Job-hunting at Halloween

Today I plunged head over heals into job-hunting. Bought a file for my portfolio, cotton fiber paper to print my resume on, business card paper to print the business cards I designed. My resume is polished, my cover letter more or less in order. And in the afternoon, at a birthday party Yair was invited to, I made my first attempt at networking my way to a job, after learning that only about 20% of all open positions are actually advertised. One of the mothers turned out to be a Harvard-graduate who, for years, has been working for a consulting company in San Francisco. This company, it turns out, also gets requests for technical writing contracts. Now I am to enter my profile into their system and let the girl's mother know when I am done. She is Senior Vice President and General Manager. One of them. That's one step forward then, isn't it?

I do miss the easy, simple way of sending out your resume to a bunch of companies within 15 minutes, the way it is done in Israel. Here, finding a job is real work. It could be a full-time occupation if you wanted to. It is strongly recommended that you call up the companies after sending your application to affirm your interest in the position and improve your chances of your resume at least getting looked at. Better yet, before sending your application, call the company and find out who is the hiring manager. Then address your cover letter to him (or her). And call again afterwards to make sure it went through.

All the while, Shai is supposedly enjoying himself at his first Halloween party in San Francisco. Don't ask how he left the house. He put on one of my pajamas. Did I mention it's his first Halloween party? I tried to tell him that Halloween is different from Purim, in a sense. Aren't you supposed to wear something scary, or spooky, or extramundane? But for lack of a real costume, he wanted to be creative... I, for one, would have skipped the party.