Unemploymentality

Recession Lesson #1 Million dollar dreams and nickel slots will not get rid of your unemploymentality. 

 Mesquite Nevada is a tiny casino town on the border of Utah.  It catches eager Mormons itching to sin on their way to Las Vegas.  I guess that explains why the place was practically dead.  I decided to make my first overnight here because you can always count on two things in Casino Towns – cheap rooms and cheap beer.  Plus, bless her heart, the Virgin River Resort & Casino is pet friendly. 

 After checking in I cruised the casino thinking it would be fun to play $50 or so.  You never know, all you need is a dollar and a dream right?  But with every row of slot machines I passed, there were a few men & woman that looked like they had been sitting on the same stool with the same dream for several decades.  Cigarettes hung heavy from their lips and they’d long since forgotten about posture or trying to look like they had other places to be.  Instead they mechanically pulled their levers, pushed their buttons and patiently waited for their million dollar dreams to come true. 

 Shortly after I was canned another laid-off friend and I got together for lunch to lament our situation.  We started expressing our frustrations with work in general and what we really wanted to be doing.  We dreamed about how nice it would be to just get rich.  To get rich quick and just stop worrying about driving our careers forward and all that’s involved in doing just that.  Half seriously we started kicking around different things that we thought we could do to get to the fast lane and forget about the toil that we’d consumed ourselves with for yours.  Eventually we landed on playing the lottery or gambling. 

And as soon as we had mentioned it the idea was gone. read more…

As if things weren’t bad enough for the unemployed.

Trying to decipher legit and made-up job postings, fighting tooth and nail for their unemployment checks, and politely listening well-intentioned “advice” from friends and family.

We thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Well it can.

According to the Wall Street Journal, employers – even in this economy – are giving preference to job applicants who are already gainfully employed. The reasoning? Those who are still working must be the cream of the crop. A type of corporate Darwinism.

Right. Because incompetent middle managers never cut their hardest working reports to save themselves. Because no one ever gets to stay put simply because they’re better at schmoozing with upper management. And because it’s always better to fly hundreds of miles to court an employed person, than to  give a local, perfectly qualified unemployed person a chance.

I think we all know that some extremely talented people have lost their jobs in the past eight months, for reasons that were well beyond their control (coughAIG-Citigroup-FannieMaecough). It seems ridiculous, at least to me, that anyone would be discriminated against for not having a job in the worst recession of our lifetime.

We’ve all heard the old adage: “it’s easier to find a job when you already have one.”

But isn’t it time for hiring managers to put aside their short-sighted, lazy, archaic litmus tests to find and nourish the very best talent?

Corporate culture is evolving. And yet, corporate HR departments have, so far, miraculously managed to dodge extinction. Clearly, Darwin’s theory is not fool proof.

Drinking coffee this morning out of my favorite mug gave me some really good ideas.

And by good I of course mean ridiculous.

My cup of choice happened to be a Dwight Schrute mug graced with a portrait of Dwight holding a sign that has his name spelled out as an acronym with attributes that he considered appealing to possible employers.

Brilliant.

Add that to the fact that my younger sister just forwarded me a resume she received at her marketing firm from a young woman who listed “handstands and basic tumbling” along with “writing and friendship bracelets” as her special skills.

These two occurances inspired me to create my very own Resume Acronym for those employers out there looking for something a little bit different.

L-egit

Y-iddish-Speaker

N-ational

D-efinitely hard working

S-omething to believe in

A-really good person

Y-outhful

Can you say HIRED?,

LR

Send us your Name Acronyms that you think would hook a potential employer. P.s. Dwight’s was D evoted, W orker, I ntelligent,  G  ood worker, H ard Worker, T errific.

For more of LR’s musings, Check out her blog for pete’s sake.

Yesterday I hit the road for a week and will be dropping back by the blog with reports from the road.  Now, originally this was to be the Recession Lessons Road Trip where I would visit several people who would have contributed their Recession Lesson stories to the blog for a chance to win awesome prizes like: 2^nd hand t-shirts, an autographed picture of my dog, or maybe even a copy of Tania’s blockbuster holiday mix, ‘Slow Jamz 4 Mom.”  We were to announce the winners of this contest on June 23^rd, but guess what?  We only received one contribution.  One.  And that contributor lives in D.C., which wasn’t even close to my route across country.  So I’ve canceled the competition. 

 But as always, there’s a lot to learn from ones failure, whether that failure be your layoff or a sucky blog competition. read more…

I know how this guy feels. John and I considered doing the same, but we started a blog instead.

I stumbled upon a great new site via twitter the other day.  It’s a comic strip that’s being created online by Lyman Dally a self-proclaimed ‘laid off Wall Street Exec.’  The comic chronicles the anti-adventures of Less, a frumpy hero who moves back in with his parents after beeing canned.  The art is pretty good, it’s smart, quite witty and I’m sure a lot of people out there will relate, even if they don’t want to.  Here’s a taste:

To enjoy the rest of this fun little comic online check out the Living with Less website…

• The Backup Dancer-  Have we learned nothing from Britney Spears’ mistakes? Wait, we really haven’t have we.
• The Lawn Mower- Because even my little brother could come up with a better way to earn money this summer
• The Barista- Unless the $8.75/hr he makes will magically buy you a nice dinner. Ever.
• The DJ- Do you really want to say “I’m with the DJ” ? You do don’t you.
• The “Network Marketer” – Prepare to sacrifice the contact information of your closest family and friends for the sake of success, er…i mean, love.
• The Bouncer- Can you say late nights and muscle T’s?
• The Janitor- Exceptions include Matt Damon types who clean up colleges and secretly solve math problems and have dimples and a genius IQ.
• The TA- You really want to compete with college girls? Good luck.
• The Retail Guy- A flair for fashion is dangerously close to just “flair”.
• The John Henion- Cuz he sleeps in Spiderman boxers.

Nando Calrissian, Director of Career Development (DCD)

The Unemploymentality’s Department of Career Development (DCD) has been working overtime searching the ‘world wide web’ for the best job opportunities for our devoted readers.  And this week we’ve got a real hot lead for any aspiring actors out there. But given the canine nature of this week’s premier job posting it was tough for DCD director, Nando Calrissian, to pass this one along.   But hey, Nando’s a dog.  He ultimately has to do what I tell him.  Otherwise he may end up at the wrong end of a diabolical little scheme like what this Washington D.C. father has cooked up to rid the family of the Cocker Spaniel from Hell. 

 Originally posted in D.C.’s Gigs on Craiglist.

Actor needed for emotional role – One day high pay:

My deceased aunt gave my two kids a Cocker Spaniel a few months back. The dog has been a terror and become overwhelming for me. I am a single father raising two young children. I cannot face telling the kids that the dog must go. I have found a good home for the dog, and just need someone to transport the dog, and play the villain. read more…

Another very interesting piece from our ambassador of good video, Mr. Anthony Ferraro.  Enjoy!

To see more of Anthony’s work check out his website.

There are a lot of people out there that have been unemployed for months, or worse, years.  For these people, the novelty of unemployment and its endless hours of free time, with no bosses and no clocks to punch has long since worn off.  These are the people that have hit what I like to call the, Welfare Wall.

In a word, they’re broke. 

I call it the Welfare Wall because it’s usually hit when the unemployment checks stop coming.  It’s that moment when you’re reduced to competing with teenagers for summer jobs dishing out soft-served ice cream to throngs of thankless kids who are lucky enough to still have a season’s pass to Six Flags.  But you can’t even get this job.  At that moment you think to yourself, “Oh my God, I might have to apply for welfare.” An animalistic survival instinct replaces the malaise that you had been living in for past six months while receiving the bi-weekly checks that you had convinced yourself that you earned.

So now it’s not so much a ‘job’ search anymore as it is a ‘how am I going to make enough cash to keep the water on this month’ search. read more…