, I wrote it off as an overwhelmed recruiter, too many candidates, too few openings. I soon to learn this is actually a trend if not an accepted practice.

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*Note: I mean the real Grateful Dead with Jerry, not that band of leftovers calling themselves "The Dead" of recent years.

Shoes and email revisited

chaussures et email encore . . .

It is very tempting to recap, and therefore, relive every moment of this trip, the cheese, the nutella crepes, the meals and the aesthetic ecstasy. The amusing moments of my nephew transforming from a teenager who thinks the world revolves around the US to a more worldly kid. And not least of all, the European coverage of the Michael Jackson verdict.

But it is my goal to sort through this past year of my job search and find a little clarity so I can move on to the next phase in my life. However, if you are ever in Paris, you must dine at Restaurant Astier, the cheese plate alone makes it worthwhile.



So by the end of the trip I received two job related emails, one from Ketchum and one from Modem Media. I email them back to tell them I am very interested in the positions they are contacting me about and when I will be back in town. Thank god my mom decided to buy me a pair of shoes for an early birthday present so that I had a good pair of shoes that went with my suit.

Croissants, shoes and email

Springtime in Paris . . .

There is a reason classic musicals and other cliches recall this fabulous city during the spring, it truly is so beautiful. Something about the light that time of year. This is my 4th trip to Paris but the first time during spring. I always love it, but I really love it in spring. This is my third time staying in my friend's apartment near Place Maubert, so I am not only enjoying the springtime but a comfortable familiarity as well.

Still adjusting to the time change, my nephew and I wake up really early. That is ok, we walk to pick-up the buttery, melt in your mouth croissants at the place nearby. Much to my shock, it is not open. I realize 6am is too early, and within the hour there will be the fresh croissants.

I immediately start looking around for an internet cafe, I know there are a few around but I do not remember exactly where they are. What my nephew notices is that porn is openly sold at the newsstand. Generally, I am pretty compulsive about checking and responding to email, so I really want know where my spot is going to be for the next ten days, as if I would be getting instant job offers from the resumes I sent out. And the offer will depend on my immediate response.

I also decide to check to see if my unemployment check arrived and it was deposited. For some reason I am surprised it is not there. It had not come in the mail before I left, and I had not been gone that long, but with the jet lag, it seemed like ages. It took me a slow minute to figure this out that it was the middle of the night in Berkeley, CA and there probably had not been another mail delivery since I left.

Before I left I scraped together the last of my student loan, some miscellaneous income for random tasks, and covered the rent. I was given some euros for graduation but otherwise I had very little spending money. I would have to restrain myself. I have yet to leave Paris without at least one pair of shoes, but I would have to stay out of the shoes stores this time.

I want to be very clear; I am not complaining at all. But it is weird to be living a very privileged life in the moment to moment, but in the longer term (but near future)have your whole life on the edge, making a house of cards seem like it has a solid foundation.

At this point I am still optimistic. I can calm myself, relax and enjoy Paris and a croissant.

A fork in the road

By graduation, I not only had a resume and cover letter, but I had two of each. There were two directions I was equally interested in and so I took a two-pronged approach to my job search.

Prong 1: I was really interested in Management Consulting -- it appeared the place that the MBA is most valued, where you get paid extremely well for the skills acquired during business school and it involves tons of travel. As someone who first entered the job market with a Humanities degree from Berkeley, the idea of a job directly corresponding to your degree seemed quite a novelty. Besides, I think I would like it.
I know, I know, "you have to work really hard." I do anyway.

Prong 2: Return to plan A. When I started thinking about getting an MBA the plan was to stay in marketing and advance to a senior level. After all, as my new marketing resume currently states I am an:

Astute and results-oriented marketing professional with 10+ years experience in account management, project management and strategy development.

I would find a job soon enough. True Bush was still in the white house, but the economy seemed to be recovering. I do some mass emailing of my resume and cover letter to companies before I leave the country.

Surrealism 101

I have received a request for a working definition of surrealism. And since this blog currently has 3 readers I can accommodate the current flow of reader requests.

I think most people know that surrealism has something to do with Salvador Dali and/or Rene Magritte. Technically, it was an aesthetic movement in painting and literature that was concerned with portraying images of the subconscious and/or dream states.

My interactions with recruiters and hiring managers as well as my daily life has taken on this characteristic of odd juxtaposed images that don't make sense together yet they are conveying the truth of my existence.

For example, my checking account balance is under ten dollars, I have a stack of unpaid bills, I am not quite sure how I am going to pay my rent, and yet I am driving an Audi Quattro, up a hill, to a beautiful house where I am living for the next six weeks. It is like a dream state. It feels entirely natural, like this is how my life should be.

None of it is mine. In fact I am being paid to oversee it all. This requires very little on my part for what I get in return. I can lull myself from the anxiety of my life, temporarily. But I am also perplexed by how entitled I feel to a life like this and how far I am from that.

How do I make the transition from beautiful house sitter to beautiful house owner?

David Byrne said it best "My God, how did I get here?"

Lets review

Why is the job search surreal?

In my mind this job search began in Spring of 2005, my last semester of business school. Now that semester started off slow for me because during winter break I broke my ankle and required surgery. So at the beginning of that semester, I was in a walking cast and taking regular doses of vicodin.

To get my MBA I went to Mills College which is a small program with small classes resulting in regular class discussion. Someone who is generally comfortable speaking up, in a small class, on a lot vicodine . . . well lets just say my grades for in-class participation where high (double entendre unintended).

So this was the mental state I was in when I was attempting to do my resume and develop a job search strategy. I was able to stop taking the painkillers 3 weeks into the semester. With a clear head, I realized I was so OVER business school. None the less, with my bad attitude I ended the semester with my highest GPA yet, a respectable resume, and a tight cover letter template. A milestone that seemed like it would never arrive, finally did.

The resume was sent out, a few nibbles, emails from recruiters, etc. I am feeling confident that within a month or two I should have a job. With a comforted mind and an ability to "be unemployed with the most style"* my broke self was off to Paris with my mom and nephew for 10 days.



*I was given this honored title by two friends. How I swing this and why will arise later because it contributes to surreality of my existence.

The blog begins

I have been haunted by the idea that i need to start writing a blog ever since I read Julie and Julia where the author redeems her existence through french cooking and blogging.

Though I am quite full of opinions I was not sure if really had anything to say that was blog-worthy, but if that is not stopping anyone else, why should it stop me?

Motivation arrived when two friends of mine from different dimensions of my life suggested I write a blog about my current job search, which can only be described as surreal at this point. Veronica and Robin, both genius' in their own rights and in different ways had the same idea. One in Hawaii, one in NY, there is gotta be something to it.

For quite some time I have been researching and trying to find contacts at google. Along the way I found blogger, and well the perfect storm of motivation and an easy to use tool has come to pass, and well here is my blog.