Dear E. Jean: I’m currently homeless and living in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I’m educated, I have never done drugs, and I am not mentally ill. I have a strong employment history and am a career executive assistant. The instability sucks, but I’m rocking it as best as I can. Recently I stumbled across a job notice (a reality show casting call for executive assistants) and was intrigued enough to apply. It was a shot in the dark, and I assumed I’d never hear back. Surprise! I was called in this week! And I promptly bombed it. When I found out who was involved in the show I got kind of starstruck and completely froze up. My usual personality did not radiate. My question: How does one get another shot when one screws up a job interview? Homeless, but Not Hopeless
Her reply:
Miss homeless, my dear: You don’t “get” another shot. You take it. Wear the new suit you get from Dress for Success (the fantastic organization that provides interview suits and career development guidance to lowincome women, Dressforsuccess.org), find a company, a store, a business you admire, and show up ready to work. When you speak with the manager, don’t ask for a job. Simply introduce yourself, tell her why her company is brilliant, and give her three ways you can help her succeed. Follow up with a phone call, plus a visit the following week.
Of course, the cleverest way to land a good job (and get an apartment) is to already have a good job/internship/volunteer position. This strategy permits you to impress the interviewers with the superhuman passion you have for your current projects.
This is what you did with your letter: You knocked me out with your courage and spirit. I am therefore, Miss Not Hopeless, offering you a four-month internship. Of course it’s the most hideously humdrum internship in America. You’ll be stuck with the tedious job of organizing research for my book, transcribing interviews, and analyzing data from 1,800,000 pages (not a misprint) of a college sex survey I did on Facebook. I looked you up and discovered you’re on the West Coast and that you write a highly entertaining blog. You possess a brain and access to a computer. Excellent! If you accept this internship, you’ll telecommute to my East Coast mountain office one hour a day, six days a week. At the end of the four months, if you don’t have a job and an awesome place to live, I will become YOUR intern.
My thoughts at the time were less than eloquent: Holy shit. This girl just got an internship with ELLE. All because she wrote a letter to an advice columnist. And, apparently, was entertaining enough of a writer on a blog. Can that happen?
Apparently, it can. Read the blog: the Girls Guide to Homelessness. I'd suggest looking specifically at the posts she made before she landed the internship at ELLE (before August). She has a great, personable tone. Apparently she's living in a shitty trailer now, which is eons better than living in a shitty parking lot.
Wow, this probably should have been inspiring, but after reading how she became homeless, I just got depressed. Because she sounds harder-working than I am. And because I'm financially sound now, thanks to parent-subsidization, but that probably won't be the case in a few years.
ReplyDeleteWell, guess the message is to keep blogging; could benefit you in unexpected ways.
When I saw "homeless," I thought you were talking about another blog called HoboStripper (www.hobostripper.com) which is about...well, a hobo stripper. The blog isn't frequently updated anymore, and I think her lifestyle has changed significantly, but she traveled around America in her van, stripped in various strip bars, and knew (and still knows) an extraordinary amount in nature-y, herb and horticultural things. I think she has a home now (one post mentioned her having a garden), and her blog is sponsored and she blogs for other larger blogs - basically, she's a pretty successful blogger it seems.
ReplyDeleteThis brings up two points.
(1) There are at least two homeless blogs out there, and at least two of them are very successful. These bloggers don't have homes, but they're still producing content, garnering readers and meeting some degree of success. If people without homes can sustain a blog, there's no reason any cushy, overprivileged university student can't. "Too much work" my ass. You have a bed to sleep in; don't be a pussy.
(2) There are blogs about seemingly everything. You can have your typical big blogs about politics, food, fashion, sports and what have you, but the obscure ones can be really successful too. Remember BonerParty? Yeah, that dude has a book deal. And StuffWhitePeopleLike came out with a book. These homeless blogs have also met their own type of success, which is thrilling for those among us with off-kilter but passionate interests/lives. As long as you have a good voice and some good material, get on a computer and blog diligently because success in the blogosphere may seem elusive, but maybe it's not THAT rare.