The Awful Guide to Job Hunting

Applying

Hi. This is you.Now that you've got your resume finished, it's time to start hitting the pavement looking for jobs, right? WRONG. Doing the typical "Are you hiring?" gauntlet of local businesses can only end in shame and humiliation, as asking this question in most places will only earn you admonishing glances of people who'd like to spit on you, and sometimes do. And if you happen to stumble upon a business gracious enough to let you sit in their lobby for the fifteen minutes it takes to fill out your standard application, 99% of the time they'll crumple it up the second you leave and spend multiple lunch breaks making fun of you and the other freaks who dared to aspire to the American Dream of being exploited for a minimum of 40 hours per week.

No, you'll have to be much craftier when searching for jobs in our current economic sinkhole. Most jobs can be applied for online, and if you're unemployed, odds are you waste at least 10 hours a day on the Internet trying to complete your video collection of obscure porn stars. Your refractory periods can be spent searching the many, many job-hunting sites that exist on the Internet, but be warned: a good deal of online job offers are complete scams. If someone seems legitimately interested in you, beware - you are definitely being recruited as part of the essential lower section that the entire pyramid scheme depends on. More than anything, applying for jobs should teach you to mistrust everyone and to see dark machinations in the most innocent of human actions.

BEEP BOOP your phone number has too many threes. APPLICATION DENIED.Should you actually find a legitimate job listing somewhere on the Internet, it's not simply a matter of e-mailing your resume and waiting for results. For every job you want to apply for, prepare to register a user name and password for some wholly unnecessary application system it'll take you nearly an hour to wade through. Instead of spending that time being a productive human being, you'll be copying and pasting all of the information from your resume into hundreds of little boxes just to make it easier for some HR drone to eliminate you without having to read a single word you've written. Of course, you'll be attaching your resume most of the time, but this is only to create the illusion that a human being will actually be reading the cover letter you labored over for hours. Now that all human interaction has been removed from the employment process, your entire future rests on a number of unknown variables you can't even begin to comprehend. My only advice is to drink and keep drinking until you forget you read that last sentence.

Waiting

They said they'd get back to me in a few weeks :(When first starting the job hunt, most people naively think, "Golly. I'm gonna follow up with employers and call them and e-mail them and show them how much I want their jobs. Jeepers!" Over time, though, these people quickly learn that the last thing employers want is to have to talk to some jobless, desperate loser. This is why most hiring is done through uncaring HR departments that, if contacted, will answer no questions, give you no contact information, and treat you like a potential murderer. This is why it's best to not get too excited about a job opening you know you're perfect for; like The Matrix, you will have no idea if you're ready until someone contacts you and provides the special pill that helps you turn the electricity back on in your depressing apartment. Until then, treat applying for a job like the wish you make after blowing out birthday candles; you might not achieve financial independence, but Disneyland never appeared in your backyard, either.

Since I've already provided you with enough advice to give you an advantage over me in the job market, I'm afraid we've reached the thrilling conclusion of this article. But I'll leave you with one last word of warning: never lie about how much blood you've given recently, especially to people that want to buy your blood. Later, proles!

– Bob "BobServo" Mackey