From Hedge Funds to Hedge Trimming

When I received a scholarship offer from a top 50 MBA program last May all of my friends and family couldn't stop talking about what a wonderful opportunity I'd found. I agreed wholeheartedly. A year and change later I've found myself exiting the one year program into the worst economy in recent history. 152 job applications later I, like 9.5% of you reading this, am still without gainful employment. The following article will showcase my top 5 pet peeves I've encountered during this process.

5. Finding Something to Apply For- Did you know the federal government has set aside over 10 trillion dollars to fix the economy? Welp, 2.68 trillion in and I promise you I'm not seeing the results on careerbuilder. In fact, when I've tried to lock in on sensible career options I can actually spend an entire day looking with zero results. The guy that shows up at the internet café and nurses a small iced coffee in the corner for 4 hours? That's me. And I never even send a resume!

4. Scam Artists- Weeks ago I hit rock bottom in the search and with that decided I'd go a different direction; A personal resume post on Craiglist titled 'From Hedge Funds to Hedge Trimming.' The post showcased skills including accounting, sales training, house sitting, and dog walking. Why not at this point? I submitted what I thought was a clever post on Friday evening and when I checked back 48 hours later my inbox had exploded! The results: Over 150 auto populated emails from people looking for me to invest in work at home starter kits, join rival job boards, or process their US payments. The only email that seemed to come from an actual human was an offer to drive a panel van... They never got back to me.

3. Sales Job Titles and Descriptions- Notice how fancy these have become? Apparently folks realized just how challenging it is to sell products in a bad economy and tried to compensate by applying decorative titles. Account Executive, Business Development Consultant, Territory Manager, Senior Client Specialist, and the list goes on. They tricked you in to opening one too right? I also find it interesting when the job description contains a dozen bullets about cross-functional collaboration and developing marketing strategy. Really? I think 3 bullets would suffice: 1- Make an inordinate amount of cold calls, 2- Propose solutions to senior executives who don't give a damn about you, your company, or your well being, 3- Attempt to shorten the sales cycle by adding 'urgency' while everyone knows your product offering will be EXACTLY the same in 6 months. Did I mention I was trying to transition out of sales?

2. Head Hunter Incompetence- This one has been mind boggling. The conversation usually starts with the head hunter asking why I'm looking to leave my current employer. Well, that little 06-08 thing to the right of the company name and the grad school section at the bottom should kinda give it away. Dude, you have a brand new copy of my resume sitting on your desk, give it a quick look before you call me. I'm also always intrigued when a head hunter jumps into the 'perfect opportunity' pitch with out even getting an idea of what I'm looking to do. You get paid to place me somewhere, I get it…

1. Resume Writing Services- If anyone has ever submitted their resume for the initial free critique and got back a 'hey this looks great' I'll buy you a hot dog and mustard. Obviously they want to tear you down a little so you start thinking about the service, but I've actually seen a fellow student's review come out almost verbatim to my own. Scam.com baby. On top of this template style attack is the pricing travesty. I've seen sites charging up to $650. So look, I'm unemployed and that is more than my rent right now. If I give you a reasonable working document and it takes one of your 'expert resume professionals' more than 3 hours to doctor it up, something is seriously wrong. I've emailed them about offering an unemployment discount but they are yet to implement my strategy. Stay tuned...

I feel so much better!

Tags & Keywords : jobs, unemployment, insanity, careers, economy, job market