re: #336 HappyWarrior

I really think older wingnuts think getting a job for today’s young people is simple as going up to old Mr. so and so who runs the shoe store and saying “Hey Mr. so and so, my family’s been a customer of yours for as long as I can remember, I’d like a job” and he responds “Of course, when can you start?” Modern Job hunting is an endless avalanche of resumes, cover letters, references, interviews, and follow ups. And then you have the younger ones who by good fortune and sometimes by good connections got into a good position fairly soon out of school who look down on the rest of us still looking for that right position as just being “lazy” and “entitled.” Maybe I am entitled a little bit but I challenge those who claim that to ask themselves if they worked any harder than I did for their degrees. If they too didn’t spend sleepless nights writing papers and preparing for tests.

Just finding a minimum wage job these days is no longer a simple matter of walking in and asking for an application. Paper applications are an endangered species, mostly only seen in start-ups or small businesses without a major net presence. If you want to work for a major chain, you better be prepared to sit for 20-30 minutes online filing out an application and dealing with a long questionnaire. The last part in particular is a way a lot of kids are getting screwed over, because they don’t tell them up front that that questionnaire is pretty much a pre-interview.