I want to talk about the interviews I've been to. For the couple of years or so, I've been on the hunt for paying work in the valley. I've signed up and gone to job fairs for about a year. I've had someone from a resume workshop read my resume and critique it. I've also learned from online forums about how to best get people to read your resume. One of the hiring managers for a casino told me that they have a computer program that reads all the resumes and applications they receive. This program looks for key words like hard working, motivated cheerful, etc. It depends on what you apply for. So, when they ask you to describe yourself or explain why you want the job try to use as many positive adjectives as you can. The computer will read this and pass it on to the human manager. Hopefully you will get a callback. Now, you still have to pass the interviews and other things.
I've also been on a few interviews, especially on those job fairs. I try not to get my hopes up when this happens. I try to look at the interviews where I didn't get the job as practice for the next one. Well, one of the interviews I'd been in this lady is the hiring manager for the kitchen and waitstaff. She looked over my resume and asked me a few questions about the work I've done. Like how busy the restaurant was, how I got along with my coworkers and why I'm there today. All the while, she is looking over my appearance like clean fingernails, hair etc. I decided to dress like I'm about to go to work. So, I dressed up in one of my cleanest chef uniforms and ironed out all the wrinkles. I put my hair up in a bun and made sure my fingernails were clean. After all these questions and conversations, she asked me if I had any questions. I already knew I didn't get the position because she directed the conversation to one of the earlier applicants who applied for garde manger. She told me about his resume and how excited and enthusiastic he was about his work, etc. She also started to tell me about the way I dressed. She said I wouldn't fit in their workplace because the people I will work with have tattoos and multi colored hair. She said I'm not the right fit for their company because I'm not exciting enough? I guess is the right word. Mind you, I told her I wanted to apply for an entry level position like buffet or pantry. I told her I wanted to work my way up and wanted stable work. I guess my personality was the problem not my qualifications? It really pissed me off. I decided I wouldn't waste the opportunity though, and started asking her questions about what they were really looking for and about how much experience I need to start working in a casino. She told me they are looking for people with at least 1-2 years experience in high volume environment. She said that if you work on the strip it's 3-5 years. So she advised me to work in one of the off the strip casinos first and work my way up. So, it wasn't a total wasted of 4 hours waiting in line smiling and madly trying to explain my qualifications in 5 seconds to anyone willing to talk to me. So, I stopped going to job fairs of such a large scale and decided to find work in restaurants, etc. I also just kept applying online. Everyone kept telling me, even baskin robbins and starbucks that they only hire online now and told me to fill one out on their website. It saved me gas, traffic, and the added headache of walking around in the heat. I signed up for snagajob.com, monster. com, etc. and signed up for job connect nevada. It's like a hiring agency. They uploaded my resume in the system and I got to look at the job board. It didn't really help much, but at least it's in the system. The amazing thing was I managed to get 3-4 job offers in the same month. I got one from Chili's, a scary smoky casino named Luckys, red rock, and as a server in mimi's cafe. This was last year. I even got a nice job too.
Well, anyone who knows me knows what happened next.......and I've decided to scale back the amount of stress in my life. I don't want to work like a madman and be burnt out. I want something that will leave me time to enjoy my life and work on my big ideas. They've been popping out of my head in a rapid pace and I feel very creative again. I don't feel dead inside either :) But now, I want money so I can pay for my stuff and eat out and buy art supplies. I applied in michaels, target, walmart, sam's club, ulta, starbucks, lifetime fitness, panda, smiths, vons, albersons,etc.
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