WAYT: Call me, maybe!

In life, you are your own advocate.  There’s no one else looking out for you except for you, and when you want something, you alone are responsible for whether or not you achieve your goals. 

I bring this up because I am spending a lot of time these days looking for a new job.  I’m ready to move on to a new challenge, something with greater responsibility, something where I feel… promoted from my current status. 

In “job search mode,” I am constantly defending my supreme employability, which begs the question, what are you thinking if you aren’t calling me for an interview??

When a hiring professional reads my resume, they see the basics: I have a college education, I’ve been steadily employed, I am capable of using strong descriptive words to highlight my past work experiences.  But I believe the reader needs to go a bit farther and think about what each line means.  I didn’t painstakingly choose what I said to dupe you into hiring me!  It’s all critically important and verifiable!

For example, when an HR rep reads that I have a degree from Illinois College, they should Google that.  They should find out what type of college it is and evaluate what that means about me.  If you Googled my alma mater, you’d find out that it’s a liberal arts college.  This means that I had a lot of education on a lot of topics.  You’d also find out that it’s a college with a small student population.  This means that graduating with magna cum laude honors is really something.  (Not as good as summa cum laude, but still, pretty darn good!)

When a hiring professional reads my list of previous employers, they should think about what that says about me.  In my first position out of college, I was the only person who worked in the office.  I was solely responsible for the day-to-day operations and the complete support of my boss, who was a pretty important guy.  In my second position, I was the office manager for a very small business.  My job performance was critical to the continued existence of the company.  In my current position, I support seven staff members out of twenty-four total.  That means that I do a great job at doing a lot. 

Also, I was accepted as an intern into two very competitive internship programs during my college years.  Someone considering me for employment should evaluate the programs that allowed me into their hallowed halls.  I started out strong and I continued on an upwards trajectory.  Furthermore, my work experience began back in my intern years.  At this point, I can boast over seven years of accumulated experience, all with increasing levels of responsibility, all of which helped to educate me on various industries and allowed me to broaden my reach among other professionals. 

Which leads me to my next point: I do not know a single person who could say anything damningly negative about me as a professional.  On the job, I am the most committed and responsible person that I know among my peers.  This is why I maintain a reference page and include it with my applications.  I dare you to call my references!

So, in summary and in the interest of being my own advocate, I have to ask, why am I not employable?  (How many other people like me are out there in the world lamenting the same fate right now?)  I know that I’m capable of doing just about anything and I wouldn’t apply for a job if I didn’t know that I could do it. 

Yes, there are hundreds of people out there looking for work who each believe that they are perfectly perfect in every way.  But at some point, a person needs to be recognized (read: that person is me!!).  At some point, something about me should stand out.  What are you thinking if you don’t call me?! 

Just call me, please.  I’m not too proud to beg!

WAYT: Talk that talk, leave Ann out of it

I hate this debate about Ann Romney.  Any time women become the focus of discussion like this, it turns into feminist BS that, to me, is so outrageous and insulting that I can’t stand it.  We’re not moving forward when we have to fight over stuff like this. 

Hilary Rosen, a Democratic pundit, wants the world to know that Ann Romney has never worked a day in her life.  What is she thinking, bringing up this petty nonsense?

Uh, who cares?  Anybody?  Thanks for letting us know, Hilary.  Now shut up and go away. 

Ann Romney doesn’t have to work to earn my respect.  She gets my respect for signing up to be a politician’s wife.  Can you imagine what it must be like, day after day, following around someone like Mitt Romney?  She always has to be pressed and dressed, smiling and friendly.  She may have fancy dinners and she may have a stylist and make-up artist and personal assistants, but she’s still a person who has to deal with media scrutiny like this and much worse.  That’s work, hard work, whether she’s earning a paycheck or not.   

I WISH I had never worked a day in my life.  I wish I had never worked at JC Penney for years and years.  I wish that my main concerns in life would have been experimenting with my hair after school or reading more books just for fun.  I really can’t imagine doing any of that, and I honestly prefer to hold a job.  But I truly doubt that Ann’s life was so simple.  No one’s could be.    

I’m sure that Hilary Rosen started this discussion about Ann because Hilary wants to make Ann a factor in our voting decision come election day.  Hilary wants us to think that Ann is just another piece in the puzzle that makes up Mitt Romney: so filthy rich, so grossly out of touch, so privileged that there’s no way he could govern the United States in this day and age.  Hilary, let me assure you that Ann could never affect me in that way.  Ann’s stay-at-home status isn’t going to keep me from voting for her husband.  (He’s not getting my vote regardless.  Though he is a worthy candidate, I’ll give the Republicans credit there.)  Anyway, I was saying, no potential first lady has ever had an effect on who I cast my vote for on election day, nor will she ever.  Let’s be serious. 

(Funny that if I were voting for a woman for president, I feel like I would be really interested in who her husband is… when the shoe’s on the other foot…)

What really annoys me is these pundits who characterize Ann Romney’s work - raising her children - as a luxury when opposed to working any other way.  I doubt that Ann Romney sat down and said, “I’m never going to get a job.”  I bet it didn’t go down like that.  Furthermore, I doubt that, at the end of another luxurious day at home, when all her FIVE munchkins were in bed, Ann thought to herself, “I feel great!  I’m not the least bit tired, my knees feel great after playing on the floor all day and my back isn’t shot from carrying the kids around, I’m totally not hungry after feeding the children three-quarters of everything I intended to eat today, and I bet everyone at the grocery store thought I was a great mom when all the children were hanging onto my shirt whining endlessly over nothing of consequence.”  For real. 

And what effect does her not working have on her opinion of the economy?  I work every day and I’m sure I have barely a grasp on the economy.  Maybe Ann has so much money that she didn’t have to plan a budget to pay her bills.  Maybe she has so much money that she doesn’t pay her bills because maybe someone does ALL of that for her.  That would be luxury. 

I bet that Ann is a very smart woman.  I bet that she counts her blessings on her fingers and her toes and her kids’ fingers and toes.  We should all be so lucky.  I don’t envy her and I don’t begrudge her.  I would like to congratulate her for living a life that shines so brightly that she’s now the focus of all this big talk.  Unimportant people, people like me, will never make a splash like this.  Good for you, Ann.