Ringing In Your Ears

One thing the Unemployment experience teaches you is to be humble.

After a harrowing, near-death experience (from nerves, not actual real danger) buying clothes and getting, *ahem*, groomed for The Big Interview last week, I entered the period known as "Waiting For The Call" where all of your senses are heightened and any sound, from a bird chirping to a cat throwing up to the mailman pulling up to the mailbox all the way at the end of the driveway -- sound like your phone ringing.

But it's never really ringing until you go to take the dog outside.

During this stage of your Unemployment, you will occasionally think it's ringing when it's not (which is key to the whole experience) you will, if you are in any way high-strung, have what we call anxiety. Some of us who are little more high-strung than others have what can only be referred to as panic attacks. For those of you that aren't as perceptive of everything going wrong in your world, or just lucky enough not to be ridden with anxiety, I can best describe this with a quote from Chris Hardwick, who broke it down to it's brutal explanatory truth.

"A panic attack is like getting fucked in the HEART. "

You can beat these attacks.

The key to getting around this is to tell yourself you don't want a job.

It's not the end of the world if they don't call. (Yes, it is.)

To breathe (which will happen anyway, I assure you) and to focus on your breathing. (Oh God, I'm breathing...)

To keep your heart rate down and to avoid caffeine, if you can. I can't. (I won't.)

Or you can just be a real functioning human who doesn't think that not getting a call from someone who might give you a job will make your head explode like you're an extra in Scanners. Do whatever you think works best.

So I'm in "Waiting For The Call" mode and what do I get? My old friend Insomnia! You might remember Insomnia from earlier in the Unemployed Files, where he visited for several weeks. I quickly went from DayWalker to Bill from True Blood, burrowing into the ground at Sun Up and only peaking out once that damned fire orb goes back behind the trees and wherever it goes when I am amongst the living.

Of course, insomnia is no good when you're "Waiting For The Call." Mostly, because those that could potentially be making the call are awake, and outside, and wearing pants and are at an office and ostensibly, on the phone...

..and they're calling you while you're sleeping.

Of course, sleeping really doesn't happen either, since you're in "Waiting For The Call" hypersensitive senses mode where your reflexes are augmented by 315% and your needs for sustenance and rest are negated by the needs or wants of, well, what you think you need or want.

So every noise wakes you up. REM sleep is a thing of the past. Dreams are gone. Nightmares prevail. They adapt quickly, like a virus, learning to strike quickly in the short times you make an appearance in the Land of Nod. Tense muscles give way to body aches, and the sleeping positions that work for you also make you snore, and therefore, don't work for the wife, so you're forced into an uncomfortable position that makes you snore less and Oh, Why Not: Stop Breathing.

All this fun multipled by a few days of it plus the general uneasiness of being Unemployed in general leave you with a Unshaven, Grumpy, Surly, Un-rested, Jumpy, Skiddish, Ill-Mannered, Over-Tense, Heart-Fucked, Soulless, Panic-Ridden, Anxiety monkey waiting for a call from a potential employer.

I got one. I had the phone in my hand when it happened.

Remember the interview from my last dispatch that I killed at?

It was those guys.

Remember how I thought I killed at that interview?

I did.

They love me.

They think I'm incredible.

They're so impressed by my abilities and how I came across and were so happy to meet me.

And, that they offered someone else the job.

Well, there you go.

I was told they liked me a lot, and want to work with me in the future, and that they'll keep me in mind.

I said thanks for the opportunity and hung up the phone, and looked out the window. I saw a bird on a tree and the mail truck pulling up to the mailbox.

Suddenly they just didn't sound like the phone anymore.

Nothing does. Because the phone's not ringing.

It's hard not to take it personally, because every call that doesn't happen, and every call that does but includes a "I'm sorry to inform you..." is just another in a long line of the thing that most humans are allergic to called rejection.

It's become a theme this year, and the worst part is that I'm getting used to it.

I'm an Invisible Man walking through a society that's drudging on around me, pushing my way up and down the aisles of stores in slow motion while the manic hysteria of the working world goes on around me. I hear about The Unemployed on the news and in the papers and on the internet, but I never see any of them because I suspect they're all on odd-time schedules and have become recluses like I have.

It's hard not to feel like the only one living this reality.

It's even worse when you realize that you're not the only one.

The production world that I used to be a part of has been described many times as "A Lot of Hurry-Up-And-Wait" and I'm finding that's more true now, and appropriate for more situations than just that tiny block of the entertainment business.

Jobs come and go and opportunity comes knocking when you least expect it to. If you're wanting it too much, you might as well just kiss it goodbye.

You have to remind yourself that work doesn't define you and life is what you make it.

Sometimes you need some rejection to put that back in frame of focus for you.

Cursing In The Dressing Room

"Clean shirt, new shoes
And I dont know where I am goin to.
Silk suit, black tie,
I dont need a reason why.
They come runnin just as fast as they can
Coz every girl crazy bout a sharp dressed man."

— ZZ Top - Sharp Dressed Man

"Fuck. FUCK. FUUUUUUUUCK."

I hear the Dressing Room Lady outside the door.

"Everything okay in there?"

I sigh.

"No... Yes."

This is the third pair of pants I have tried on, and the fourth or fifth shirt.

It's right at Six O'Clock and the place closest to here that cuts hair on Mondays (because strangely most barber shops here are closed on Mondays) closes at 8 O'Clock.

I still have to shave this beard off.

I don't have shoes that will go with whatever I end up buying that I am currently trying on in this stupid dressing room at this stupid store that doesn't make freakin' clothes that actually fit my...I'm guessing, totally freakish and awkwardly built body.

Sorry, I've gone and got a little ahead of myself. I'm in the middle of the PRE-INTERVIEW JITTERS.

I don't wear what I call "dress-up clothes." I appreciate the whole Mad Men aesthetic of tailored suits and bespoke shirts, but I can't put it any more clearly that my ideal mode of dress is a t-shirt of some sort along with blue jeans or shorts. Original, I know, but it let's me put absolutely zero thought into what I'm wearing so that I can focus on what I'm doing.

Anyway, today I care. I'm trying on dress shirts.

I am attempting to find a proper pair of fucking khakis.

After nearly giving myself an anxiety ridden panic attack trying to find clothes for what, in my head, will essentially be a quick trip to a footstool covered in thumbtacks in front of a What's Your Line panel of people who hate me upon sight, I finally settle on a pair of proper light brown pants and a white and blue checked button-up.

I can't pay for it quick enough. My wife wanted to look at some things in the ladies section of the store but my interview is first thing in the morning and I have to get my hair cut so I am freaking. My stomach is in knots.

The kid checking us out has to call his manager because I have a coupon. Of course I have a coupon. Of course it doesn't work.

The manager takes care of it. I pay. We are going towards the car. "Don't run off on me!" my wife says. I look back and she's five feet behind me. I am unaware I have ran off towards the car in a power-walking sprint (of which, in the spirit of transparency, I am accused of often. What? I'm tall.) and have a mission. HAIR CUT.

Ten minutes later we're at the barber shop. I go inside and the girl at the counter asks me for my phone number. The last four digits. I give her what I think I gave them last time (I've changed numbers a few times for various reasons) and it pulls up nothing. I give another number, and it's the wrong name.

"That's not me." I say.

"Well who are you?" She says.

"Well...I'm me."

"What's your phone number?"

"Can't you just make a new person on there with my new number?"

"No, I don't want to. What's your phone number?"

At this point I want to scream "I hate you and I just want a motherfucking haircut, bitch." but instead of that I give her my full name and she pulls up a number I didn't even think about as my phone number.

I still am not really sure why I even have to give a phone number to give a haircut, but whatever.

A few minutes later I'm in the chair.

A few minutes after that I'm out the door with a lighter wallet and am off to Wal-Mart.

I point out that "That's a lot of gray hair on the floor."

The lady who cut my hair says "Everyone says that."

It was a lot of gray.


After Wal-Mart, my wife tells me it's all going to be okay. She's said this several times tonight but I am less than half a day from the thing I hate most. Being judged on who I am, in tiny cereal box form where they just see the cover and maybe read the ingredients, but don't really know what I am, or what I can do, or if I'm even crunchy in milk.

It will be okay, she says. I want to trust her.

We get home, and groceries are put away. Everything in it's right place. Food in the fridge and the pantry. Toiletries to the bathroom and all that. New clothes off the hangers and all put in their final resting place.

On me.

I actually look okay.

My wife tells me to come out and she sees me. "You look really good. I told you you would."

She then tells me I freak out too much. Guilty as charged.

A belt ties it all together. My dog is giving me that smile. She must be thirsty.

I go to bed early but not before setting every alarm in the house in staggered times so that I don't sleep in like I have the last few months.

Today I had my interview, and I feel pretty confident that I killed at it.

Everyone was laughing at my jokes, and giving eye contact, and seemed genuinely interested. Out of hundreds of applicants I was one of only a few they asked to come in.

Cross yer fingers. I want to be writing Employed Files sooner than later.

And if you're in the same situation, for the love of god: Don't Freak Out.

Pre-cursor audioblog I did yesterday

Anyone even notice we haven't been updating?

Thought the Wednesday's guest post was very good and chock-full of tips and tricks for the newly Unemployed person that I'd leave it up on top an extra day. As for myself, I've working on some actual projects that might make me some money! So I might miss a day or two occasionally. The whole "posting everyday" thing was a little ambitious, anyway, without me giving up my actual identity and all the juicy details. Which ain't gonna happen.

If you did notice we were not updating yesterday, give us a comment and let us know. Otherwise we'll start thinking that no one cares, and hell, we might just abandon the site. So if you like what you've seen so far, let our anonymous keesters know it. Not only are we out of work but we're attention starved and crave your feedback as much as we do our unemployment checks.

We'll be back soon! Make sure to follow us on Twitter and RSS!

-U.F.

U.F. GUEST POST: Pragmatic Tips for Being Laid Off

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the first guest post here at the Unemployed Files by a good friend of ours. If you have a tale of unemployment, or tips for those that are unemployed, feel free to send it in to us here. Thanks!]

I know the author of Unemployed Files and he offered to post an article that I wrote. I normally don’t do this sort of thing but I feel like I have a lot of good advice to spread. Like the author, I was recently a victim of The Second Coming of the Great Depression. The author is very creative and that is his talent. My main talent is being a planner and being organized. Even though I try to be creative and funny, I just never quite got he hang of it since I got a C in Humor for Engineers in college.

Resumes

Everyone knows that the resume is the foundation of the job search. There are many different kinds of resumes out there and here is the biggest thing about resumes: if you talk to 10 different people about resumes, you’ll get 10 different answers on what to put on them. I’m not going to expound upon that stuff because I’ll just be the 11th different answer that you hear and I’m just some idiot on the Internet. However, hear are some things that I do know:

• Be confident in your resume. It represents you and others may have different opinions about your resume. Learn to know when to take their advice and when to stick to your guns about your resume.
• Your resume should be in .doc Word format. Yes, I know that there is the new fangled .docx Word format, but there are still lots of people out there running older versions of Office that don’t have the compatibility packs installed either. You could also save your resume in PDF format, but I prefer .doc since almost every computer can edit Word documents. Also, this is your primary version of your resume and should be formatted properly and be pretty and everything.
• After I have a pretty, formatted version of my resume, I then create a plain text version of it. Here is the thing though. I still keep it in a .doc format. I just take my pretty resume and then convert everything to a 12pt Courier font without any kind of special stuff such as bold, italiacs, underlined, etc. Also, EVERYTHING is aligned to the left side. I don’t change the information at all; just the formatting. This really helps because you never know when you are going to need to copy and paste your resume into a job submission site and then you’ll have to deal with mucking around with it. Do it once at the beginning and be done with it.
• Next step is a Google Docs version of your resume. Here is why. You may already be using Google Docs which is great. Then, just share your resume with everyone in the world. After this, go to http://tinyurl.com/ and create a custom URL for GD resume. You can actually create a custom URL such as http://tinyurl.com/uf-resume/ which then points to your GD resume. The reason for this is that the GD resume is something like docs.google.com/View=id?th3oue_UP86x456ou3 which isn’t easy for someone to type in. For this resume, I just copy my plain text resume into here and then do a few things such as bolding stuff, but it is essentially my PT resume.
• Next up is LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a social networking site focused on the professional environment. The way that I describe it is LinkedIn is for the 9-5 professional crowd where you want to get business done, Facebook is for the happy hour type of crowd where you go to have a bit of fun and unwind, and MySpace is the dirty area of town on the other side of the tracks where you go at 2am when a “good idea” suddenly becomes a bad one. There are many different things to utilized LinkedIn for your job search. For one, you can link to a website. How, but you already have a website. OK, it isn’t a website, but you do have a TinyURL that points to your resume. Also, under your experience, post the highlights from your resume there. You have to be picky because a Word document really isn’t limited in size but I think the LinkedIn Experience section is limited to something like 2500 characters. I also copy this from my plain text resume.
• If you are a creative type, definitely have a web-based portfolio of your work so that it is easy to see. With everyone, including my grandmother, on the Internet these days, it is important to utilize Internet resources for your job hunt.

Business Cards



You never know when a networking opportunity is going to come up. Hell, I’ve traded business cards with another customer at the mechanic before. This is usually something that people forget until it is too late, but they are pretty easy to get. You could use an online service that has free business cards such as http://vistaprint.com/ which I’ve heard good things about. You could also print your own if you have a decent printer at home. You go to an office supply store and they have templates for business cards. I use one made by Avery that has clean edges, a nice linen texture, and can be printed on both sides. The pros of creating your own business cards are you can download business card templates online, edit it however you like, and then print them whenever you want. The cons are that getting things lined up perfectly when you print them can be an exercise in futility.



The information that is critical on a business card are name, title/position that you are seeking, phone number, and email address. Also, you know that TinyURL thing that we created earlier that links to your GD resume? I think that is critical as well. Remember that the resume is the foundation to your job search and it is pretty cool to tell people that they can easily find your resume from your business card. Or if you have a portfolio website, you can just link to that as well. In this day and age, I don’t think address is needed anymore on a business card unless you have a physical business somewhere. You could put a catchy phrase describing yourself on there as well, but I’ll leave that up to you.



Once you do have business cards, the most important thing is to actually keep them on you at all times. I usually have about 5 or so in my wallet because you never know when something like this will come up. Yes, you could trade phone numbers with a business contact, but then you have another person in your phonebook with about 400 other people in there. A business card is a physical reminder of your meeting. And another piece of advice, if you get a business card, immediately flip it over and write a few details about the meeting such as date, setting, and what you talked about. It’ll be easier to remember that meeting later on.



Networking



You aren’t going to find your next job on Dice.com, Monster.com, or one of the hundreds of others job sites out there. And as most people know, most of the responses you get are spam or people offering opportunities to own your own business by selling insurance. You need to be proactive about networking. Find out any networking opportunities in your area. Always have business cards with you as well and if you think you’ll have enough business cards, then double the number that you bring with you. Practice at having a 15 second to 2 minutes spiel about yourself, what you are looking for, and what you are great at. You need to have this sales pitch about yourself done well rehearsed as well. The key is to also present yourself as how you can help your future employer/clients instead of what you are looking for. Present it as a way that they would benefit from having you employed.



I’ve been to a few recruiting events lately and here are a few other tips that I’ve learned that many others don’t do. I bring a small padfolio that isn’t fancy, but on the inside, I have plenty of business cards, a pad of paper and pen, as well as a copy of my formatted resume. It isn’t for people to take, but in case anyone is interested in my resume, I can say “Well, I happen to have a copy here with me. Would you like to take a quick look at it now?” If someone has a great piece of advice or a company that is hiring, I write it down immediately in my padfolio. Also, if someone doesn’t have business cards, you can have them write down their info in your padfolio as well. And the most important thing is to follow up with people afterwards within a day or two.



Networking is going to be how you find your next job and you need to be proactive and prepared to increase your chances of finding your next position.



Interviewing/Prep



Here is another topic where there are 10 different answers if you ask 10 different people and I admit that I hate interviewing. It’s crap because you have to pretend to be someone you aren’t and that is just tough for me to do, but the most important thing to do is to focus on your strengths. You can mention your weaknesses but only in passing and mention that you are working on them. The most common type of interview questions are behavioral interview questions where they ask you to describe a situation where the sky was falling and how you saved the day. If you’ve been out of work for a while or you are trying to think of an answer for an off the wall question, you’re going to stumble upon the answers which is not good. This is where you can do some homework no matter for which interview you do.



Go online and find all types of behavioral questions online. There are millions of them. You’ll quickly find out that they boil down to three to maybe five general types of questions or situations. This is good because this is easier to handle. Now, use the S-A-R technique from your past experiences. In short, this technique is where you describe a Situation, then your Actions in that situation, and then the Result of that situation. By using this technique with your experiences, actually write down some of your situations that you could potentially use to answer these behavioral interview questions. Also, think of experiences that aren’t specifically on your resume. Of all the points on my resume, I have just as many talking points that I use in an interview that I’ve practiced.



Once you start writing down your experiences using the S-A-R technique, you’ll see how one situation can apply to one type of behavioral question and another situation can apply to a different type. By doing this, it will really help you to figure out some of the things that you’ve done in the past. It’ll refresh your memory and it is great practice prep for an interview. You will want to focus on your strengths as I mentioned before. And if you write them down, you’ll have something to review later when you have an actual interview. And the biggest thing that employers want to hear is about how you can benefit their company, not how their company can benefit you.



Other



Finally, here are some general thoughts that I’ve discovered that’ll help when you lose your job and are looking for a new one. Stick with your schedule. If you are used to going to bed at 11pm and getting up at 7am, do that. It won’t be such a shock when you go back to work. Stay busy as well. You don’t have to spend 40 hours a week looking for a job, but keep yourself occupied by doing stuff. Actually, use this as an opportunity to do something that you would never do. Get a part time job somewhere where there are a lot of people. You could use this as a networking opportunity as well as long as you have plenty of business cards with you. You know what areas you are weak in. Work on them while you have the time. If you don’t have coding skills, take a class at a community college or teach yourself. If you aren’t organized, go clean out your filing cabinet or that stack of papers on your desk that is your version of a filing cabinet. Put things in their proper place and realize how much better it is to be organized. Work on some missing skills. A lot of the positions that I’m looking for require Visio and MS Project experience and I’ve been teaching myself those applications over the last few weeks. Or do something off the wall like volunteering somewhere.



Losing your job can be very traumatic and it is for most people, but it doesn’t have to be. You can be very proactive about finding your next job and it’ll take a lot of work, but the more work that you do now, the quicker that you’ll find your next job. And as I said at the first part of this article, I’m a planner. And I always plan for a rainy day. Hopefully, you’ll learn a lot from this and you will be better prepared because this isn’t likely the last time that you’ll lose your job. Have an emergency fund on hand and have a plan on what things can be cut from your budget if you have to. This isn’t the end of the world because billions of people before you have lost their job and they all have found a way to survive. And you can too.

Chairman of the Bored

"Countin' flowers on the wall
That don't bother me at all
Playin' solitaire till dawn with a deck of fifty-one
Smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo
Now don't tell me I've nothin' to do

— The Statler Brothers, "Flowers on the Wall"

After a few weeks, the novelty of being home all the time wears off. You break your old habits, and start forgetting things that don't matter anymore. You start asking yourself questions like "What the hell is a timesheet?" and wonder why anyone would waste time out of their productive day to do something as asinine as to tell someone else what they'd been working on all day. To me, that would seem counter-productive. You forget about that. It just doesn't make sense, so it's wiped from your memory banks.

The job hunt is going slow. You keep seeing contradictory reports on the news saying that unemployment is going down, or that it's going back up. That things will be okay by mid-year NEXT YEAR. You send in your requisite three resumes a week to satisfy your Unemployment requirements and sit waiting by the phone that just...doesn't...ring.

The dog, (remember her?) is now just kind of used to you being home all the time. It's not a big to-do anymore that requires her to have a smiling face or enough of a thing that she gets excited. When she smiles now, you know it's because she wants some water, or to go outside. The cats ignore you, but that's okay, because that's what cats do.


In this economic downturn, (both recession-wise and unemployment-wise) I've become a customer of our local dollar stores. Luckily, the part of town I live in has two. One has good deals on some things I need, and the other has bargains on other items I want. So I split my time between the two when I go out shopping and am friendly with the cashiers at both.

Who knows what they think of me coming in so often, and during the day no less. I'm sure they've noticed the deterioration. I've lost a few pounds since I lost my job. Probably due to not eating out at lunch every day. I've grown out my hair and my beard, just because I can and because it doesn't really make sense to go get a haircut when I'm not making money and I don't really see anyone except for my wife, and the two cashiers at the two local dollar stores.

Perhaps they think of me as a wealthy eccentric who roams the aisles of cheap establishments, constantly on the prowl for tchotchkes and trinkets and the recently faded trends of the last year.

I'll take "Low-rent Howard Hughes" all day long, for the record.

More than likely, I don't even get noticed. Or maybe they think I'm just another asshole that comes into their stupid little store and buys things and floats out into the customer ether or wherever all those people that pass by the register mosey off to.

I think about all of this (and everything else) too much, because I have entered the stage following "FREEDOM" called "BOREDOM."

Freedom is the best stage to be in because your optimism is at an all-time high. You are positive that what has happened is a good thing and that you have nothing to lose and nowhere to go but straight up to the top! It's all going to be okay and nothing can stop you! You get to sleep late, and stay up late, and do anything you want to do anytime you want to!

The dog used to "smile" at me because she was excited I'm home.

I'm fairly sure I saw her just roll her eyes at me today. Nothing like a sarcastic canine.

Things change. Deal with it and move on. This, too, shall pass.

Your freedom becomes a burden. You run out of ideas of things you can go do. Or you run out of things that are feasible for you to do, because, well, you're out of work and can't just go on vacation or fly somewhere.

Another downside of your "freedom" is that the work that conveniently got in the way of the things you didn't want to do around the house is no longer there as an excuse. Or, you can look at it as an chance to finally do all the things you have been needing to do forever. It's all in how you look at it, I suppose.

John Lennon once said that "Life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

Sometimes life is what's happening while you don't have any plans.

And that's okay.

"I've been traveling on a boat and a plane
In a car on a bike with a bus and a train
Traveling there, traveling here
Everywhere. in every gear

But, oh Lord, we pay the price
With the spin of the wheel, with the roll of the dice
Ah yeah, you pay your fare

And if you don't know where you're going
Any road will take you there"

— George Harrison "Any Road"