Saturday, June 07, 2008

Success Story

An excerpt from the Career Center’s bi-daily newsletter, Working for The Man and Nobody Cares If You Like It or Not, featuring an interview with a star pupil who learned to get in line, shut up and be counted.


How was the Career Center beneficial to you?

The staff at the Career Center has been an excellent resource throughout the job search process. Many of them have backgrounds in recruiting or human resources and also maintain close relationships with their best friends’ Uncle Karls. I found their advice very valuable in seeing the recruiting process from the undersea weatherman’s perspective. This helped me focus on making a good bouillabaisse in all aspects of the process and also avoid showering with hairy men or pitfalls that can cause a candidate to be overlooked, disqualified, or, at the worst, hired by a crappy company.


What advice were you given?

Besides "don’t kiss the interviewer on the first interview"?


Yes.

As a student in the process of changing careers, I initially came to the career center for the free donuts and the desperate women. I received great suggestions on how to fabricate new skills and education on my resume (do I LOOK like a Solid Gold Dancer to you? I do on my resume.) and combine them with my previous experience as a drooling drunk derelict. The format changes also made it much easier to read, which is very important when you consider the limited cognitive capacity employers may have when initially screening candidates. My resume now consists of mostly pictures of dinosaurs and teddy bears, and a Sudoku puzzle. I believe all the changes I implemented were responsible for a greatly improved response rate (0% up to ½ %). Although I had experience in one-on-one hockey games, the career fairs that the school sponsors obviously require a different wardrobe than my usual tunics made out of shag carpeting. The Career Center can tell you what to expect at these events, how to approach the recruiters, which ones are the dish rags, how to make the most elaborate dinner center piece out of the brochures, and follow-up strategies, like inviting them to clog dance orgies.



What advice would you give students about the Career Center?

The Career Center isn’t only there to coordinate interviews when you’re ready to graduate, but they can teach you how to clean port-o-potties for when their interview strategies don’t work. This includes scrubbing, disinfecting, curtailing the puke reflex, how to get the stink out of your clothes, how to lie about your job to women and more. If your attending the university to enhance your career possibilities, be sure to include the Career Center as something to do before happy hour, or maybe even after happy hour – as long as happy hour is in there somewhere. The classroom education you receive will help you qualify for new opportunities, but unless you know how to feign interest and to kiss major corporate ass, you may find it difficult to realize those opportunities. It’s a very competitive job market and you should take advantage of all the resources available to help you stand out while hiding your true identity as an undersexed drunk pawn, which is what you’ll end up being, anyway.


Does your life in the corporate world still suck, even after the change of careers?

Yup.


3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I initially came to the career center for the free donuts and the desperate women. You were misinformed, free doughnut day was June 6.

LOL, this whole thing made me laugh in that whole it's so close to the truth you have to laugh instead of cry thing.

That's why I'm not in the corporate whirl any more. But I think if/when I do go back to that merry-go-round, my preschool playground skillz will be extremely valuable.

Anonymous said...

Fuck you.

Anonymous said...

Stop making fun of what I did!