The hunt

I'm a terrible job hunter. I don't follow any of the recommended rules, and I'm not necessarily proud of my not following etiquette or procedures. I like procedures and I like etiquette so my willful disobedience startles me greatly. To wit:

* I don't hire resume writers to write my resume. They are incredibly expensive so I do it myself and rely on spell-check and one or two friends to look over. I try to make sure the first word in every bullet point is the same tense and same type of word. I also try to make sure I tie activities to results.

* I don't have an objective on my resume. Many experts on resume writing say you need to have an objective on the top of your resume. If I want to be really blunt, my objective is almost always to "Find a great job with a great salary with an opportunity to grow." So I leave it off because I don't think it helps my resume in any way. After all, who doesn't have "find a great job with a great salary with an opportunity to grow" as an objective?

* I only have one resume. There are recommendations to tailor each resume per job posting, but if you're only applying to jobs you're a) qualified for and/or b) resemble your resume of skills already, then I don't see the point of tailoring a resume for every job you're applying to. I do recommend, however, tailoring the cover letter for every job, though I say this hypocritically (see below).

* I don't write cover letters for jobs I'm half-hearted about.

* I don't network. I should, but I don't. Instead, I rely on job boards and public postings. To date, I've been employed by 5 different companies, three of them with more than 100,000 employees and the other two considerably smaller (less than 2,000 employees). I found these jobs through the local newspaper, hotjobs.com, journalismjobs.com, careerbuilder.com, and jobfox.com. No networking involved. So if anyone tells you that job postings or newspaper ads don't work, remember me; all of my jobs have been found this way.

* I never send thank you notes after the interviews. I should, but I don't. Invariably I forget or I don't have the address. And this is odd because I'm a firm believer in thank you notes and yet... strangely though, it hasn't affected me actually getting the job. I don't think I sent a thank you note for any job I actually got. I should probably do better on this one though.

* Last three job interviews on, I didn't wear hose. This could be a regional okay thing -- hose melts to your legs in this part of the country -- so few women wear them. Still, if I was going to be all proper, I'd wear the hose.

I start my new job on Monday. I'm looking forward to the new experiences, meeting new people, and gaining new skills and expertise. That's always the fun part of a new job. Of course, I'm always stressed about where I should eat lunch, where is the bathroom, and how do you fill out an expense report? And usually, by the time I'm comfortable with the answers to these and other questions, it's about the time to move on.