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Today I want to talk about job searching. Let's get started. Well, hello and welcome back to Tweed Trends. Let me start by saying, let me offer you my best Eric B and Rock him apology, because it's been a long time.
I should have left you without an episode to listen to. My apologies, but hear me out. I feel like the reason was very noble. Here's the deal.
I fell down a rabbit hole. I know it's not surprising. I do that, right? That's my thing.
That's my verb, rabbit holes, and falling into them. But recently, I've had about five friends and family members to be actively searching for jobs. One is looking for one. They've been out of work for a little while, because they're a mom.
So my heart went out to that one. Another one, something happened at their job, and they laid off people. I get that I've never been laid off before, but I can only imagine because when you've worked at a particular place for so long, and then you find yourself having to look for another job, I've been in that position. So my heart went out to that.
Another one has a job, but is looking for extra. I get it. Even myself, I put in a couple of applications lately, and I'm struggling to wrap my mind around this whole job search thing, because it feels a little different. So having said all of that, that was the rabbit hole I fell down.
And because it was so many different things, and I lost track of everything. I was so set on wanting to find ways to help, to offer some advice, some something that my own work kind of got put on the sideburner, to where I found myself having to make up for lost time during times of days that I wouldn't normally work. But to me, the sacrifice was worth it, because I feel like, one, I learned a lot, and two, I was able to kind of give some insight, some feedback, some found some things to share that I feel were definitely a plus. So let's talk more about it.
I'm going to start with my own personal story here, where I currently have a job, but I decided that I want to do something, get a little bit extra money in. So I went to the state job website. I put in an application. I got immediate feedback from them, and I'm sure that's an automation saying, boom, we got your stuff.
But through the state job website, other state entities post their jobs there. So I never heard back from the actual employer who was wanting to fill the position. And so I thought that was kind of crazy, like, oh, OK, so maybe I did something wrong. Maybe there was a glitch between the state site and the organization.
So happened to be looking again, saw that the same place had another job that they were offering. So instead, this time, I looked up the HR number. I called them and said, hey, just want to make sure I'm doing this right. I'm new to the state.
I'm new to the system. Help me out here. I put in an application. I heard from the state, but I never heard from your organization.
Is there any way that we go about following up on these types of things? She was able to actually look it up in the computer. And she's like, oh, yeah, yeah. Here we go.
I see your name. Oh, oh, oh, oh. Oh, my gosh. That was a kick to the chest and a blow to the ego.
Yes, I'm that chick. Because I'm like, OK, so who was the person on your staff that allowed that paper gold to just kind of slip through their fingers? Yeah. I said that in my head.
I didn't say it out loud. But now that I know, OK, now I can apply for this next job, knowing that if I don't hear anything back, that there's a reason. And also, I guess, knowing that I can always call HR again and find out, well, what's the status? And is there a place that I can look for the status versus just calling y'all in harassing you?
I'm sure you have better things to do with your time than have people like me calling to be like, hey, so what's the status? What are we doing? What's happening? But so that's my own personal situation.
Now, going back in time, when I was 15 and started working for the first time, it was way easier to get a job as far as I'm concerned. Because when you go to these fast food restaurants and you go to the malls and you put in an application, it was almost the next day. They were like, hey, can you come in for an interview? Oh, sure thing.
Yeah, let's do this. You know, they're actively looking for people. And sometimes I wonder if these corporations and organizations, now they were older, are they actually looking for people to feel these positions? Or is it kind of like just what you do, you post the position?
Although in house, you already have somebody to take that role. And the reason I say that is because I've seen it happen. I've seen it where the entity puts it out there almost like because it's a legal thing, like I have to actually advertise for this position. Although we know that Shelley from two doors down, we're going to move her from where she is and we're going to put her in that position.
But we did our due diligence by saying we were advertising the position. Yeah, not cool. If that's what's going on out there, as to why people aren't hearing back and whatnot, then that's messed up. It's one thing to be like me and just wanting a little supplemental, you know, some coins, but it's completely different for somebody who is in need of a job.
So another thing to kind of go along with this is that this particular time period, I'm wondering if this might be a problem because then as I was kind of doing my deep dive, I did see where it said that employers are not wanting to do seasonal work. And I've been that person too that got a job knowing that I only wanted to be there for a certain little time period and then I was going to move on. So maybe people like me made it bad. I don't know.
But usually leading up to the holiday times, you have seasonal positions where companies need extra help because sales go up over the holidays and, you know, foot traffic goes up. And so they need more people. It's unfortunate that the outlook right now for seasonal work is kind of grim. I'm wondering if that has anything to do.
Does it have any effect on just regular jobs as well? Being a military spouse, moving every three or so years, made it to where I ended up having to get multiple jobs, multiple, you know, different places. And the thing that worked for me, though, is that being a math teacher, everybody needed a math teacher, although Japan was a little different. They didn't need math teachers as bad as I thought they did.
But I eventually got in with a great school. But the thing for me is that because I had a specific area that I worked in that was pretty high need, no matter where you go, I didn't have trouble getting a job. Now, when you look at this, though, the fact that from place to place to place, I constantly had to go get new jobs. The whole idea of working virtually now, perfect.
Now, when we were in Florida, I was working virtually. However, when it came time to leave the school I was working at, they informed me that I would not be able to continue to work virtually because I was leaving the state. I'm going to let you marinate on that for a second. Why?
How does that make sense? It's a virtual job. I can go anywhere and do this. But in Florida, they were saying that they reserved their jobs for people in the state of Florida.
So because I was not moving to another city in Florida, then I had to kind of give them their job back. Now, I probably had some legal action that I could have taken because in my husband's military record, Florida was his state of residence. So no matter where we went, Florida is what we always revert back to as far as taxes and whatnot, that sort of thing. So yeah, I probably could have done a little legal something, but it really wasn't worth it.
It's an education job. They don't pay that much. So having said that in doing this deep dive with my friends and my relatives and trying to find bits and pieces and information about jobs and whatnot, one of the things that I was looking into was what do you do when you have gaps in employment? Because that's what happened when we left Florida and came to Virginia.
I ended up with gaps in my employment. And in the research that I was doing, I found that I just kind of naturally did the things that they were saying to do, like to volunteer. Well, I was doing that now, granted I wasn't volunteering on the level in education that I am certified to teach on, but I was volunteering in education nonetheless. So it still had a good look to it.
Just not the direct line of this makes sense because this is what you do type thing. But it wasn't saying at home to my phones that much. I know for sure. But some of the other things that they were kind of recommending is like networking and refreshing your resume.
And I'm going to tell you, when you have holes in your job history, figuring out the resume, I would definitely recommend going to a person that knows what they're doing. I went to this guy and he was like, Oh, here's what you do. You look at the job and you cut and paste what the job description says. And you put that in your skills and then you just kind of change a few of the words here.
And then now you have all the keywords that their system is going to look at and it'll spit your, your application out to be in the good pile and not spit it out and be in a bad pile. And I'm kind of like, is it really bad? Easy? Well, clearly not because the job that I was going for when he helped me with that, I didn't get any feedback.
I didn't like none of the none of the stuff happened. So it's like, and then I went to, um, I went to an event and it was crazy because that was the exact thing that the people said not to do. They were like, don't do this. And I'm like, okay.
Well, now I know, um, you know, they even have career coaches out there now. My only issue with that is that if you and your family are in need of money, it's real hard to wrap your mind around giving somebody else the money to help you not knowing if it's going to be a good return on investment. It just, I mean, now I'd like to think that a career coach could help you with interviewing and answering the types of questions that you may have about interviewing because that can be a bit daunting. Some of the questions that they asked, um, I was talking to, um, our oldest daughter and she was saying that she was in a job interview and they asked her what character would she describe herself as?
I believe that was how the question went. And I'm thinking if I were in a job interview and they asked me that question, I don't know that I would be able to dazzle them with the greatest answer because I'm not thinking about characters while I'm in there. I'm thinking about getting this job character. Now granted, it may work that we got a 10 year old.
So we watch lots of Disney shows and whatnot to know who the current characters are. But yeah, that would have been a definite monkey wrench thrown into my plan. Like, Oh, give me a second. Let me let me ponder on that for a second.
Thanks for joining me for today's episode. I really think I'm going to have to have at least one more episode to cover jobs. Because one thing I didn't talk about was, should you stay or should you go? You know, once you get the job, do you stay in that job or do you kind of balance around places?
There's talk about that. There's guidance on that. And I kind of wanted to touch on that. So next episode, that's what we're going to cover.
And then there's another thing too, the idea of families with children with disabilities. Some of these families need money because of the medical situation that their children are in. And the fact that one parent may not be able to work, then that's a big stressor on a family. And so when you're looking for a job and you're in that situation, you're looking for a specific type of job because you're possibly going to need to have time off or whatever it is that you need to handle your own personal situation.
So the thing with that is do you disclose or do you keep it to yourself? Do you disclose it up front and let the employer know before you get the job? Or do you hold it in your back pocket until you can get in somewhere and then you let people know? That's another thing.
And so I don't know if that one needs to have its own episode or was that enough right there just to kind of get you thinking like, Oh man, what about people with children with disabilities? Like I never thought about that because if you don't have that as your personal situation, those types of things kind of go under the radar. You don't even think about that. If you know somebody that's going through that or it's you, then hello is very real and it's a big thing.
So not sure we might go into that as well, but for sure, for sure, we got to talk about should you stay or should you go? I said all that to say, Hey, you know what, if I need that place that used to be called Twitter and Instagram at he that's at he that that's at he T T T T T T T T T T T T or just look for the hashtag tweet trends. I'm still trying to get on threads. I know y'all are like, Hey, you've been saying that since the rest came out.
We'll see. We'll see how that goes, but any feedback, any information, hit me up. If not, I'll see you back here again later this week.