poplar road: A Knock On The Door

May 27, 2006

A Knock On The Door

Some of you may have heard me talk about a very exciting job I applied for two weeks ago. Well, you can uncross your fingers now. Once again, not even shortlisted, although this time someone in the HR department was kind enough to let me know the hiring was over and done with. That was just before 9 on Friday morning. Needless to say, I spent the rest of the morning sadly job-searching in the comfort of my favourite pair of flannel pyjamas and a very well worn in T-shirt.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because a few hours after the bad news about the job, I was sitting in my tiny bathroom, wishing I could land a decent job so we could afford to finish our glorious master bathroom, when there was a knock on the door. No time to even put a sweatshirt on over the pjs, and anyway it's usually just a neighbour. Only this time it wasn't Jonathan, it was a security system salesman. I got my polite face on, about to tell him not interested, when he said the funniest thing. "I guess your folks aren't home?"

I gaped at him in astonishment. Me, thirty-three years old, no makeup on, only needs to put on flannel pyjama bottoms to be mistaken for a teenager? "I am 'the folks'," I said. He looked surprised, and I cut his spiel short to send him away. When you've got a neighbour like Jonathan keeping an eye on the street, why get video surveillance and motion sensors? (There's a reason Bud calls him the "Mayor".) Anyway, when I got back to my computer I sat there thinking. How old is thirty-three, really? I obviously don't look a day over 20 – gotta love unintended flattery – and I'm still young enough to roll with the punches and keep up with a learning curve, while educated and experienced enough to provide an employer with more than some fresh-faced eager young thing can offer. Right?

Right. So I got out a very short list I made a few months ago, of all the event coordination companies in town. All four of them. Now, I have no credentials as an event coordinator. Nor even as an administrator, for that matter, a BFA being highly irrelevant to employers looking for Business Administration on a job application; but experience should count for something. I'm neither patient enough nor can we afford for me to start over at minimum wage, let's be realistic, but I have to look at every job option, and event coordination has been a huge part of my work for the last 5 years. (And privately, too – Pam's wedding was a crash course in how to pull off a wedding at the last minute without the bride worrying about a thing. She could write me a reference: "I don't know how she did it because I hardly saw her the whole day, but the wedding went just fine.") So I made a mental list of my accomplishments, and called the first number on the list.

The owner/event coordinator answered the phone, which surprised me, and she chatted very openly with me for a few minutes before suggesting I call back Monday re setting up an informational interview. That's all I'm going for at the moment – I need to know more about the potential for the work here, no point shifting gears mid-career if there isn't a market in this town. The woman was friendly and I was reassured by her statement that she values experience and the ability to think on your feet more than a credential from an event coordinator program. Ten years ago when she started her business, there wasn't such a thing anyway. She didn't say if she was looking for staff, and I didn't ask. I'm sure it will come up on Monday, but what I want to start off with is to talk to someone about the business. They're a catering company, so it's a much different viewpoint than my experience as a project administrator, where coordinating meetings, workshops and conferences was just part of my workload, not 100% of my time all year. Does one even get a salary, or is it almost like a comission structure? I have lots of questions, and movies like the Wedding Planner just get in the way of really understanding what the full-time nitty gritty of the job is like. I'm hoping it's the right job to meld my design and writing skills with my customer service and marketing skills, not to mention my love of entertaining; but right now it's just one more place to look in this lousy job market.

Before I talked to the event planner I was kicking myself for not taking myself seriously back in grade 12, when for thirty seconds I considered a career in carpentry. Number of carpentry jobs advertised in Kamloops this month: over a dozen. Number of administrative jobs advertised: one. Trades wages: $3 an hour more than my last salary, and up. Local admin wages: $10 an hour less than my last salary, or lower. (Writing jobs of any sort: nil or unpaid.)

But now that I've taken the leap to make my first real cold call, perhaps I'll get somewhere. If nobody will speak to me after looking at my resume, then I'd better speak first and hand over the credentials later. On that note, a conference centre on my list said call back today, but doesn't have an answering machine so I have to try calling again. When was the last time you dialed a number and it rang ten times? Extraordinary. Then there are two or three other places to call. Ever feel so lucky once that you think it couldn't possibly turn out well if you try again? Maybe that's just me. I'm more intimidated to call the other places since the first gal was so nice about it. I haven't been in that position for a while, but I'd say right now I'd be less terrified asking a guy out on a date than asking someone to talk to me about a job. We'll see how it goes next week. At least I got from moping in my pjs to getting on the phone. It's a start.

Posted by anita at May 27, 2006 4:59 PM