You can do it in your underwear, without getting arrested. I discovered this yesterday when I spent the better part of the morning sitting on the couch in boxers and an old tee shirt searching for a job. Without squeezing my ass into pants or wasting even one eight by ten sheet of precious natural resource, I fired off about ten resumes, each one with a unique cover letter, each one tailor made to make me sound like the person someone out there might want me to be.
If, by some miracle, I get called for an interview, I'll suggest Skype. That way I can still avoid getting dressed from the waist down (which is where the agony of tight zippers hits hardest), and I can continue to get the utmost enjoyment out of my house. It bothered me, these last couple of months, toiling away to spruce up my long neglected home solely for the enjoyment of somebody else. Now that the sale has fallen apart, I get to cuddle up with my laptop, unencumbered by clutter, free to graze in the pantry without breaking my teeth on expired crackers and dig my toes into carpet that is neither shredded nor pee stained and bask in the glow of blandly painted walls. If I can finally get the cable company to fix all the broken cable boxes and ensure I have hundreds of channels in every room, I won't even need a job. I won't ever have to leave the house.
Job hunting in the new millennium may be convenient, but it's complicated. The terminology can be baffling, and it's tricky trying to convince someone that a certain position is your dream job when you don't even know what it means. Take, for example, one of the openings I applied for yesterday: Knowledge Management Legal Assistant. Wow. Try saying that three times fast. Or once.
I seemed to have the basic educational requirements, so I proceeded to click through the steps of the application process. Things were going well at first; the questions were easy, and I could always look at one of my versions of my resume if I got stumped. (Sometimes I forget my phone number.) When I got to step 9 though, I realized I could no longer avoid the dreaded cover letter, which meant I could no longer pretend I knew what the hell I was applying for. But still, in my underwear, I was able to consult with my best friend Google, which immediately led me to my other best friend, Wikipedia. I would know, within seconds, what knowledge management is, and what kind of astronomical salary I should demand for my expertise in that area.
Or so I thought. Sometimes even best friends can let you down. The Wikipedia entry for "knowledge management" was unhelpful. It began this way: Not to be confused with Information Management. Okay, there was no danger of that, since I have no idea what information management is either. I read on. Knowledge management (KM) comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organisation to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences.
Huh? I hate when Wikipedia gets pretentious and speaks in a foreign tongue. (I could tell it was speaking British because of the way "organisation" was spelled.) Seriously, don't those people know how to sound things out? Anyway, I gave up. KM sounded fascinating, mostly because I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it was, so if I was going to land this job as a KMLA I needed to be creative.
I crafted a cover letter, and hoped the person reading it had a good sense of adventure, or at least some sense of humor. I'm paraphrasing, but here's what it said, essentially: "I don't know what the heck a Knowledge Management Legal Assistant does, but it sounds like it would be right up my alley. I am just glad this job isn't about Information Management, because that is sooooo not my area of expertise. I look forward to hearing from you."
No, I have not heard back yet, but it has only been a day. And today is another glorious day, too hot to go outside, perfect for sitting on my couch with my laptop, dressed for success in my underwear and a tee shirt, pounding and clicking the virtual pavement while I enjoy my clutter free and blandly painted house and nosh on fresh crackers without digging my toes into shredded and pee stained carpet. Beats workin'.
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