Job-Hunting is Like Giving a Cat a Pedicure...

...awkward, draining, and potentially lethal.  And very, very humbling.

Don't you just hate it when a teacher or employer makes you "assess yourself"?  All those painful, awkward questions...making you think about your talents, your challenges, your successes and failures...

Ugh.

Well, this time it's not a well-meaning authoritarian who's forcing me to evaluate my skill set.  It's just little old me, sitting at the computer with my warm can of Pepsi Next and a cat chattering at the window (our local cardinal couple is taunting Loki).  And I am poring through literally hundreds of jobs in the Pittsburgh area.  Most of them are well above my skill set and experience range (you know, like the Director of Marketing and Technological Advancement and Other Things You'll Never Comprehend Department at Carnegie Mellon).  A lot of them don't work with my availability.  I'm not being picky; I have religious obligations on both Saturdays and Sundays and therefore cannot regularly work weekends.  It's not like I'm sleeping in until 3:oo PM and then going out to party all night!

So I am at a bit of a standstill.  I joined LinkedIn about a month before I lost my job at Fenner.  It's funny...about three months ago is when I started seriously looking for other work.  It wasn't that I was unhappy at Fenner.  I certainly couldn't complain about my hours (perfect), or co-workers (generally awesome), or the commute (8 minutes with traffic)!  It was that I wanted something more fulfilling.  A different career path.  So I started poking around.

And here I am, still poking. 

On LinkedIn, I've seen some of the people who graduated with me from Clarion.  Granted, I don't know most of them personally (the English and Theatre departments were relatively intimate, mind you), but I'm looking at their current job titles and wondering how they possibly ended up so awesome and important and special.  Not that Clarion grads aren't all of those things, of course.  They are!  I went to school with some pretty amazing people!  But I had to ask myself if maybe...just maybe...some of those fancy titles weren't a little bit puffed up - even by the companies themselves?  I mean...a cashier could call herself a "Financial Exchange Overseer"...couldn't she?  A janitor could say he's a  "Systems and Facility Maintenance Coordinator".  Even a blogger could list "Social Observation Analyst and Reporter" as a job, right?

So, hard as it is, I'm trying not to get caught up in the allure of important-sounding monikers and fluffy, highfaluting job descriptions.  I'm trying to look for jobs that are close in proximity to my home (I'm not that interested in a 45-minute commute...again), for reputable companies, within my skill set, and offer decent pay.  Simple.

Apparently there isn't much out there for a conservative, well-spoken, educated, book-loving, high-energy, customer-friendly 30-something with fantastic taste in footwear from Carnegie.

Well, nothing that pays more than $9.50 an hour, anyway. 

I gotta keep on truckin'...