Plan B

Or in my case, I think I’m up to Plan Q.

With the job market only just starting to rebound, it’s no surprise that we’ve received a large number of resumes, with the respondents covering a broad range of educational backgrounds, internship or post-graduation work experiences, as well as real on-the-job career experience.

At this time we’ve decided to pursue next steps with other applicants. So, regrettably, we won’t be requesting an interview with you. However, we sincerely wish you good luck with your current job search, and with your career in the design and graphic arts profession.

In other words, you have everything we need, but you’re too old.

I’m not convinced about that job market rebounding comment either. I’ve been talking to people, they don’t see it.

In the past 3 years I’ve easily sent out over 150 resumes in response to ads. All of them were a virtual cut and paste of major sections of my resume. 90% never responded. The rest all pretty much sounded like above. Except for the 3 head hunters that told me to get out of the industry because at 54, I’m too old.

A few months ago I sent out an email to about 50 people. These are all people I’ve worked for over the past 27 years. It was a last ditch effort to see if any work was out there or if they could pass along my info if they knew of anything. I got 4 responses. They couldn’t help, but would keep an ear out. Never heard a thing from any of the others.

So that’s it. I’m waiting for a response from one more company. Even interviewed with them. Working for them would be a life changing event, which is why I want the position. It’s not the position itself, that is no different from what I’ve been doing for the past 27 years, it’s where I would have to move. It would be like a dream come true.

If the response comes back negative, then I’m done with the graphics industry. I’ve already wasted too much time hoping for the best.

In my last position, I was working for 30% percent less than just 5 years ago. Based on what I’ve been seeing, whatever I take from here will be 50% less than the past year, which was already quite pathetic.

I no longer care. I’m going to find something that looks like I would enjoy doing regardless of what they pay. Seems that the going competitive rate, as they say it, is somewhere between $9 and $15 per hour. It will have to do as long as I enjoy what I choose to do.

If this is the way it goes, then I’ll probably restart the fishing guide service I used to do on the Fox River. In the water classes, seminars, I used to cover quite a bit. I stopped doing it about 5 years ago. I’ll probably expand it to other locations. I’ve forgotten more about fishing rivers around here than most will ever know and over the past 5 years, I’ve learned quite a bit more.

The end of one could be an interesting start to something else. I’m giving it 3 days to hear from the one company I’d like to go work for, then I put things in motion.

Time to start over.