Monday, July 12, 2010

sweet frustration.

Writing a resume and then showing it to different people is like decorating a room and then asking all your friends' opinions.

Friend 1: "It's nice, but couldn't you paint it a lighter color? It would open it up more."
Friend 2: "Nice idea, but maybe a few shades darker."
Friend 3: "Too much art on the walls."
Friend 4: "Maybe you should paint it all white and then just paint that one there as an accent wall."
Friend 5: "The whole thing kind of... doesn't go together."
Friend 6: "You need more art on the walls."
Friend 7: "It's too well-balanced, maybe add some new elements."
Friend 8: .....need I go on?

I have been "working on my resume" for hours and hours these past couple weeks, in what feels like a sort of deeply unfun, fruitless abandon. Changed the font, the formatting, the lines in bold, the verbs, the amount of writing, the information. Changed it again. And again. Showed people. Problems brought to my attention. Incorporated changes. Showed people. More problems brought to my attention. Finally the critiques are starting to wind down, and it's admittedly looking a lot better. But my confidence in my ability to put together anything professional? Well... I sort of feel like I should really be applying to Subway and 7/11, at this point.

I'm like an unbroken dog. I keep peeing on the carpet, and then my nose is whacked and I am brought outside and made to look at the grass. But then I come inside and pee on the carpet again.

I don't get it. Nothing about applying for jobs is intuitive to me. Other things are not intuitive to me either: playing the drums, break dancing, interacting with someone whose parent has just died. But applying for jobs? That's something I need to GET. It's my next step. It's muh bread and muh butter.

But everyone has a strongly informed and different idea of What's Good and What's Terrible, as does every person hiring. I have looked at some sample resumes that strike me as atrocious. I have seen graceful phrasing scrapped for greasier, inflated phrasing. All this exercise is really telling me is how dizzyingly subjective the whole process is. It's a big crap shoot, based partially on the emotional flarings that occur in the brain of the boss when she scans my resume, partially on my actual experience, and largely, I think, on whether and how well I know her cousin.

It is a little frustrating. A little chaotic. A little enlightening. A little nauseating.

Very "Real World."

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