If you don’t already have a job…

…odds are you’re not going to get one.
 

            It’s a sad state of current affairs in the US right now for those of us who are struggling to make a living.  The GOP is hell-bent on doing as little as possible and blaming victims for their own lot in life while also refusing to help them, but the bigger problem goes much further than that.

            Anybody who has applied for a job in the past decade is sure to know that you don’t get a job by actually talking to a person or presenting yourself to a potential employer anymore, you do it all online.  The reason for this is so that the company you’re applying with doesn’t actually have to pay a real-live person to vet and review applicants in order to find the right fit for both the job and the company - like everything else nowadays, there’s an app for that.

            I’ve applied for over 85 jobs in the past five months or so and received precisely three interviews.  Most recently I was rejected for a writing job and when I asked specifically which minimum qualifications I didn’t meet I was told that my degree was not in “Marketing, English, Journalism, Communications or other liberal arts-related field” and as such I was required to have at least 7 years of experience “of performing professional level writing for marketing and promotional campaigns.”

            So apparently Theatre is not a “liberal arts-related field” and a cumulative ten years of professional writing experience is less than seven.

            Keep in mind that I wasn’t applying for any kind of management position or administrative anything, this was for a basically entry-level job (MAYBE it could qualify as a step or two above entry-level).  In the interest of professionalism I won’t post here where the job was or what company it was for, but please rest assured that it was a place that I would have appreciated working at, fit in beautifully, and done a damn fine job of it because it’s a place I actually believe in and would actively WANT to promote.

            So here I am at home still working like hell taking free or on-spec work for friends and family and desperately trying like hell to build up my resume so that I’ll be taken seriously and I realize that it’s not necessarily a question of my experience (although I’ll bitch about that in a second), it’s simply that people don’t seem to grasp that a college degree based in reading, interpreting, expressing, performing, and communicating ideas (not to mention creating aforementioned art) is not appropriate to hire someone as a writer.

            Don’t get me wrong, I genuinely love writing and I’m not going to stop, but it can get mighty frustrating to be told repeatedly by people who actually bother to read my stuff that I’m damn good at it, yet I can’t make a living at it.

            This exact same frustration is shared, I’m sure, all over the country right now by people who have decades of experience in their chosen fields but can’t get an actual job because some computer program doesn’t pick up on the right keywords or phrases on an application to give these people the chance to actually work.

            A perfect example of this is my application for Verizon -- a place I worked for two years with an exemplary record, literally ZERO strikes or negative remarks against me, and more than a few awards in my name…  Who now say I’m not qualified to work there (or am less qualified than other applicants - even those, I assume, who don’t have actual Verizon experience). 

            So think about that the next time you hear anybody talking or saying anything about the state of unemployment in this country.  The next time some talking-head gets on TV and starts going off about how it’s all the workers’ fault, how people are lazy or feeling entitled to something unearned or how the “American dream” is failing because people just don’t seem to be as talented or hard-working as they were a generation or two ago…

            The problem isn’t with the people.

            The problem isn’t with the job.

            The problem is that barely a fraction of people with the talent and abilities to actually do the work, and excel at it, are even getting the chance to prove themselves.