Thursday – Mortgage Experience Makes For A Subprime Résumé

[ninanevermore]

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Just yesterday I got an email from my friend the Cajun Queen, giving me her new address in New England so I can send her a Christmas card. Needless to say, I'd emailed her to ask for it some weeks ago. I asked if she had a new email address that she checks more than once a month that I should know about. She replied, no, she just hadn't been checking her email lately. It seems she'd been looking for a job last year and, despite sending out 100 resumes, she did not receive a single offer. This put her in such a funk that she stopped checking her messages all together.

Now, my friend the Cajun Queen is probably about the hardest worker I know. Cajuns, as a group, work almost as hard as they play, which is pretty damn hard. She has an excellent work history and is not one to arbitrarily walk away from any job. Her problem is that most of her jobs have been in the mortgage industry, and her last job was with a subprime lender that has not just gone belly up, but is starting to bloat. This creates a job hunting dilemma for her: the mortgage companies that have not gone under are laying people off rather than hiring, and anyone associated with that field is kind of a pariah right about now.

This got me thinking about how looking for a job is never pleasant, but searching for a job during a global economic meltdown is its own brand of misery. They say there are 5 stages to grief, but I think there are 8 stages to unemployment. They are:

1. Hopeful Enthusiasm: "Wow, this'll be great! I see this as a chance to start off in a new direction. I'll be working again in no time!"

2. Subdued Enthusiasm: "Well, it's taking a little longer than I thought, but something will come along now any day – I can feel it."

3. Dawning Realization: "This is turning out to be a long, hard slog. Maybe I should look into food stamps."

4. Bitterness: "What do they mean they like me, I have a great résumé, I give a great interview, and they'll keep me in mind? What the ##!!!%? It sounds like they're saying they love me, but they're not in love with me! I'm lovable, damnit! Somebody hire me!"

5. Depression: "##!!!% it. I don't really want to work, anyway. I'd rather stay at home and watch infomercials. My Ped Egg should be arriving any day now."

6. Despair: "My credit card was declined and they won't send my Ped Egg. Not only am I useless and undesirable, I have ugly feet and there's nothing I can do about it."

7. Desperation: "I don't need to make as much money as I did before. I just need to get back in the workforce before my food stamps run out."

8. Resignation: "Would you like fries with that?"

I set up seminars to help sell pre-paid funerals to old veterans. It's like flipping burgers in a lot of ways, but not so hard on the complexion (working fast food always gives you zits, but my skin is as nice as ever, if a bit pasty from sitting in a cubicle all day).

I'm hoping the Queen finds a job soon, hopefully in a field that isn't in the processing of collapsing. If she winds up flipping burgers, I can guarantee they'll be the best burgers anyone has ever tasted, served up with a heaping side of sass.



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Comments

[adamant-turtle.livejournal.com]

My mom's currently job-hunting, so I know the drill...

The trouble is, even if one IS willing to take something "beneath" his or her prior experience, if you will, generally they will not be hired, because the company/employer is suspicious: "Why do you want something you're overqualified for?", "Are you just biding time til you can find something better?" etc. Never mind that the economy is crap and people are desperate, or that people often start off in high, "desirable" fields that just don't make them very happy, so they choose to move down, or any number of other reasons. But it's like once you've done one thing, you're stuck with it for life.

[neanahe.livejournal.com]

I nipped that suspicion in the bud in the interview with, "The salary you're offering will be a raise over the unemployment benefits I'm making right now, which pay me $450 every two weeks." It put things in perspective for them.

My problem is I'm a professional general specialist. Everything I've done has been unique to the company I worked for, and had nothing to do with anything I'd ever done before. My main life skill is adaptability.