Category Archives: Karyn

In which a rejection letter is actually rather nice

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Back in February or March, Kate told me I could fully expect to send out 40 resumes and cover letters, and not hear anything back from the majority of them.  Kate prepared me for a very long and low response rate job search, especially given the glut of qualified candidates in the job market right now.  The many applications that have already gone out have not resulted in much, as I expected—Higher Education has a notoriously slow hiring cycle, and non-profits do not exactly have gobs and gobs of time to spend responding to my applications when they have already found someone for the job.

But I have time, and I use it to keep tabs on my applications.  I set up an Excel spreadsheet to track when, where, and for what applications went out.  I also have a column detailing institutional response, and more than half of them read “Job Posting Removed.”  I check back every few days, to see what postings have been removed, and that double-check is the only option for finding out if that job is definitely out of my grasp.

When I write a cover letter, I spend hours on it, a back-and-forth email exchange spread out over a day or two between me and Valinda, trying to make the letter as good as possible.  It is a huge investment of time and effort, since I research every institution/non-profit, and pull apart job postings line-by-line so I can try to answer the questions of my abilities that they ask.

The process of applying for a Job, as I approach it, is a lot of work.  Receiving only one automatically generated email telling me that [they] received my application is disheartening because I put so much effort into the application itself.

So far in the process, not receiving any response is the norm.  I received an email a couple months ago, which seemed fine, as I had applied by email.  A month ago, I received a postcard.  I appreciated it to the extent that they were actively informing me of the fact they had decided to hire someone else, but was somewhat mystified by the medium they chose to communicate their message.  A postcard seems like an odd way for an institution to communicate with an applicant for a professional position.

Last week, however, I received an actual letter.

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In which I plan to return to the other coast

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So, I really really want to move to Boston.  I love the public transportation system.  For $59/month, I have access to most of the Greater Boston Area with subways and buses that run with greater frequency and in a denser grid than much of the Portland system.  I love Portland’s bike-friendly ways.  I can get to my friend’s house 15 miles away in less than 2 hours with very little interaction with motorized traffic because of the fairly extensive system of bike routes…but I really like Boston, and have since I visited nearly 3 years ago.  It doesn’t hurt that I have a lot of people I’m pretty fond of in the Boston area, either.

To that end, most of the jobs I’m looking at are in Boston, which is good because Boston has a slightly more hopping job market than Portland.  As much fun as this city is, with its amazing food, bike and beverage culture, it’s not a place that its thaaaaat easy to find jobs in.  Looking at my idealist.org daily job posting summary, the most often positions crop up in Portland (at least ones that match my job skills and job desires) is once or twice a week.

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In which I have an Informational Interview

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In a delightful coincidence, Valinda is working on a project with someone who recently worked at the institution I just applied to.  She just introduced us, and I’m muddling my way through an email to her, requesting an informational interview to talk about working for that school, and working for higher education in that geographic area.  I have two pages of my notebook covered in notes for things to keep in mind for any interview, and questions I want to ask, and, because this is how I deal with feeling nervous, questions I’m guessing I might be asked.

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Now that I’ve returned from my exciting journey, I can report that doing my first informational interview with a career planning professional was awesome.  Tremendously nice and agreed to meet with me on a Saturday, and was chock-full of information.

For starters, since I’m trying to break into higher ed (or possibly non-profits), it’d be good to demonstrate familiarity with web 2.0 stuff, including…wait for it…wait for it…

Twitter!

Which is how I now have a twitter account.  I’m learning more about how to use it, and it seems like a pretty cool tool.  I just need to figure out how to use it without being obnoxious/sharing only my extreme love of cupcakes.

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In which potential employers are not as good at communication as I would prefer

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It’s really frustrating to hear nothing.  Not simply because it means they aren’t interested in hiring me (not awesome, but not that upsetting), but because they didn’t care enough to say “the position has been filled”.  I received a rejection postcard a couple weeks ago, which would seem weak, but is actually a physical acknowledgment.  The job I applied to last week had its posting taken down within a few hours of me emailing my application, and I haven’t heard a word from them—not even saying “Oh, the position has been filled”.

For some reason, that’s more disappointing.  I emailed my application to the department head directly; surely it isn’t too onerous to respond with a couple sentences explaining the situation?  As an applicant, I spent a goodly chunk of time putting together a cover letter for the position and tailoring my resume, so it is disheartening to not be afforded the courtesy of a two-sentence email.  Then again, it’s a hirer’s market, so anyone offering a job can more or less afford to not be 100% as nice as I would prefer.  I imagine its not the top priority for a nonprofit.

I suppose, if I had been more clear about my own interests to begin with, or at least willing to admit a broader range of possibilities, I would have been using idealist.org sooner and wouldn’t have caught some of these listings at the outside of their posting range, and might have had more of a chance with them.

Bah.

I called an organization yesterday to make sure the job was still available, and haven’t heard back from them.  Either I spoke too quickly when leaving a message, or the posting has been filled and they have more to do on Thursday than return calls that’ll disappoint potential applicants.

Well, I found a posting today that I think is right up my alley that was just put up yesterday, so I’ll work on that and mope later.  This is for another university, a school I’m already liking because of their dedication to “real-world experience”.  I loved my academic experiences at Scripps and they’re very important to me (I will always value my time as Tree-Girl in my last classes with Prof. Matz), but some of the most valuable experiences I had—especially in terms of becoming a functional adult—were from working, for DOS, Alumnae Relations, and Development.

On another note, I organized a regional 5C Happy Hour at one of PDX’s fine brewpubs.  So hey, that’s like professional development and craft-brews at the same time.  Yes, sometimes I do speak in italics.

I’m hoping to get at least one informal interview while I’m in Boston next week, so back to work on this application!

Oh, and here’s a link to a sample of the kind of pre-write matrix that I use before writing a cover letter.  Valinda told me that it’ll make interviewing (when it happens, anyways) easier, and I agree.  Or at least realized that was the case after Valinda pointed it out.  It does help me organize my thoughts and make notes about what things exemplify what skills, so at the very least its been useful.

Oh, and I’ve been learning more about loan forgiveness, and I’m definitely going to talk more about that later.

In which I turn to Excel to make life decisions

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Today, I received loan repayment paperwork, and am trying to figure out which repayment plan I should aim for.  They have the graduated payment plan, which means two payments of about $X/month for my two hunks of Stafford loans with an added interest payment that is not insubstantial…or the level payment plan, which is $1.5X/month for the lifetime of the loan.  Either way, about 120 payments await my attention over the next ten years.  Then again, I have other student loans to repay, so if I go for the graduated plan, I might actually have a fairly constant debt load over the next ten years, in terms of monthly repayments.

I chatted with a friend this afternoon about her wages, which seemed pretty cushy to me–but I have very different demands from a paycheck, and have different loan obligations.  This is something I talked about at length with L when I was working for development–that is, what kind of loan obligations I would be facing and how that would affect budgeting and what kind of jobs would actually support me…which also ties into job search in the sense that more and more programs exist that focus on funneling people like me into non-profit work by offering financial incentives in the form of debt reduction or forgiveness.  That aside, I’d probably aim to work in a non-profit anyhow because I have a tendency towards starry-eyed idealism.  Anyhow, I think the programs are designed for pushing folks who are interested in non-profits more strongly in that direction.  e.g., me.

I apparently believe everything can be made more comprehensible with spreadsheets, so I created a loan repayment schedule for the next 10 years that logged the payments as they are dated on my loan paperwork.  I have four separate loans, each of which has a unique payment level and schedule—some start earlier than others, and some have much briefer loan repayment periods than others, making an altogether confusing web of interdependent variables (all of which are VERY dependent on me finding decent employment) that make it very difficult to figure out what’s the most appealing/manageable option.

The spreadsheet tracking my loan repayment obligation is ENORMOUS.  Well, I guess that’s not surprising, considering it is supposed to lay out a financial course for the next ten years.  Higher Education is really expensive and I’m glad I’m not in school right now, what with the tuition increases schools are making in order to not taking on crushing amounts of debt.

My debt load isn’t too bad,  but it is still disheartening to see four years of academic pursuit translated into a flurry of billing options and fluctuating monthly payments.  On the other hand, the payments are (probably) low enough for me to manage, if I get a job that pays alright.  If not, there are definitely things I can do to defer payments on the loans I can’t pay back yet.

Fun fact: the level repayment plan would have me with teeny(ish) payments later this coming decade, and saddle me with fairly un-doable payments early on because of my shorter-term loans.  I might have to shoot for the graduated payment plan, just to rein in some of the costs the first few years, and then maybe ramp up loan repayment (maybe?) once I (hopefully) am stably employed and have a less onerous loan payment obligation to face.

Oh, Excel, how would I make life decisions without you?

I’ll write more on loan forgiveness as I find out more–it is bound to be interesting reading about it, in any case.