Tag Archives: job searching

The Gambling Trilogy [Where's part 3]?


Posted by Jessie Spielvogel

A few weeks ago, after developing my gambling-with-fake-money addiction, I decided to begin a 3-part series on comparing various gambling games to job searching and professional development techniques. In The Gambling Trilogy [Part 1], I discussed how the game of blackjack relates to your job search. In The Gambling Trilogy [Part 2], I discussed how you can learn to be a “doer” vs. a “watcher” through the game of craps.

Well, the reason you see no [Part 3] is because, frankly, the series was crap. (<< I crack myself up). When I decided that I was not going to finish out the trilogy to complete the whole, I looked at it from two perspectives:

1. Quitting half way through a project can just make you look bad. It comes off as a character flaw, and no one wants to be known as a quitter.

-or-

2. Realizing where your strengths and weaknesses are is important, and correcting what isn’t working sooner than later is just one more key to success (and will ultimately prevent you from wasting time on a project destined to fail).

I chose option number two because it makes more sense to me. Think about it like this: Why would a cable network pull a TV show off the air before the series concluded? Because the TV series in all likelihood sucks, and there is no reason to throw more time and money into a series that no one is watching. Plain and simple – they see their flaw, they listen to their audience, and they do better next time. Hopefully.

Going back to square one isn’t always a bad thing. It’s a chance for a fresh start, a new perspective, and endless opportunities. If you see that something isn’t working, change it.

  • If you’re not getting any bites on your cover letters and resume, change up your job searching techniques.
  • If you’re not closing sales at your job with an important company, talk to someone to help change up your strategies.
  • If you’re working on an artistic project and it’s just not turning out like you’d hoped, start over!

The beauty of starting over is that you already know enough to realize what works and what doesn’t, now all you have to do is switch up the approach to your project. Throw your energy into something worthwhile, and let’s see if something comes of it!


Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. – Albert Einstein 

Jessie


Your resume is great…SO WHAT?


Posted by Jessie Spielvogel

Here’s the ugly truth: even if your resume is perfection, you STILL may not get the job…or even a phone call.

I don’t say this to be discouraging…I say it so that you realize something that took me about four months to figure out.

When I first got to this city, I thought my resume was my most powerful tool. If I had a perfectly clean, well-designed, content-filled, beautifully crafted piece of paper that expressed my most proud professional accomplishments, any company would be a fool not to swoop me up right away, right? Maybe. But that’s not what happened.

My resume had been filtered through my college professors, my parents, my past internship managers, the career center at my university and several of my peers. I don’t think I could have possibly tweaked it anymore than it had already been tweaked by the time I arrived on the D.C. scene. I thought it was golden! And actually, now that I think about it, it was! It was a damn good resume. But what I learned was that my perfect resume is just a needle in a haystack. It was a wake up call when I realized that I am not the only one who put their resume through 800 levels of editing and reshaping…there are, in fact, other ambitious people looking for work.

So, how did I fix it?

I didn’t. When I say my resume was great, I mean it. It was great. I didn’t end up getting attention from employers until I began attending more networking events in the area and handing out my job title-less business card.  I began volunteering on committees in hopes of crossing paths with that certain hiring manager who would see the potential I knew I had. And sure enough, at my very first volunteer event, I met the right person and landed a temporary position at a public affairs firm (and by temporary position, I mean paid internship).

The moral of the story is that you can’t rely solely on your resume to take you to a great job. It’s a combination of putting yourself out there to meet the right people, continuously working on your skills (even if no one is currently paying you to utilize them), and yes, having a well-crafted resume and business card on the ready.