Good news! This week my brain has actually functioned for two days! It wasn’t a full snap, crackle and pop up there but there was definitely hints of crackling and a couple of borderline snaps. It was delicious! Welcome back old brain! I will never take you for granted again!
For today’s newsletter, I asked Joanna Kelly to write a piece for us about what it’s like to be job hunting in a pandemic, after we had a conversation that made me want to laugh and cry and then laugh again.
I met Jo in a newspaper office in Dublin where we bonded over midnight finishes and after-hours Guinness. She is a good friend, writer and editor.
Here is her piece followed by the usual reading / viewing / eating recommendations from me…
By JOANNA KELLY
I need a job, a haircut, and a vaccine. But I’m not sure which will come first, or if I can even have one without the other.
This time last year I was an editor in an actual office with real humans. When lockdown hit, I worked from home and compiled a newspaper from my kitchen table. It was the most difficult job I’ve ever had to do.
But it was fulfilling work. I was in charge of a local government newspaper and helped deliver covid-19 crisis information to residents in lockdown. Writing about NHS doctors and frontline staff gave me a purpose and made me feel as though I was a 1940s auxiliary worker doing my bit for the ‘wartime effort’.
Then the contract came to an end in December - and three months later, I’m struggling to even get a part-time job.
Every day I wake up and go online to check the latest vacancies. If it looks like I could possibly do it - I hit ‘Apply’. With more than 15 years’ experience in newsrooms, I should be in with a shot. But apparently not.
Recruiters aren’t calling me back. And this year-long sluggishness is making it hard to differentiate between what is my part and what is their part.
Just to make sure I was as well-equipped as I could be, I paid £129 for a CV refresh expert. The writer, ‘Leo’, replying from America, assured me that my old ‘résumé’ wasn’t ‘selling’ my skills enough so what he sent back was a CV that made me sound like Iron Man. If he had it his way, he’d have recruiters believe that I singlehandedly built the Hadron Collider and can ‘tirelessly leverage this results-driven agility for your organization’ - *said in a New York accent and sent to a small charity in Surrey*. ‘Leverage’? I check spelling. I’ve never ‘leveraged’ anything in my life.
However, Leo may be right. I’m doing something wrong.
The four virtual interviews I’ve done so far have been total failures. And I’m happy to take full responsibility for that. You know when people tell you to be yourself? Yeah, well, it's not the best approach when the real you is flat, weary and tired. To be frank, I’m completely drained right now. I miss my friends. I’d like a hug. And I’d really like a haircut, man. Zoom calls aren’t flattering at the best of times, they’re even less so when you look like both Cousin Itt *and* Uncle Fester at the same time. So I’m finding myself being professionally ghosted. Like a date that’s used an old profile pic to lure you in, I’m a disappointment. I’m not ‘The One’. And it hurts.
Like many people, I am depressed. But I’m supposed to put on my best face for recruiters and pretend that I haven’t just tried to not die for the past 12 months. They ask what I’m passionate about. What *am* I passionate about? I don’t know… Can I just pay the rent and get a vaccine first?!
Interviewers want examples of how you are trying to save the world with this ‘passion’. So I took this tip and applied to PETA, the animal rights people, of which I’ve been a member since 2006 and have protested for many times. How much more ‘passionate’ can you get? PETA then sent me five questionnaires for their editor vacancy to fill out which I diligently answered and even attached a pic of me in a PETA shirt. Their curt reply was that I made a mistake on the test but they didn’t make clear what the mistake was. I wanted an answer because, dammit, I’ve stood out in the rain protesting for PETA for years! They did not respond. Possibly because my emails came across as crazy but, hey - that’s what made me a PETA member in the first place. They can’t have it every way.
Last month I received an interview invite from a heart publication. In the interview, I talked about my family experiences of losing a sibling to a heart problem and spoke from the heart, no pun intended. But I also accidentally left my laundry in the background because the video call view was on MS Teams and not Gmail where I tested the screen layout. Having recently moved house, my new ‘office’ is a spare room full of bags waiting to be put away when I can buy a new wardrobe. So while I was regaling interviewers with my past employment, they could also see a Christmas tree and an M&S bag toppling over with towels and a hot water bottle. A few days later, I got an email to say that I wasn’t successful because I ‘didn’t have enough knowledge of the subject area’. Rubbish - it was the February Christmas tree, wasn’t it?
I can't seem to meet anyone's expectations right now and it's crushing. To succeed, I must up my game. I need to be more Leo. I bet Leo doesn’t get sad. I bet Leo just gets more awesome. I bet Leo’s Christmas tree is long tucked away. Mental note - be more Leo.
Friends rightly point out that recruiters must be suffering as well. Maybe they’re homeschooling several kids. Maybe they've lost a loved one. Maybe it’s long covid, they're afraid of losing their jobs, or maybe all of the above. So many variables. How well people are truly functioning right now is guesswork. Though rejection stings, this is not a normal period of time. Yardsticks aren’t helpful to anyone right now. Compassion is key.
If this past year has shown us anything, it’s that we are all just human. Planet Earth was here first, our time is fleeting. We’re all just trying to survive. I don’t know how younger jobseekers without much experience are making it at this time, along with everything else. So reach out to your nearest jobseeker today, they may need a few soft words of support. We need hope and reminders that things change. It’s tough and our bills are multiplying quicker than John Travolta’s chills.
In the meantime, I will keep applying. Wish me luck.
WHAT I’M READING
There were so many good articles online this week, here are a few.
Please please read this article in the New Statesman if you have time. It’s a powerful description of the grief that we are all experiencing, whether we realise it or not. Here is a quote from it: ‘The enormity of this crisis is too much to compute while you sit doom-scrolling on your sofa, but that doesn’t mean it can’t crush you. “Many people say they are feeling a heavy sadness – and what they’re describing is grief,” the psychologist David Kessler told the Guardian recently. “Everything has changed. And change is actually grief – grief is a change we didn’t want.”
Also, The Harvard Business Review is excellent on what businesses should be doing to alleviate the burn out many of us are experiencing.
This article in The Guardian explains how our brains are craving novelty right now - which is why a trip to the supermarket can feel like the height of excitement. I went to a deli I don’t normally go to this week and it was like an art gallery of fancy packaging! So pretty!
And another piece in the Guardian explains how just as we need a variety of foods to make a healthy diet, so we need a variety of interactions to make a healthy social life. We need deep conversations and small talk, jokes and physical contact. Many of us are missing the small talk component right now, having lost those moments of interaction we get by chatting in the lift, or having lunch with a colleague. It makes sense to me. That’s why a long talk with loved ones won’t always make you feel better. Sometimes you need banter with a stranger, in a pub, after three pints. The article didn’t actually say that, I’m extrapolating…
Finally, for Covid-related stories - this article explains why the pandemic has affected menstrual cycles, which is something I’ve heard from many friends.
In NON-Covid reading - I hear that there is a Whiskey flavoured Kit Kats are all the rage in Japan!
And this piece in the New Yorker is long and fascinating. It’s about how polyamorists and polygamists are changing family norms and quotes sex therapist, Ted talker Esther Perel who says that traditional monogamy is on the wane and perhaps increasingly untenable. “Many social norms don’t fit human nature,” she told me. “For most of history, monogamy was one person for life. At this point, monogamy is one person at a time. The first freedom was that we can actually, finally have sex with other people before we are together. Now we want to have that freedom while we are together. The conversation about consensual non-monogamy today is the conversation about virginity sixty years ago. Or the conversation about divorce twenty years before that.”
You can view my full list of recommended books below.
WHAT I’M LISTENING TO
Tim Ferris interviewing Joyce Carole Oats was lovely.
WHAT I’M WATCHING
The Morning Show with Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon. It was excellent.
WHAT I’M BUYING
Vegetables! I am doing my very best to get this brain of mine back in action, with a lot of vegetables, sleep and supplements. I have a feeling that what it really needs is hugs but until that’s possible I’ll keep buying broccoli. And here, just for fun, is a picture of a man dressed as a carrot.
We’re back in April! I’ve missed them - and you - so much. I’ll share the link for tickets next week, also I have other events planned for April which I hope you’ll like. If there is anything in particular you need help with / would like to explore - do let me know and I’ll find an expert and see if they’ll do a workshop for us.
Thanks for subscribing! I'm Marianne. I am the bestselling author of Help Me! and creator of the Writing for Fun and Sanity Workshops. You can also follow me on Instagram HERE and Facebook HERE
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Job Hunting in the Pandemic