Years of Experience

My biggest frustration in job hunting right now is that companies are down-sizing and/or laying off employees with years of experience and then those people are getting entry level and junior positions at other companies. Obviously those people have to work and it's a shame they have to take pay-cuts. Obviously, hiring managers are making safe decisions by hiring people with five, ten, fifteen years of experience. I'm not frustrated with the people, but this situation stinks for me, the recent college grad.

I applied for a junior writing position at a small local organization. I submitted strong writing samples. I outlined my relevant experience in a cover letter.

Today I received an email from the hiring manager that I'm not moving forward as a candidate because she needs someone with years of full-time writing experience. I don't have that and other applicants do. Fair enough.

Or is it? True, I don't have years of paid writing experience on my resume. How can I? I graduated from college in May 2011. I wasn't on a time clock, but I did write every day, research, and put together presentations in English and in Spanish for four years of college. I learned to be flexible, work in groups, and adapt to whatever guidelines I had to meet.

I know that my B.A. program was heavy on writing and that may not be the case at other colleges and universities, but why is my college experience overlooked when I'm applying for full-time work?

I don't know what page I'm on

When I read a paperback book, I like knowing how many pages I've read and how many I have left. I thought that one of the things about ebooks that would bother me is the lack of page numbers, but that isn't the case.

I've been reading a lot on my Kindle lately, and none of the short stories, non-fiction books, or novels I've read have page numbers that correspond to their physical counterparts. I don't think locations are useful, so the only thing I pay attention to is percent complete, that little number in the bottom right hand corner. I know that I'm 43% done with Neverwhere, and that suits me fine.

I realize this is a lot like using a bookmark to keep my place and then looking at how the bookmark separates what I've read from what I have left to read. I can see if I'm about a quarter of the way, half way in, or more. Percentage does the same thing, just more specifically.

I don't have to cite pages or discuss passages with other people, so not having page numbers isn't an issue. I'm surprised, though, that I don't miss page numbers that much. This would be a bigger deal if I was reading as an assignment.

Evernote for job searching

One of the ways I use Evernote is to organize my job search.

I dedicate one notebook to track jobs I'm interested in. The first note is Applications In, where I keep a table of the jobs I have applied to, when I follow up, and any additional notes. The top row looks like this:

I keep a list of sites and job search engines on a second note. That way when I'm looking for jobs online, I can simply go down the list to do a thorough search.

The third note has keywords I use. I'm looking for a position in marketing, public relations, or writing, so my keywords include those words as well as "communications specialist," "marketing assistant," "social media," and "media relations." Hiring managers use various job titles and descriptions, so searching several related keywords gives me more relevant leads.

The fourth note has notes about my portfolio: pieces I should edit, pieces that are tailored to a specific job, and notes about presentation.

Using Evernote this way helps me search for jobs efficiently.

Point of View in A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin

One of the things I like most in A Game of Thrones is how George R.R. Martin uses point of view. He moves the story so that we see it from Eddard's eyes, then move on to Bran, to Jon, Sansa, Catelyn, and so on.

Switching points of view works so well because these characters' stories interlock, and this also creates tension within the story. We see all the points of view, so sometimes the tension comes from waiting to see what happens when a character finds out something we saw in an earlier chapter. At other times tension comes from leaving one character at a critical moment and not seeing her point of view again for 50 pages or more.

With seeing all the parts of the larger story, surprises might lose their impact, but that's not the case. Many times in the book, we find out something at the same moment as a character. Even when we know about an event before it reaches across the kingdom, it's still exciting to see what happens.