So, the Internet has jobs right?

When I started my job hunt I thought for sure that I would be able to find a job online that would be perfect for me. I thought that my resume and my huge list of qualifications, skills, and activities on campus would make me the clear candidate from what I figured was a relatively large pool of applicants.

WRONG!

If you think you are getting a job just by uploading your resume and clicking a few buttons to fill out a profile then you are going to be sorely disappointed when you realized that your degree has just earned you a trip BACK to living in your parent's basement. For the most part, you are going to have to be a carbon copy of what the HR director or whoever is divining these things out before you even get a call. Even having inside help won't matter.

GOOGLE

Here was my first serious attempt at trying to get a job online. I used to work with a darling woman who had a little brother who just happened to be an executive at Google. So, abiding by the maxim of "It's not what you know, but who you know." I called Rita up and asked if she would get me an inside track if she felt comfortable doing so.

As luck would have it, she was more than happy to oblige and gave me an introduction to a gentleman who had extraordinary talent, intelligence, and writing skills. (Granted, I gleaned all of this from his emails but you don't get to work for Google by just being lucky). So I began a dialogue with the gentleman in New York and he agreed to submit me as an insider for three different jobs at Google. Now, normally, Google gets around 2,500 resumes a day and I think they hire around 50 to 75 people. So, with that in mind, I figured I had anywhere from a 2 to 3 percent chance of getting hired. Then, you take into consideration that I was submitted as an insider so that probably doubled my chances so we're now looking at around a 6% chance of getting into one of the best companies in the world to work for.

During the time from resume submission to rejection email, I was one of the happiest guys you could have ever met. I envisioned working long hours for a company that finally understood that you will get more out of your employees by giving them a clear directive and an environment in which their creativity can roam free. I thought about what it would be like to hunker down and work in a corporate legal office or marketing department that would be a drastic change from the brazen and wild small criminal firms that I work in now. You could have popped me with a pin and rainbows, Skittles, and free beer would have burst forth like a piñata.

Even when I got the rejection emails from Google HR I wasn't downtrodden or disappointed. I knew my information would still be in their system and I kept applying even after I was turned away for not having my degree yet. (Something that I failed to mention was that I can actually start on December 18 but that is a lesson learned). Either way, applying and getting rejected from Google has been a positive experience and I am still plugging away and trying to get my foot in the door there.

APPLE

This blog post is coming to you from a 12" PowerBook that has become my inseparable companion for at least a year now. Addie, as I call her, follows me from my room, to class, to the back porch, and anywhere there might be a wireless connection. So, naturally I thought that I might want to apply at Apple because I love what it is that they do.

Filling out the profile was easy enough but it is now about four weeks later and I haven't heard a word back from them. No news is good news right?

MICROSOFT

Like fanny packs and wine from a box, this is something that I really wish I would have not spent any time investing myself in. Why Microsoft? To this day I looked at it as a game of probability. They are one of the largest employers in the world and I figured that there would be SOMETHING open in Redmond.

It took me around 30 to 40 minutes to try and fill everything out and get my potential employee profile filled out. When I went to submit it I got a fatal error on the page. Oops. Maybe OSU's connection died. So I went back, filled out any information that was cleared and hit submit again. Error. Hmmm.... Maybe I'm using the wrong browser. So I switched from Firefox to IE and found that I was thwarted by the same error at the same point in time. I figure that they must not be hiring.

THE END

So, how do I plan on getting a job online. Well, I could continue to go the regular route and keep banging my head into the wall and not getting anywhere. Or, I could take up the same type of creative flow and irrational creativity reticent in my former roommate and hetero-life-partner Jeff Clark and create something really fantastic. Jeff did something called www.ihiredjeffclark.com and landed a job in his ideal industry in his ideal city. Well, success becomes a relatively easy thing to achieve once you have seen a friend get it so I have decided to create a job search site called www.hiremyroommate.com over the Christmas break that will relate how much my roommates wish that I would get hired away someplace so they can get rid of me. It should be entertaining at the least.