21 February 2006

A Wasted Shave

I shaved my trademark sideburns for that?

I've been waiting for several months now for the [Generic University] career fair. My hope, of course, was that the Central Intelligence Agency would be there again. Last year when I went up to their both, introduced myself, and handed them a resume, I totally nailed it, and they scheduled an interview with me for the next day. Given the luck I had last year without a completed degree or a year of Arabic, I was positive that I could score another interview and knock it out of the ballpark.

Well, they didn't sign up, and they didn't show up. Bollocks.

At any rate, I figured this morning that in order to make a good impression on prospective employers, it might be a good idea to temporarily trim back my Wolverinesque sideburns, which have come to be a trademark feature of my face. I had an agenda, skipping the tables manned by flunkies from such companies as State Farm, Target, Wal Mart, and Con Agra foods. On the list of visiting employers were two government agencies that I could, at least temporarily, identify with: the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection department. I prepared targeted resumes and put them in manila envelopes and everything.

I walked up to one of the three recruiters from the FBI, introduced myself, and said that I had a resume for them; I was immediately told that they couldn't take a resume, that all applications had to go through the website. She went through her spiel, and I'm thinking, "I go to the effort to put together a resume, and you won't even humor me by taking it? What a joke! Why send a delegation to a career fair if you have no authority to actually help people in the application process!?"

The recruiter from the Border Patrol was absolutely floored that someone would come up to her, introduce themself, and say that they were interested in the Border Patrol. She had me there for a good fifteen minutes, and I was impressed enough that I think I actually will apply for the Border Patrol, though I don't really have that much desire to use it as anything more than a jumping off point, if I get hired in the first place.

I only seriously visited one other employer: a company called translations.com. I also asked the Navy recruiter, who I believe to have been a Yeoman First Class (the rank is easy, the job classification symbols are the tough part), what the minimum age for the Navy Reserve was. It used to be twenty-six, but they've apparently dropped it down to eighteen. She was friendly, but aggressive.

The highlight of the day was after I'd already spoken with the four prospective employers that I had any interest in; a gorgeous grad student who was working on a video project for her MA in education asked if she could interview me, so in addition to being interviewed by a hot grad student, I got to talk to her for a couple of minutes about job searching and post-college life.

So, I reiterate my earlier statement: I shaved my trademark sideburns for that?

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