The Bleak Outlook

I Google-imaged the word "bleak" and found this picture from a movie we watched recently called "The Road." It is a post-apocalyptic story starring Viggo Mortensen, very bleak.

 Overall, the job outlook is not so great. I keep vacillating between thinking that I should just do something creative and find another way to make a living, or go to work for Target, then thinking that accounting is such a valuable skill that it would be stupid to set that aside. Following is a brief rundown on some of the things I am trying to use to find a job and how each is going.

• Craigslist: It's my best resource. I check it a few times each day, filtered for my area and accounting jobs. Some of the accounting jobs are part-time bookkeeper or accounts payable clerk, but there are usually a few good possibilities each week. Sometimes I spend an hour or so tailoring an email response and attaching a resume. My experience so far is that I never hear from them again. At least I have something to apply for.
• Worksource: Jackie showed me this one recently. It is the site the State of Washington uses for job searching for people collecting unemployment, but anyone can use it. There are a lot of jobs out there, more than Craigslist, but the sort criteria are so broad that most of the jobs are not related to accounting, so I have to sift through them.
• Simply Hired, Indeed, Monster: You start to get a lot of repeats.
• Recruiter number 1: Kept me working half of last year, has contacted me about some possibilities, but she has a limited number of openings and only updates her website periodically.
• Recruiter number 2: One person from this office contacted me maybe a month ago. I got right back to her by phone (left a message) and email. She never responded. I contacted another who responded a day later and said he would get back to me. He did not. The owner called me Wednesday with a possibility. I have not heard back from him, so my hopes are not high.
• Recruiter 3: I suspect that recruiters have a list, with people at the top, people in the middle, and people way at the bottom. Teh people at the bottom of the list only get an email when the rest of the list has been exhausted. This recruiter had not contacted me in months, but just got in touch with a job possibility for someone willing to relocate to Omak. For those of you who do not know where Omak is, it's an hour from Chelan. If you are not familiar with Chelan, it's an hour from Wenatchee. Wenatchee is in Eastern Washington, two and a half hours from either Spokane or Seattle.  So Omak is kind of remote, not far from Canada actually. Jackie says no. I suspect that when I tell recruiter number 3 that I cannot do Omak, they will give up, because there is no one on the list below me.
• Recruiter 4: These guys had several possibilities for me recently, but then they sent me to Microsoft, and I was really pissed about the interview, and I never expect to hear from them again. I did not actually tell them I was disgusted with the whole experience, but I kind of hinted.
• Recruiter 5: Stopped even responding to my emails a long time ago.
• Boeing: I know someone from Farmers who now works at Boeing and suggested that I apply there. As a result, I have applied to a few jobs at Boeing -- they always have openings. They respond right away, thanking me for applying (by automated response, of course, but most companies do not.) Then, a couple of months later, they send me another email saying that the job has been closed.
• Microsoft: I have interviewed twice with Microsoft for contract jobs, both times with the same woman. I wrote about this. She rejected me for stupid reasons because she is stupid. Stupid Microsoft woman. I hate her, and them.
• Networking: I suck at networking. I don't even keep in touch with my friends, let alone with people who might help me get a job. Someone who used to work for me works now at TMobile, so I will try to use her to get in the door there. I should get in touch with that ex-Farmers colleague at Boeing too. Then I am out of networking ideas.

I keep looking, but it is not easy for someone my age at my level. I should have stayed a senior accountant.

Long-Term Unemployed

I did not realize at the time that November 22, 2013 was such a pivotal day. It was the last day of a contract, but I had just completed three back-to-back contracts lasting six months total, and with accounting busy season coming up, it did not seem like a big deal that I had nothing specific lined up for my next job. As it turned out, it was the last day I worked, maybe the last day I will ever work for all I know, at least as an accountant. But at the time it was not all that remarkable.

Somehow I went from contracting on a regular basis to unemployed, without any real warning or any event that triggered the change. What worries me now is that I am in danger of becoming one of the long-term unemployed, those people whose unemployment benefits run out, whose prospects for ever getting a job begin to look grim, and who give up looking in time.

I don't exactly fit the category, because I have worked as recently as last November, and the definition of long-term unemployed I usually see is 99 weeks without a job, but it still feels like I fit. It has been more than 99 weeks since I last worked full-time, and my prospects going forward are not great.  I talked to a new recruiter back in December, and they came up with several possibilities, but the last one may have killed my chances with them. I interviewed with Microsoft, and I talked with one of the two MS people about an experience I had at Farmers accounting for companies at remote sites, and I told her that I was never comfortable with the way it worked. She decided that this meant that I would not like working at Microsoft, because they of course work with people at remote sites all the time, as she explained, because they are a big international company.

Now this thought, I have to say, much like things that were said to me that caused me to leave Farmers, was one of the stupidest things that has ever been said since language was invented. Did she really imagine that I did not realize that working at Microsoft on currency translation for foreign subsidiaries would involve communication with people far away? But it carries the day, because someone gave someone power and she did not have the wits to use it. Based on something she imagines she gleaned from talking to me for 25 minutes, something about my personality (she agreed that I was well qualified to do the work), she decided that I was not the right person for the job. Who cares about 27 years of experience when you can figure it all out so perfectly based on a short conversation and no data? It's so much like high school, except that not being popular in high school doesn't fuck you over financially.

I tried to be nice about it when I wrote a note to the recruiter telling him it did not go well, but I used the words "ludicrous" and "frustrating," so he knew I was pissed. And I have not heard back from that recruiter, and don't expect to ever. I have a great background for contract work, but my guess is that recruiters try a candidate a few times, and if it does not work, they move on.

And to be honest, my career has felt like a series of these types of decisions. Sometimes they go my way, and I have recognized that and accepted it, and sometimes they go against me, and I usually lash out. I really cannot stand having major events in my life controlled by dull-witted people making arbitrary decisions that have a big impact on me. Unfortunately, this is called "having a job."  Which I don't.