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?)

It buuuurns!

No, not fire. Although fire does usually burn. I'm talking about my throat and calves. I, ladies and gentlemen, attempted running a mile without stopping today. I am now paying the consequences, and also failed pretty miserably. (Took me 14 mins. Laaaame.)  Lesson 1: When it's cold as $#%$&^# outside, and you are moving quickly, your ears get cold. Cold ears turn into earsplitting headaches, making running even worse than normal. Lesson 2: When you've just began walking, your nub self is probably not ready for this, so it's going to suck. Man up. Lesson 3: I probably don't stretch or warm up well. I should fix that. I'm now back, ears properly warmed, thighs burning painfully sitting on my butt. I'm a bad runner.

Yesterday, I got my new, pretty and very expensive resume. My cat promptly did this:

Substitute "socks" for "all things paper", and that is my cat. This comic was actually linked to me because of a different cat "episode", for lack of better word, which is also very much my cat. So far, the few I've seen I'm a big fan of. They are all from www.somethingofthatilk.com, which if you like stupid things, is probably for you. DISCLAIMER: Comic definitely has "LOLPENIS" jokes. Click at your own risk. If you're a fan of the Ctrl+Alt+Del Comic, I think you'll like that one. And if you aren't a fan, you should be. http://www.cad-comic.com. Go! Waste hours of your time sitting at the computer at work, randomly laughing out loud because of it and make your co-workers question your sanity! Do it! Or your children/animals/whoever if you work from home or are a stay at home mom. Which basically means you work from home. Now I'm rambling...

Just another .. not very manic.. Monday

I know most of you dread Mondays. (Haha, I say that like there are actually people reading this. I'm funny.) They end your weekend, you have to get up early again, and are usually just plain hectic. I'd give a lot to have those Mondays back. However, I am not losing faith in my job search. My resume pick up was postponed from this evening to tomorrow afternoon. So instead of spending this evening pimping my skills marketing myself to future employers (See? Random inserts like that come from my mind out of no where. It's terrible.) I'm losing myself in blogisphere land. Blogger says "blogisphere" is either not a word, or misspelled, but I like it, so it's staying.

Because of my lack of social interaction through forcing me to go to a place every day and speak with other people (aka a job), my social life has kind of waned lately. I'm trying really hard to pick it back up and this weekend I went out to the Fort Worth Gallery Night (www.fwada.com if you're interested. There's another one in the fall!). My best friend invited me down, and her husband and his best friend (Mike) accompanied us. Lot's of great galleries, lots of neat art, neat people and looots of free alcohol. My BFF is currently doing...crap what is it called... ah ha! The John Ramsey Money Management thing, so the fact that it was relatively free (besides gas) was a big plus for her family. (Hello, kids are expensive!) And honestly, who doesn't love great times on the cheap? I sure didn't mind.

If I was a good little blogger this is where I would add a few awesome pictures of our evening, the places we went, and what we did. But alas, I'm not. Some photographer took mine and Mike's picture because we are stuffed of awesomeness. Or because we were standing and discussing art. One of the two, but my ego is choosing the first one. I tried to see if I could find it on the internet to mask my lack of blogging skills but sadly either they decided it was a bad idea to take our picture and it will never be published out into internet-land, they just haven't gotten around to it, or my searching skills are sub-par. All of these are probable, and still mean no pictures for you.

Because Gallery Night (aka free beer and wine starting at 3pm) was followed by a rousing few games of drinking Jenga (We're grown ups. I swear. We just like to pretend sometimes we can drink like we could in college) I was absolutely useless yesterday. Movies in bed all day with some dozing in between to keep up the energy levels so I could survive the hard work of breathing. I'm pitiful, I know. The weather was suddenly cold (50's) and gross (rainy-ish), so it is partly to blame.

The weather is still gross, and I'm still waiting on my resume so my usual 8-5 (Okay.. more like 9:30 to when the jobs run out) job of job hunting can't be done and I'm just plain bored. I've been browsing through blogs for a while, and I've been suddenly hit by a need to be crafty and amazing like so many of the ladies I saw. You stinking crafty people amaze me, and make me want beautiful, sweet, crafty things. Bad crafty people! Bad! But I don't have a space to create things for! Not yet anyways. I did find a neat menu planning dry erase board crafty idea (technical term) that I think the BFF would like, but if she doesn't I'd hate to have to shove it into her house and make her use it anyways. It could be detrimental to our friendship, and god knows I need her.

What did you do this weekend?

Progress

So I recently decided that I wanted to be able to run a 5k. Now, by recently, I mean about 2 weeks ago. I started this off by walking around the park here where I live. You may be going, wait, walking? Why are you walking? That's not running! You said run a 5k! Let me explain a few things about my thinking here.

1.) When I was in high school I went skiing with my youth group. I'd never been before, so I took the lesson and all that. On my first attempt at the bunny slope I failed fantastically and ended up slamming my back in the huge pole that holds up the ski lift and fracturing my hip. Impressive, I know. So I don't have back problems or anything, but I have to be careful.

2.) I've never been exactly.. fit. Now, I'm not fat (Okay, there were a really bad 6 months once, but we don't talk about that.) Even as a newbie freshman in college rocking a whole size 2 body, running a mile was pure torture for me. I huffed and puffed my way through it every Friday for a class, but my god, it was bad.

So my thinking was that I could work up to jogging once I started getting faster with my walking and in better shape. My goal here is fit, not fat! I want to be able to achieve my goal, I'm not worried about what I weigh. Anyways! I've been walking for about 2 weeks now, and last night my cousin asked to come with me. My cousin is 20 years old (that's 5 younger than me) AND she's always been athletic. She currently coaches a girls basketball team and plays in her church softball league. So I'm sitting here going "Great, she's going to come in here and absolutely school me and I'm gonna look like a nub."

So we meet up and set out at the park last night. Less than 5 minutes in I realize something that made my day. She couldn't keep up with me. I know, it's silly. But hey, it's the little things.  My 2 weeks of walking have put me at a pace that an average athletic person apparently finds too fast! I was absolutely ecstatic during the whole thing. AND! Her being the competitive person she is, we added bursts of jogging into our walk (I may have been egging her on, but pushing each other is what we do, and we love each other like sisters). I was using RunKeeper, an iPhone app that I'm in love with now and our average time per mile was pretty pathetic, but when we weren't jogging we were going at what felt like a dismally slow pace to me. Even with the jogging, I didn't get out of breath once, and we ended up doing 4 1/2 miles.

I guess the point of this is: I'm making progress towards my goal, and it feels great! I'm gonna hit the trails again this evening by myself and see what my average time per mile is. Seeing this has made me want to keep going even more! Is this how people get addicted to running?

Welcome to my brain! Yay..?

So, I used to blog quite a bit, I always thought I had a lot to say. In the past few years I've kind of felt like even if I did have something to say, it's not like anyone really was interested in hearing it. But honestly, what kind of attitude is that? This isn't for fans, this is for me. I ran across this little gem on the internet today when I decided I was getting back into the blogging world:

The internet is made of people. People matter. This includes you. Stop trying to sell everything about yourself to everyone. Don’t just hammer away and repeat and talk at people—talk TO people. It’s organic. Make stuff for the internet that matters to you, even if it seems stupid. Do it because it’s good and feels important. Put up more cat pictures. Make more songs. Show your doodles. Give things away and take things that are free. Look at what other people are doing, not to compete, imitate, or compare . . . but because you enjoy looking at the things other people make. Don’t shove yourself into that tiny, airless box called a brand—tiny, airless boxes are for trinkets and dead people.

This is from Maureen Johnson, and it really hit home to me today and convinced me to get back out there. Or in here... blogging... either way.. you get it. So here I am. Oh, who am I? Let me tell you.

I recently turned 25 and it makes me feel old.  I'm *almost* done with my bachelor's degree. (This is big step for me. I was not one of those people who popped out of the womb with a passion that they pursued tirelessly from the moment that they could walk. I like things, but mainly.. I just like to live. ) I'm looking for a job. I just got into jogging/running. I love, love, love books. And the rest, you'll find out whether you want to or not probably. 

These things may not seem important or anything but they are the basis of me. And again, this is for me. So there. =P