I wondered if newspapers still ran classifieds so, when our local Montclarian appeared in our driveway, it seemed the perfect moment to satisfy that nugget of curiosity. We haven't had a newspaper subscription in years, you see.
At first, we both grew weary of the general lousiness of the "local" papers - the San Francisco Chronicle and Tribune (before they became one), and the Oakland Tribune (which never really amounted to one newspaper at all). Maureen grew up reading the Chicago Tribune, I dallied with both the New York Times and the Washington Post. Small wonder, then, that we were print journalism snobs.
Given my accidental career in public relations, I've long been an armchair follower and critic of trends and developments in journalism. It seems to me that the consolidation train was on the tracks long before Internet news caused print media's ultimate derailment. All of the local East Bay papers, some that published Pulitzer prize reporting, folded into the Bay Area News Group in 2006, after the Alameda News Group acquired the San Jose Mercury News (and decimated the ranks of its talented and decorated reporters). That was only one year after the birth of the big mama of news aggregators, the Huffington Post.
I still read analyses from the Pew Foundation, Columbia School of Journalism, and others, about how the stodgy mastheads of the ships of information freedom and democracy failed to adapt to the new age of infobits and infographics. Much hand-wringing about the death of print journalism contributing to, if not causing, the polarization of the body politic and even some hints that we, the people, have chosen the fork of the road taking us to diminished critical thinking capacity.
It turned out that the Montclarian had a story about the reopening of a quasi-public horse riding stable near our house. Maureen and I rode there together decades ago in what I described as a condo horse arrangement. For $150 a month each, we got a couple of private riding lessons and weekend trail rides. We enjoyed the experience, and our horses Two Story and Doc. So sad when the concession folded. Given Maureen's passion for all things horses, the stable's reopening seems a wonderful employment opportunity for her. Not the classifieds, but any job lead works.
The Montclarian did have job classifieds but nothing like those I remember reading when I first moved to the Bay Area in the mid-1980s. Then, it took a long time to get through them. Every job and potential career was there for all job seekers to consider - from artists to xenophobes. Okay, I made up the xenophobes and it only phonetically fits the A to Z pattern desired. Still.
Yesterday's classifieds surprised me. One, that there were any at all. Second, that almost all fell under two first letters: E-ngineers and T-echnology. Not a bartender, cook or domestic help job listed at all. I'd hoped that hyperlocal jobs might be listed but no. Why the likes of Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Apple would spend any money to purchase classifieds in a newspaper with a circulation approaching the hundreds is lost to me.
Time to dive back into Craigslist and Indeed.com.
I just sent off an application to be a part-time receptionist for a foundation that governs what it refers to as "America's premier active adult community." I've been at this job hunt and application gig for three months. Actively, at least. It has been an interesting journey.
First, I haven't applied for a job in more than 20 years. I had a sense that we wouldn't need to subscribe to any newspapers to look at the classified ads. That's good because our newspapers are pretty awful. What to do? AARP to the rescue. You see, ever since I've retired, I've followed select organizations. AARP is one. Others have to do with my own professional development, such as the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA), from which I am accredited in Public Relations (proud of that - the pass rate when I took the exam in the 80's was 30 percent) and the Pew Research Center, because there will always be an anthropologist in me.
It was reading one of the AARP aggregated news emails that I found Indeed. I love that you can set up filters to look for work near you. Every morning, after satisfying my Facebook craving, I peruse through the emails from all the various feeds. Sometimes - it varies day by day and week by week - I send off a cover letter and resume. I have two resumes now. Maureen told me that my "real" resume made me appear to be so overqualified as to be intimidating. So I wrote one, in fits and starts, that focuses on writing.
Which brings me back to the title of this entry... job filters. Early on, I made the conscious decision that I wasn't going to cross the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Bridge to go to work. Too expensive, parking's a nightmare, and there are those small matters of earthquakes and firestorms. That one decision allows me to breeze through job postings pretty quickly.
Over time, a month or so, I realized that my Indeed filters (communications, presentations and, most recently, environmental) pulled up a ton of jobs I was either not interested in or qualified for. By interested in, I mean my own screening for what organizations might hire me. I smoke, get over it. That means applying for work in or near a California health care system is out of the question. By qualified for, I mean that hiring officers seem to throw in references about being good at communications. You can be sure that I am not an engineer (nor have I ever met one who could communicate worth a damn, so good luck with that, hiring officer).
Then, frustrated that all of the jobs were full-time I realized how little I wanted that. So off to Craigslist, on the advice of a previous coworker and current friend. I've found that to be quite useful. In fact, Craigslist is where I found today's job possibility.
