I’m at wit’s end. I’m three months into a job search like the 30-month one I went through starting four years ago, and things proceed apace. I’ve gotten zero interviews despite 20 years of experience, and even finding things I think I could stand is a fucking tall ask.
I’ve always been of the mindset that if you have a good product, shockingly little marketing is required. And that investing in the product is going to have a far larger ROI than blowing money on trying to convince people your product is better than it is. Just fucking, you know, make it better.
Which is what I’ve always done. Whether it’s a redesign or significantly better editing than the audience is used to, or infographics for stories that no one is going to comprehend from text analysis. Or, process improvement that makes employees lives better even though it may challenge the necessity of salaried positions.
I cannot and will not subscribe to this notion that lying to people for pay is an ethical career. During my one stint in marketing, I got to the point of feeling physically ill that I was making the best money in my life to write saccharine copy about products we internally mocked our customers for buying.
I honestly don’t know how I can find a job that makes life worth living at this point, which is less than ideal when ideation is always on the menu (I last got out of a psych ward in late January, and all they had to offer is “you need to stop wanting what you want.”). I don’t understand why I would want to be alive to be able to pay off debt accrued because society has already discarded me as useless.
I swear to fucking god, I cannot handle being told again that I’m wrong to have the ethics and goals in life that I do. If these do not align with the positions advertised, then the logical choice is simply removing myself from this clusterfuck.
I have provable results from things I’ve done that did align, so why does saving companies six and seven figures several times by teaching myself what I needed to to accomplish my goals over the course of my career make me a bad hire? I’ve rarely worked for competent managers, so I’m generally needed to actually get improvements done. I don’t care about my title, and I’ve topped out at $48K, so it’s not like I’m looking for $150K … but I don’t like selling myself through insipid, meaningless prose just because it’s what others want to hear.
What is the point of even being alive when everyone is telling me I’m wrong to want to accomplish things that improve the lives of people other than shareholders? They sure as fuck don’t need the money. I do, but I don’t count because I’ve not already rolled over and begged to suck at the teat of immoral people who care nothing for the rest of the world, let alone the people without whom they’d have no product in the first place.
The latter is really my goal. I’m not one to be content to sit and bitch, but sometimes, so much piles up that it’s either that or another trip to the ward.
Ok, so I get that marketing is kinda totally evil and causes moral injury. Have you looked into:
I realize that the market is shit right now, but use all your advantages to get what you need.
After looking for a really long time (3yr) but only halfheartedly, I landed a job last august. One of the biggest things that helped were really luck (which you can enhance through repetition and effort) and some cleverness.
Using GPT to assist with organizing and formatting my resume, as well as crafting cover letters, proved to be highly effective for me. Theoretically, this approach is ideal for navigating the applicant tracking systems that employers use, enhancing your chances of getting hired. GPT excels at incorporating relevant buzzwords and operates as an “average-ifying engine.” When it comes to resumes and cover letters, this capability is invaluable, as it optimizes your documents to align closely with what hiring algorithms and recruiters typically look for.
also, I used GPT to make the garbage I wrote in that previous paragraph more readable (full disclosure)
Also, it can, as I did up there, act as an editor, speeding up your process SIGNIFICANTLY. If you have to apply to 100 jobs, I think some shortcuts are in order.
I hope this helps. Feel free to DM me of you need someone to bounce ideas off of :) I promise I won’t just dump your message into GPT and use it to respond to you.
As for the ward… I have a lot more experience with that than I’d prefer. It’s good to stay out, but make sure you have enough support. I’ve learned that just putting everything you don’t want to think about on a shelf in the back of your mind is… poison.
Take care, Random Internet Friend