Like everyone these days, I hate my job. I want to say it’s because I hate my boss or I hate my employer, but really it’s the job I hate. It’s not the job I was hired to do 17 months ago, but it is the job I very specifically told the hiring committee I didn’t want to do and that I asked them repeatedly to promise me that the role wouldn’t turn into.
But you know how that shit goes.
So for 17 months, give or take a few weeks early on when I wasn’t really sure what was going on because my own supervisor was soooooo checked out, I’ve just sort of hated my job but haven’t really bothered to do anything about it.
Call me an optimist, tho, because I kept being sure it was all just about to get better.
Today, however, that’s going to change. I’m setting a goal to see if I can do something to get out of this job before it hits 18 months.
The plan: use Indeed to get a job that doesn’t suck.
My plan: use Indeed for the next 30 days as my ticket to finding a job that’s less sucky. This means:
- 200 applications
- 30 days
- Accept all job interviews
- Report back daily
Starting Now: 12 applications, 1 website
Why Indeed? Because I haven’t actually used it before so I thought I’d see what it was all about. I’m old-school: LinkedIn, which, BTW, kinda blows and is full of pompously humble, self-aggrandizing rockstars, but I’m pretty sure I’ll find that all online job boards match that “kinda blows” descriptor.
Over the past few years, I’ve not really looked for a lot of jobs: I was a freelancer writer/editor for a while, took a sabbatical to teach high school English, and dove back into the corporate world when a former boss of mine sent me a job and asked if I was interested (it wasn’t teaching teenagers so I was in). Indeed would be something new…
…or so I thought. When I went to Indeed to set up a profile, I was informed I already had one. I guess I created a profile and uploaded a resume on Indeed way back in January 2017. Makes sense: right after American lost its freaking mind and elected Trump, the agency I was running went out of business and I was on the fence about either taking another corporate job or starting my own biz. So maybe I considered Indeed?
Obviously it didn’t make a big impression on me, and I doubt my profile was really doing much, since the resume that Indeed used to autogenerate my profile says this:
Experience: Christmas
“Christmas” shows up again in work history.
Work history: Christmas
I vaguely recall including a line on my resume years ago about starting a business 6 days before Christmas, which was when my then-employer let the last of the remaining employees (me) go because he wanted to build a feeder website for ambulance-chasing attorneys rather than a reputable business. Who was I to stop him? I guess that’s the resume I fed to Indeed 6 years ago and the one Indeed subsequently, after an apparent format change, decided to latch onto when building my profile.
And why not? I mean, Christmas is essential experience.
I upload a new resume. And I build a new profile. I remember why I hate this shit so much. Seriously — why do I need to do both? Can’t we just use the resume and call it good? It’s much prettier than the thing Indeed wants me to use. And maybe even a little more accurate, too.
I spend a few minutes updating my skills on Indeed, which were 6 years old. too, although they were an impressive list initially, things like “self-motivated” and “kick-ass,” which aren’t actually options now. But I’m still self-motivated and kick-ass, although humbly so.
Then I look for jobs.
If a job has been posted for 30+ days on Indeed, is that a sign it’s a massive turd?
Maybe I have a skewed perception because I work in tech or because I once had a client who was a headhunter (recruiter, not with spears and shit), but I’m pretty sure that no job that’s been listed for 30+ days is still a thing. Honestly, if companies took that much time to hire, maybe some of my coworkers wouldn’t have sucked so much.
Also, did I mention that the head of marketing at my current employer was hired within 3 days of the initial meeting? Thorough vetting isn’t one of tech’s strengths.
Anyway, my first filter is “date posted” — I limit it to 7 days, although that feels kinda generous.
I also slap a “remote” filter on there, too. My dog would miss me if I didn’t spend most of my days working from home. Plus, fuck offices.
I actually go into work 1 day/week currently. It’s painful. I have to get dressed in something other than sweats, drink coffee from a to-go cup, deal with idiots on the highway, pack a lunch because I’m cheap, and then see coworkers who also don’t want to be in the office. And it costs time and gas. The only benefit is that there’s a Costco nearby.
Yes, I AM that old.
I tack on a dream-job title for my search … then I back off. If I’m doing this—and I am—then I’m probably trying to find a job that someone will actually hire me to do. Since I’m female, I’m not great at BS-ing my way into jobs that I haven’t held before, so I stick with Director and Sr. Director level gigs (mostly — I mean, a “head of” and a “VP” here and there might be okay, but in marketing, those are usually reserved for 28YO wunderkind who quit 6 months later).
Anyway, I hit enter. I’m not sure how many jobs Indeed returns because there are only a handful on a page and initially I don’t realize there are more pages. I’m also not entirely sure how well Indeed stays in the lanes I’ve told it to stay in: I think there are a few gigs presented that are more than 7 days old and aren’t remote. But I have numbers to hit and I’m in a hurry, so any problems I’m seeing with the results could actually be me.
And then I get to work. I apply for 12 jobs in 1 night.
If 12 jobs seems like a lot for 1 night — actually about 1 hour — it is. I obviously made almost no effort to ensure I was the right candidate or any of these was actually the right job, but, just like jackass SEO teams I’ve worked always say, we’ve number to reach and who we reach matters less than volume, volume, volume.
Fill out a 2nd application for a job you applied for or move-the-fuck on?
And then there’s a problem: one of the jobs needs more information. I make the mistake of clicking on the emailed link to do this one last little step for that job … and it takes me to some massively annoying online application.
Full disclosure: I’m a pretty straightforward, honest person. I assume everyone else is. too. This assumption, BTW, bites me in the ass regularly.
After my 12 applications are submitted, I get an email from one of the companies saying “you completed the first part of the application but there’s just a little more you need to do.” I know better than to pay attention but what if … what if it just wants me to disclose my demographics?
That’s not what it wants. Instead, it wants me to recreate the resume that I already submitted but in prose form. It wants me to tell it all of my references (WTF? I’d have to look people up!). It wants me to explain why I left jobs (because the pay sucked, the location sucked, my boss sucked, the job sucked — the same reasons why any of us leave jobs). It wants me to care.
I firmly believe that every one of these 12 jobs I applied for will result in a rejection, but this clown employer wants me to jump thru additional hoops, like a circus dog, before telling me that they’ve “found other candidates who are a better fit” and that we “won’t be moving forward in the application process.”
But I take the bait because I know that they just want a little more info and if I don’t give that info, I may miss the job of my dreams … and this page of garbage requests will obviously be the last one they need … oh, no, THIS page … wait, it’s probably THIS page … and 15 minutes or an hour later, I’m finally done.
Full disclosure: I can’t blame Indeed for that. I knew better than to open the email.
Up next: 188 more applications.
And that’s it: night 1 is in the can. Just 29 more nights and 188 more applications to go.
Will it work? I’ll let you know with updates daily.
Femme Futile 