Days.

There are good days, and there are bad days. Today, I am having a bad day. I've been looking for a job for over 6 months now. In the last month I've expanded my job search to include all of DFW, since I'm willing to relocate in order to get a job. I'm qualified, experienced, and educated. I will work my booty off, given the chance. I want this more than I could possibly explain, and it's just not happening. I know our economy is rough, but the job search can be really depressing.

Frustration. Depression. Loss of self confidence. Annoyance, irritation and desperation. These are all the things I'm feeling today. I begin to really question my abilities, is it really the economy, or is it just me they don't want? How am I supposed to get any experience when I went to get the education they wanted first? How do people find jobs so quickly? What do they have that I don't? 

I've been really lucky to have my families support while I was out of work, but now, they can't really afford to give it to me anymore, and I'm reaching my wits end. I am well and truly desperate. And that feeling is absolutely terrifying.

Have you ever been unemployed for a long period of time? How did you land your current job?

Recessionista Winnings!

So, if you've read more than 1 of my posts you'll have gathered by now that I'm on a job hunt. Not that that's very uncommon these days, but one thing that's even more important when you don't have a job: Money. Income. Yeah, thaaaaaaat. So what did I do yesterday? I made $270. In about 10 minutes. Now even you people with a job can appreciate that. How did I do this, you may be wondering? Simple! See this?

This is a stack of my textbooks that I don't use anymore. They are taking up room on my bookshelf. A lot of room actually because textbooks are friggen huge. Like, really. See that big green calculus book? I swear it weighs close to 20 lbs. I'm being serious here.

I was kind of skeptical of a lot of the text book buyback websites that I found, since they had soooo many bad reviews of never receiving payment for their stuff, something that I am most definitely not okay with. So I went with trusted places, like Barnes and Noble, Half.com, and Amazon. I just went there, entered the ISBN's of the books I had to sell, figured out who would give me the most for what, and then done!

These book now have shiny new homes somewhere else in book-land. Hopefully someone else loves them more than me. I didn't particularly like many of them. I ended up selling the 2 big blue books on the side to Half.com, and ended with up $150. The stack of books on the right scored me $120 from Amazon. (Note, selling back to Amazon gives an Amazon.com giftcard, and not plain hard cash. I'm a big Amazon shopper, and they paid me more than Half.com did for these books, so that's why I went with them.) Both sites paid for the books to be shipped to them, so the only thing I had to cover was boxes for each package. I bought 2 at the Post Office for about $5. Not too bad if I do say so myself.

What are some recessionista tips that you have?

Yay, it's Tuesday!

So far, this Tuesday has been a pretty darn good one. It's amazing outside, this little lady just aced her International Business test, AND Yellow Songbird is hosting an amazingly cute giveaway featuring 3 fabulous and talented ladies :) In fact!

"I just entered to win items from @aisletoaloha, @amypetersstudio, & @bugbeansmomma over on @ohsweetjoy's blog! http://tinyurl.com/2ddk985"

Head on over there yourself and check out the cuteness! It's everywhere :)

Happy Monday!

You know you've been studying business too much when you're making a diagram for Alliance Formations and you think to yourself "Huh. Like a human relationship. Date them or just sleep with them?"  See below.

Stage 1: To cooperate or not to cooperate. (i.e. Do you like them in any way shape or form, or do you not?)
-Market Transactions
-Mergers and Acquisitions
-Pursue cooperative inter-firm relationship? (If yes, proceed to stage 2.)

Stage 2: Contract or Equity? (How serious of a relationship do you want? Where do you want it to go? Long-term or short term? Real or just on the surface? Date or sleep together?)

Contract:
Co-Marketing
R&D Contracts
Turnkey projects
Strategical supplier/distributers
Licensing/Franchising

Equity:
Strategic Investment
Cross-shareholding
Joint venture


Stage 3: Specifying which type of relationship you want. I.E. Specify which type of relationship you want.

I may or may not be crazy.

Freak out!

So, does anyone remember that nice, expensive resume I got this past week? The one that I was so sure would pay for itself in one paycheck once it landed me the job of my dreams? Or at least a good job that would enable a nice apartment and some cash in my wallet? That resume? Yeah. I had my good friend, T, take a look at it for me. He's super smart, and great with words. This is what I got back from him yesterday:

Recommendation from an older friend of mine who has submitted (and read) more resumes than I care to think about existing: "Tell her to demand her money back for receiving an unusable product, and to write a review online condemning the place.". I agree, if at all possible you should try to get money back. You gave them money and they gave you back something that isn't going to assist you get a job.

As far as what was wrong (mostly listing in case you want to argue that you should have your money back, skip to the bold fixing if you don't care about this part for now):
-Showed significant lack of effort and accuracy-checking on the part of the person who processed your resume. Duplicated items and grammatical errors would be akin to changing the oil in a car and leaving the cap off, or forgetting to put new oil in.
-They use ellipsis and semicolons where not appropriate to do so. Sometimes.
-Formatting is insane and will not display properly in most word processors. You can get around this by exporting to .pdf, but seriously they have newlines and extra whitespace all over and it's crazy.
-Resume is crazy long. As a rule of thumb assume the person reading it is only ever going to read the cover letter and the first page of the resume. Anything longer than 1.5-2 pages long is madness (the second half-page or page might be looked at if comparing two people that didn't get thrown out in the first pass over however many applications showed up for a job).
-Inconsistency. I generally shy away from using any personal pronouns in a resume (in theory it is nothing more than a marketing document describing a product (in this case, you), so third person seems more appropriate). This resume goes back and forth, which looks extra bad.
-Bolding something doesn't mean the sentence started over.
-Italicize for emphasis. Bold for lots of emphasis. Bold-Italicize for OMFG emphasis. All three probably unnecessary.
-Uses lots of synonyms that make awkward sentences. This is not invader zim (really hoping you get this joke because I'm trying to cheer you up), so more organs does not mean more human, and more words does not mean more better.

As far as fixing it! :
-From here I would say write it yourself.
-Hold onto what you have so far. It has some valuable data that's already down on paper that can be reused or reformed into pieces that are useful in your real resume.
-The cover letter for a resume sadly (because this means more work and I don't know about you but I am lazy) should be tailored at least a little to each position you apply for, and should be a page.
-The Internet is our friend. Our very good friend with the collective knowledge (and ignorance) of tons of people we would otherwise never get to talk to. Useful, good information abounds.

Ensue freak out from yours truly. It took a solid day for my brain to really process this, but this morning I woke up ready to take on the tasks of writing my OWN $150 resume. From the crap that is my already written $150 resume. Seems a bit backwards, doesn't it? Now I spent a bit of time looking around the internet to see how to start. First of all, I found JobJenny who I absolutely adore. She's got some great tips for people out there looking for jobs, and she's funny. Funny people will keep me reading their advice for longer, so this is a big pro for me. Since I'm a student who hasn't had a lot of exceptional jobs or job experience, my skills from school and these jobs are going to be more important than my actual work. So I'm changing my resume to a skill based format to show off those things and make people want to hire me! You can find examples of different resume formats here. So, to start, I decided to figure out an accomplishment at each of the places I've worked at. Here's what I got so far:

Company 1:
I created a database using Excel that let the Sales Lead (who was also the President, this was a pretty small company) have all of their leads and contacts at their fingertips basically. It could sort them by location, company type, and if they were already current clients or not as well as just search by a company name or the name of a contact within a company. I set it up so he could access it anywhere, and kept it updated constantly.

Company 2:
I fostered a belief in the products and brands to customers to keep them coming back. This is harder to explain on paper, but I worked in the lingerie department, and basically sold bras, mainly. One of the biggest brands, a Company 2 exclusive, is actually of great quality, but pricey. I love it myself, and my belief in it's quality really allowed me to sell it, making it something many people would come back to our store to buy.

Company 3:
Since it's already all over my resume, I was an "Own the Experience" award winner. But the reason I was is because of my understanding and belief in the products that Company 3 offered, as well as my exceptional ability to explain them customers, and show them how they could use them to make their life better. I.E. cross selling, kind of. A lot of people called because they were unhappy with something that was happening on their account. Because I wasn't doing the job for a sales quota (even tho I was supposed to be, but I hate forcing things on people) I focused more on what Company 3 could offer them that could solve the issues they were having. I was really good at it.

Company 4:This is harder. I was really good at my job, I saw the ways things happened here that allowed me to be really productive, and I think what I'd probably choose to put on a resume would be my employee training, because I added a lot of personal thoughts and things that really allowed them to do their job better. My understanding of my job helped others do better at their job. But I don't know exactly how to write that as an accomplishment. 

Now, what I've done since this is imported all my information from big clunky resume into new, skill based format resume! It's still too long, and I haven't added the things that I think are accomplishments, but it's a good start. From here, I'm going to pick and choose things, fix some grammatical things and wording, and get it to 1 to 1 1/2 pages. That is my goal for this evening.

Does anyone out there have any good resume writing or job searching tips? 

Fill in the Blank Friday

Because I should be taking a Business Finance exam right now instead of blogging, I'm making today my first official Friday of participating in Fill In The Blank Friday. :)

1.   The best prank I ever pulled was    Either when I convinced my mom I got into a car wreck back when I first started college, or telling my ex he might have herpes. They were both pretty mean..

2.  The best prank ever pulled on me was    I usually never believe anyone on this day, because I'm too suspicious. I'm sure someone will get me one day.

3.  A day without     laughter     is a day wasted.

4.  The most important things in life are     the friends and family you have in it. Don't take them for granted. :)

5.  I dream of    Right now, I often dream of having a good job. Also of meeting someone and getting married :) But all in due time.

6.  I dread   disappointment, and not being good enough. Or enough at all.

7.  A discovery I made this week was    that I both love and hate running at the same time. And that I actually like learning about business. Creepy.

And Happy April Fools Day! Be nice out there :)

Dun da dun daaa

 Something Of That Ilk © 2010-2011 Ty Devries. Don't be an ass.

Today, I would like to take a moment to celebrate the end of something that is both humorous and horrible.....Mustache March. If you don't know exactly what Mustache March is, take a moment. Have there been an excessive amount of men with creepy 'staches around lately? Have you walked by an otherwise normal person and thought "Dear God... what's on his face?". Then you probably have experienced Mustache March, and just didn't know it. In order to commemorate it's final day, I'm giving you a gift. (Tee hee.)

That's right. That's what can happen in Mustache March. Be thankful it's over. (Also, if my friend ever found out that this photo existed on the interwebs for the world, he'd probably re-grow that mustache, and kill me with it. So this our little secret, kay?)