Get a job

When I signed out of hotmail this afternoon, I noticed an interesting article on the msn page I was sent to.

The article is about unemployment, and it begins with a pretty surprising statistic:

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 36 percent of unemployed people -- or 5.4 million -- had been without a job for 27 weeks or more in September 2009.

Wow. That seems pretty crazy to me. Granted, I've been unemployed, or underemployed, or wrongfully employed a lot since I graduated from college. And, honestly, I've been pretty lazy in my job searches. But I can't imagine being unemployed for 27 weeks or more. I understand how frustrating it is to not have a job, and how exhausting and exasperating job searches are. But they're not impossible.

Job searches are really weird these days. Almost everything other than the actual job interview has been made extremely impersonal. Most companies require you to apply online and seem very confused, and often off-put, if you show up unannounced and try to show someone an actual hard copy of your resume.

Here are a few tips (right off the top of my head no less) for getting hired:

1. Confuse someone into hiring you. Everyone's into online social networking these days. Get on Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, build yourself a profile on Monster and maybe even start a blog. When you finally speak to someone in person, use this online information to your advantage (or just fake it). “Oh hey, I know you! Yeah, we talk all the time on myspace, right?” Or, “I've been following you on Twitter.”

2. Get famous on Youtube. Someone will probably care.

3. Find an obscure online job. There are all sorts of online companies out there. A lot of them wont try to steal your identity, and some of them will even pay you. Some come with impressive (or inexplicable) job titles. Find one and pad your resume.

These are just a few of my own ideas. Trust me, though, these are just as relevant as anyone else's suggestions I've read; I've browsed a lot of web sites and read a couple books on the subject. I'm pretty much convinced that no one really knows what's really going on these days. I mean, who has the time to figure that out anyway?