So this past Thursday I had a very big anniversary. I celebrated my one week of unemployment! Myself and everyone else on the communications team was laid off. I can't say the name of this forward thinking software company located in the Mid-Atlantic Region because I signed some documents in blood saying I would never speak bad about the company (and by company they really meant the short CEO) ever. Hey, you can't blame me. I wanted to get my severance pay.
Being laid off was something that I had never experienced before. I've always had a job. When I turned 15 my parents gave me a high five, my working papers, and then my mom drove me to the St. Louis Zoo to apply for a job. Since then I've worked at a grocery store, waited tables, catered, held internships, and two jobs. But now at the ripe old age of almost 25, I find myself with a lot of hours to fill. I looked into dog walking but every single place is like: We require a 6 month commitment and 3+ years of dog walking experience. And let's be honest all I want to do is walk a couple of dogs a day and get paid until I get a real job. Which sadly I can't put on the application.
When I started telling people that I had gotten laid off I noticed a common theme in what everyone was saying. Everyone kept telling me that I should start a blog. Now I don't know if it's because people think I'm a good writer or if my awkward stories just make people feel better about their lives but hey I'll take it. I kept saying yeah yeah until my friend Caroline got involved. Now my friends and family know Caroline as my life/fashion guru. She got me to stop wearing clothes in double digits, made me buy stretch jeans, and got me boots. In short she has put in a lot of hours working on me. She and I used to work together so when I told her that I had gotten laid off she told me to: WRITE A BLOG. And to be honest I'm a little scared of Caroline because she is always threatening to email my mother so here you go Caroline!
I have 24 hours to fill in a day now and I can only spend so many hours searching for jobs, watching Roseanne on netflix streaming, and avoiding cleaning my room. Everything I say on here/ramble about is my own opinion so if you hate it I'm sorry. But remember I have no money and was recently denied unemployment (which don't worry that will be it's own post) so I'm not worth suing. So sit back, relax, and enjoy the rambles of an almost 25 year old in our nation's capital. I'll be writing about my job search process, things I experience in the city, dating (HAHAHAHHAHAH), all of my awkward moments, past stories, and everything in between.
Alright, I need to go to the grocery store so quick story before I head on out. It's about LinkedIn. LinkedIN and I go way back. In fact, for my previous job, one of the writing samples I had to do was a press release on LinkedIN. I think I basically just wrote about how awesome it was and how it helps people network.
Now the word networking is something I always hear in DC. I went to a party one night in August and like 5 guys were handing out their business cards. I was pretty focused on the free food but I couldn't help noticing that these guys were making it rain at the party with their cards. and it wasn't even like they were really networking, it was more like awkward government pick up lines. One guy talked to me and was all: Oh hey here is my card, I work at the DOJ, we should hang out, look me up on LinkedIn. Which um no you know how much effort that requires of me? There are like 4,000 John's on LinkedIn. I'm not searching through all of those just because you want me to see that 3 summers ago you interned in the Senate. Take a number.
But now that I've been laid off, I've finally been using LinkedIn. I've been on it for awhile but never really got it. But whenever you ask people about it they are all: DUDE it's awesome! Work is all about networking! You gotta use it. So I updated my info, connected with a bunch of random people that I haven't talked to in years. Today I got an email from LinkedIn saying that there were some job openings that fit me. "GREAT!" I thought to myself. "Let's go take a look!" So I signed in and clicked on the job openings list. And you know what LinkedIn had found for me? Two sales jobs from the company that I had just gotten laid off from.
Thanks LinkedIN.
The rest of these entries will be better I promise. The first blog is always the hardest.
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