resonant | Entries tagged with career

This is the first time I've ever done a job hunt with what you'd call in-demand skills. It's a trip.

I mean, I don't have a fabulously lucrative new job yet, so maybe this is speaking too soon. But I just got on a screening call, asked the recruiter to repeat herself because I was having difficulty with her accent, and this resulted in me accidentally negotiating the pay upwards.

If you're looking for a career change, and you can write and have good executive function skills, I encourage you to check out proposal management. It's in demand, can be done remotely, and pays a lot better than admin or journalism.

If you don't have relevant experience, the APMP certification seems to be meaningful.

Been missing DW. So I thought I'd try posting as well as reading and see how that worked!

Current status:

IRL:

Still job-hunting after getting laid off this summer.

I got access to jobs coaching as part of my severance, and I didn't think much of the idea but the execution has been amazing. I've loved having assignments to help me break the whole process down into manageable steps, and encouragement from someone who understands my field. And just in the ten years since I last job-hunted, the process has changed so much (mostly around finding remote work with no local contacts) that it's helpful to have some guidance.

Obligatory self-promo: I'm looking for grant writing or proposal management work, or something else with the same skills combo (writing plus research plus executive function stuff). Someplace smaller than IBM.

Otherwise: still in a commuter marriage. The kidlet (who was asleep on my shoulder while I wrote my very first fanfic) left for grad school in August.

Fannishly:

Back in due South, the warm pond where my fannish life began. Place is pretty lively for source material that went off the air in the previous century!

Slowly dipping back into writing. Currently working on solving the problem that most sex pollen stories don't actually have very much sex in them.

Hi!

Because it's confirmed! Amended offer made and accepted! (they didn't even counter-offer.) I have a real, non-temp job with paid time off and health insurance and stuff!

I don't have a start date yet, but meh. Details.

I've resigned from the Unfortunately Extrovert-Oriented On-Call Library Job with great relief; they were wonderful people, they were people from my home planet, but I still don't want to do a customer-service job.

I've warned my boss at the Life-Threateningly Boring Full-Time Temp Job (who said, "I feel like we were just now beginning to make use of your computer skills," to which I refrained from responding, "That's why"); I didn't mean to tell my co-workers till I had a departure date, but the minute I went into boss's office and shut the door, apparently I started a great wave of whispering, so I sort of had to.

It's been hard getting along on a temp salary, and I've been kicking myself for not starting a serious job search sooner, but there were ten steps to getting this job, and none of them would have been possible if I had still been living out of town.

Yay for gainful employment!

I'm in salary-negotiation limbo right now, and I won't feel confident until we have a salary agreement and a start date and I've emailed back the magic words "I accept this offer" -- but ...

( Read more... )

Did you know that you can send people e-mails requesting thirty minutes of their time and they'll just, like, talk to you? Even if you have nothing to offer in exchange but punctuality and gratitude?

This week, as part of my job hunt, I've had in-person meetings with high management people at the newspaper, the museum, and the city government -- none of which have any openings at all. The conversations have had varying degrees of usefulness¹, but the point is, nobody said, "What qualifications do you have for taking up my time like that?" or "I can't hire you, so let's not waste our time."

About a third of the people I contacted never got back to me; the rest all said yes.

Sometimes I complain about having gone to journalism school. I do think that for a person who hates talking to strangers and doesn't like to have people mad at her, journalism was maybe not the very best career choice. But when it comes to being prepared to just contact people out of the blue, it sure has been helpful.

¹ Kind but not so useful: "You should be secretary for my church." "Are there this many hills where you come from?" "You should totally be secretary for my church." "Why not remove this whole section of your resume and just say you can do anything and everything?" "Our dream employees have X, Y, and Z incredibly specific and arcane characteristics/backgrounds, so I don't know what to tell you." Extremely useful: "Uh-huh, uh-huh, you're saying project manager but that skill list also sounds like developmental editor to me, or possibly marketing coordinator. Hang on -- I'll send a couple of former co-workers an e-mail and see if they'll talk to you."

OK, networking experts, question time.

A former co-worker of mine has given me the name of her contact at an employer in New City, "if you are inclined to reach out to her with your talents." The contact is not a hiring manager; she's director of PR. The work I seek is very much not in PR, which the ex-co-worker knows because she's been talking to me about whether I would enjoy doing the same job SHE does.

-- so what am I supposed to do with this info?

They're narrowing down candidates for my replacement.

I've found a job listing I really ought to apply for; I don't especially want it, but I'm amply, abundantly qualified for it, and if nothing else the practice would do me good.

I'm scared.

OK, I've just had a blinding flash of the obvious, which I want to share in case there's anybody else out there who, like me, didn't already know this.

As many of you know, I'm job-hunting. Now, for years I was working as a journalist and looking for different journalist jobs, and each time I went hunting, I'd break out the previous resume and add the latest job and move forward.

Now I'm changing careers, and I'm learning that a resume is not an adequate tool for career record-keeping.

( Because ... )

So I got 100% on a Microsoft Excel test yesterday, and I came home from work and removed a metric shit-ton of junk from my basement today, and I was feeling pretty darned good.

And then the spouse e-mailed me a link to a job in New City, and I thought, "Well, it's more secretarial work, which I don't really want, but on the other hand I have to have a job and it might be good practice to apply for this one."

So I download the application, and like the first question after basic identification is, "Have you ever been fired or asked to leave a job?"

And now my stomach is full of live squirmy things.

Obviously I'm going to have to process my damned feelings about this thing, even though it was eleven years ago and the company no longer exists¹, because I really can't be in the middle of a job interview and suddenly have a belly full of squirm.

Everything in the whole world sucks.

¹(and even though my preference regarding emotions will be familiar to anybody who ever tried to write in the POV of John Sheppard or Benton Fraser)

The nine steps of learning new software:

Must I? Must I really?
Intimidated.
Have one path through the forest and don't want to deviate from it.
Confused.
OMG magic vistas open up before me!
OMG I love this program! Have you seen this program??
Look at me! I'm a power user!
Yeah, OK, now I can settle down and get some work done.
Oh, that. Been there, done that.

Windfall Meme, spotted @

gatewaygirl: what I would do if $N dropped into my lap in some legal non-taxable (or post-tax) way?

$10: It would just go into the cash already in my wallet. Unless that's against the rules? Let's say it's against the rules. In that case, some midday when I wasn't working I'd use it for pho and Vietnamese iced coffee.

( Read more... )

I'm horribly late at announcing these, but:

- Cybel Harper has done a podbook of

kinseyx's podfic of my Harry/Snape story, The Familiar, with cover art by

barbana.

-

luzula has done a podfic of my Due South story, American Way.

for those who've been wondering:

( Updates on the cat, the school fire, the job, and the midlife crisis inside. )

And what's new in your worlds?

What absolutely amazing imaginary friends I have! I'm bowled over by all the thoughtful, creative, and helpful responses to my choose a new career for me post. Thank you all.

(I'm still interested in suggestions, if anyone has them, and I welcome comments from strangers here as well as people I already know.)

( Some suggestions I could have predicted. Others, not so much. )

If there's anything I can do for any of you along these lines, I'd be happy to do it.

Meanwhile, in return for your help, I'll give you the digest of some of the books I've been reading as part of this process.

( Read more... )

Or: Who wants to help the Res decide what she wants to be when/if she grows up? (Not cutting because I want maximum input, but I'll try to keep it brief.)

I've been doing the exercises in What Color Is Your Parachute, and have ended up with a list of transferable skills and a list of interests.

Skills:

Analyze
Solve problems/see patterns
Evaluate
Imagine/invent
Classify/organize
Plan

Interests:

Social sciences
Design of spaces
Communication studies
Folklore
Speculative fiction
Libraries

The next step is to ask everyone I know: Do these suggest any job titles to you? Do they suggest any job fields to you?

The best job I ever had was one that I didn't know such a thing existed until I found myself interviewing for it, so I'm very open to unexpected suggestions from you brainy and extremely diverse people. (Please feel free to share this post; I'm very interested in advice from everyone, whether I know them or not.)

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Res ipsa loquitur

Job stuff

What's up with me

Jazz hands for real!

I ... think ... I may have a job?

Networking

Now what?

Oh jeez

Career advice

Mood goes ... thunk.

The higher power is always Steve Jobs.

Windfall meme

Weekend update

Bless your souls

Tapping into the network

Profile

May 2025

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