The Awful Guide to Job Hunting

Ladies and gentlemen, this stunning and responsible man could be working side-by-side with you RIGHT NOW!As I enter my fifth month of being unemployed, a few important things have dawned on me: 1.) most dumpsters are full of perfectly edible, gently-used food with the same rat feces content as what you'd find in a grocery store, and 2.) I've recently become quite the expert in the field of job hunting. In fact, you could say I've made looking for a job a full-time job! Though you shouldn't say that, mostly because I've grown emotionally unstable and you honestly don't want to become a chapter in my next manifesto.

But when I'm not busy writing about international banking conspiracies or carving figures of my enemies out of soap, I've been hitting the job market and learning quite a bit about why I'll be the State's responsibility for the rest of my life. More importantly, the soul-destroying process of job hunting has taught me much about the process, mostly that a better use of my time would be trying to use magical mind-genie powers as described in the international bestseller The Secret. But in order to help those who have some degree of employability, I will now share the knowledge I've absorbed over these past miserable months.

Resumes

Using Nazi-themed stationary: a common mistake.If you've ever been in the position to look at other people's resumes, then you know that 90% of them are filled with typos, useless information, and casual racism. Just avoiding these common problems can help you stand out amongst the jobless and ignorant, causing them to continue living lives of utter hopelessness. To further explain how to make the suffering of others an achievable reality, let's review some common elements of the average resume:

Objective: This is where you give a brief statement about what you plan to achieve by submitting your resume. Note that honesty is not always the best policy here; my original objective statement read "Please whoever is reading this PLEASE I have nothing left and I think my parents are sick of giving me money and when I see people I know they either look like they are worried for or about me I NEED THIS." But thanks to the advice of a friendly social worker, I soon changed it to "To obtain a full-time position that will draw upon skills obtained from over eight years of professional writing." As Kenny Rogers said in "The Gambler," "Crikey, I'm not gonna show all me cards at once, mate." I still haven't received a reply from a single employer so I am starting to disagree with this.

Education: Warning: many employers think that having degrees gives you a certain sense of entitlement for benefits like a living wage and bathroom breaks. Since I have both a Bachelor's and a Master's degree, I tend to downplay these accomplishments with bullet-pointed statements like "Showed up to most classes drunk and belligerent" and "Cried in front of the dean so I could graduate." Try to avoid statements like "Was the campus rapist." It's rare, but some employers find an implied criminal history more threatening than an education.

"He helped me invent the train for the devil!"Experience: Possibly the most important part of any resume, though if you don't have a job it's clear that you lack the disgusting nepotistic advantage it takes to build an impressive employment history. Try to build a sense of mystery about yourself by leaving this section completely blank, except for a single sentence which reads "Too complicated to list here; for more information, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to the following address..." Doing this may give you the home addresses of several interested employers who may or may not have children you can hold for ransom.

References: If you burn as many bridges as I do, it may be difficult to find three or four people who won't immediately hang up and have a very important block association meeting upon hearing your name. This is why you should head down to the local nursing home and find the most neglected senior citizens to add as your references; they'll be so grateful to get a single phone call that they'll say nothing but nice things about you just for the sake of a simple conversation. And if they have some form of dementia, you'll get the bonus of being mentioned in improbable stories. I wormed my way into graduate school because the admissions department thought I saved the town of Mayberry from Russian occupation. I went to a State University.