Your job is in another castle.

It recently occurred to me my life is one giant game of facebook. Come read what's on my wall.



Because no one will actually hire me at the moment (which you should all be grateful for), all I'm really doing is sending out emails hoping people will sit down and talk with me. This is the friend request part.

Sometimes people sympathize with my situation and they agree to meet with me and offer their two cents. I'm grateful, we exchange pleasantries, and I follow up with a thank you email. This is the writing on the wall after becoming friends part. Normally this post is something under the guise of being witty like "Hey, friends already? LOL! How fun was this weekend?"

The other frequent scenario is not getting any response at all. This is the equivalent of toiling away in some one's facebook "pending" purgatory. There's nothing you can do but be patient and wait in there.

An infrequent occurrence is a response back saying they have no time to meet (I'm assuming most people without time to meet fall more into the above category of just not responding at all). This is the equivalent of the facebook rejection. The email might even say something like "Maybe in the future when I have more time," which is the equivalent of getting rejected on facebook, updating to a new, hotter facebook photo, joining a few more groups, and sending out another friend request down the road sometime.

The rarest occurrence of all is getting an email back for an interview. This is the facebook equivalent of receiving a message, but a direct message. Not a party update to inform you that the liquor package now also includes top shelf from 10-1 for only $25. You don't get a lot of messages, and you don't get a lot of interviews, so cherish them.

Inevitably, you won't get hired on most interviews, but because we're in the middle of the recession and people feel bad, you'll get a nice email back saying you were an excellent candidate and to keep in touch. This is the equivalent of somebody hitting the "Like" button for your status. It's a kind gesture and nothing more.

Occassionally, meeting with somebody can lead you to another person. This is the equivalent to somebody posting a link on facebook (of which I'm guilty everyday with this blog). You came to facebook to creep, not to watch some crappy Youtube sports video of a Vince Carter missed dunk in college....moving on.

This is not to say that networking is all for naught. It's actually how I got my last internship. But there's just no end to it. It's like how on the first world of Mario 3 you they provide you with two paths you can go on, and one has the extra face-connector stage, but you have to go through two extra stages to get there. So the extra life might help you down the road, but you have to go through a lot to get it.



(If you'll note in the above imagine, the extra level in question comes after the 3rd stage, but as you can clearly see, you there is no reason to EVER play levels 3 and 4 in this world as you can completely bypass them all together and face no repercussions)

This is sort of how I view networking. Not so much a big risk, but rather an investment with no foreseeable end (much like Mario 3, which was nearly impossible to beat). You can meet with everyone in the world who will sit down with you, but you still might leave without a job. There's reason to believe though that the more people you know, the greater odds somebody will know a place that's hiring.

I'm hoping my next interview has a magic flute hidden in it somehwere.

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