I’ve been job hunting for a solid month, and as summer rapidly approaches I’m losing faith that I’ll actually find gainful employment. If there’s an employee shortage, it must have dodged the western suburbs of Chicago because I have received radio silence from the jobs I have applied to. It’s quite frustrating because I genuinely want to work, but it takes two to tango and right now my dancing partner is shoving me into the ground.
One major issue is that there’s no transparency with the process. I can login into the job portal or Indeed, but all it says is that my application has been submitted. I have no idea if they’re actually interested in hiring me, and I’m not even quite sure what that would look like.
I can’t even get to first base with a potential employer.
Another frustrating aspect is that there’s a good amount of phantom job listings on Google. One particularly heinous example of this was a caddy job listing at a golf course near me. I clicked apply, and Google sent me to a website with no button to apply, but another description of the job and a ‘find out more’ button.
This ‘find out more’ button sent me to a completely blank webpage.
One especially frustrating part of the process is that many employers won’t even sniff your application if you go in person. One of my friends went to a restaurant and another went to a fast food type place and both were told to apply online. This is completely useless and unproductive for job seekers because online applications often get completely ignored.
It also means that we can’t put a face to a name; I have no doubt that the shift to online applications makes it way more likely to flat out forget about applicants. Whenever I hit submit on an application I feel as though I’m sending out a message in a bottle to an ocean of rocky waters, simply hoping that I will get a response of some kind.
This leads me to another question: who is getting these jobs? I know for a fact that many of my esteemed peers aren’t exactly up to snuff for even basic work, so maybe these job listings are just meant to irritate me. The listings are like an oasis in the dry desert of unemployment, but once you stumble closer you realize that they’re mirages, and at the end of the day you’re still an unemployed bum.
I also feel an increasing amount of internal stress. If I don’t or can’t get a job then I will feel pretty useless over the summer while also making no money. I want that money to buy people gifts, get ice cream, etc.
At the very least I had cross country going on last year. This year I don’t have a dedicated sport except the vague notion of ‘running,’ and that isn’t exactly the same amount of time commitment as an actual team sport.
I suppose I could continue to write columns like this one, but that rakes in a solid $0 per hour. It’s also a pretty hard thing to justify spending my time on. Here’s how I would imagine the average conversation would play out if I went the writing route:
“Where are you working this summer?”
“I’m working on my blog”
“Oh nice! So you’re an absolutely horrible human being who couldn’t even get a job cleaning up people’s popcorn infused piss.”
I even researched UberEats before realizing that I had to be 19 to drive food around. What kind of cockamamie cutoff is that? The funny thing is that I can deliver food by bike at 18, but driving is only reserved for the most wise and intelligent of 19 year olds.
But seriously, why would they do that? What kind of experience will I gain in a year’s time that will be so vital to the operation of UberEats? 18 years old is the cutoff for literally everything else except drinking and driving a rental car, but apparently UberEats is such an esteemed company that 18 year olds would be much too immature for such a laborious and difficult job.
In the meantime I’ll just sit in my dark, damp cave and continue to write articles while I figure a way to escape into the wonderful light of gainful employment.