Simoneaux: Job-hunting advice from one who’s done hunting

Past a certain age — say 50 — you’ll need to keep your wits and your humor at the ready.

By Larry Simoneaux

Job hunting.

To be sure, I’m happy to finally be out of the contest as I’m not sure that, with my odd responses to frustration, I’d be any good at it these days.

What brings this topic up is a story I recently read that provided advice to someone who was moving from being a stay-at-home mom to becoming a member of the “being paid for their work” masses.

Minor aside: I’m carefully avoiding getting anywhere near the argument about stay-at-home moms not being “workers.” My wife raised three kids (two of whom were in diapers at one time) while I was wandering the oceans. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that she worked far harder than I ever did, and, if anyone wants to argue the point with a mom, I’d be happy to sell tickets to that event.

Anyway, the article offered suggestions about contacting agencies devoted to helping find a job matching an individual’s skills and desires, finding out who’s hiring in the area, searching for any training needed, and so forth.

It was very much the same advice I found when I retired for the first time. The funny thing, though, was that job hunting after you’ve passed a certain age (let’s say, 50), isn’t funny. In my case, the kids hadn’t finished school. The cars were getting old. The house needed painting. The water heater was acting up. And I did’t own a gazillion shares of Microsoft. All of which meant that, having quit driving ships to godforsaken places with unpronounceable names, I was now going to have to find a real job.

Recognizing this, I followed all of the advice and started writing letters and sending resumes to companies that might’ve been interested in someone who was familiar with such things as Great Circle Routes, which day it is when you crossed the International Date Line, how to sleep in a bunk that’s moving through 70 degrees of arc, and what to do when you run out of movies on day 20 of a 35-day trip (show the first one again and pray the griping doesn’t get out of hand). What I didn’t expect was what I was about to find out about some of the companies — large and small — out there.

For instance, there were some companies that didn’t even bother to answer a letter of inquiry. I thought (and still think) that was a bit uncivil. Even if they think you’re so far out of the running, you’d make Secretariat’s win at Belmont look close, they could still send a form letter saying something along the lines of “Thanks, but no thanks.” It’d be a lot nicer than hearing nothing at all.

A few of the companies that responded showed the need for an old-fashioned proof reader. One letter I received began with: “Dear Applicamt.” This made me wonder what might be in their correspondence with regular customers.

Others needed proof that a sentence could, indeed, be stopped with a period. There was one letter with a sentence that ran to more than 90 words with commas that were applied, apparently, with a pepper shaker.

Finally, there were also companies who’d wandered too far off into the thickets of political correctness. One such asked me to fill out a particularly long “Affirmative Action/ Diversity/ Ethnic Background” form. My only defense for what I did was that it was late at night and I’d been working for several hours on a revision to my resume when my computer committed memory suicide. Since I wasn’t going to be able to retrieve what I’d been working on, I figured I’d just stop there and fill out the form.

I should’ve known better.

I got past checking the standard stuff – name/age/marital status/education/being a veteran (Far East Asian War Games, 1972, Second Place) plus the fact that I wasn’t “Alternately Abled,” but, by then, the part of my brain that gets cranky at such moments kicked in and, what the heck, I didn’t really want to work there anyway.

So, when I got to the part about race, I got a little creative and checked “Other.” In the space provided, I wrote “Hispano-Suiza” and added “European” heritage. More details included having various “skin colors” and being “big-bodied with a tall stance.” I just left out the part about being a “car.”

They never responded. Probably better for both of us. Eventually, though, I found a small company that was a perfect fit and worked for another 16 years.

It was worrisome while looking, though, and I don’t think that’s changed at all over the years. Actually, I think the worrisome part will only get worse what with computers and robots now taking over everything in sight.

So, I wish that lady all the luck in the world and am simply glad that I’m no longer in “the hunt.”

Because the “hunting grounds” are changing in ways that seem unpredictable and disquieting.

And that, good friends, is what’s truly scary.

Larry Simoneaux lives in Edmonds. Send comments to larrysim@comcast.net.

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