Our Job Titles, Our Selves

Before the pandemic hit, I’d already been applying for jobs online, hoping to find the elusive perfect full-time job. Once work from my two part-time jobs dried up and unemployment benefits hinged on proof of my attempts to find work, I dug into the process in earnest. I updated my LinkedIn profile, scoured posts on Craigslist, and fine-tuned the alerts from a creative employment agency which has never actually produced results for me. But I kept trying.

I copied, pasted, trimmed, rearranged, reworded, jazzed up, dumbed down and altogether skipped my cover letter so many times I stopped saving them. I redesigned my resume a half-dozen times, hoping to make it easier to slip through the algorithms, and created multiple versions that might ping for different job titles. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was looking for [More design work? Copywriting? Production or proofing?], so I turned over all the rocks that looked shiny and promising.

The only follow-up I received in the last year and a half turned out to be an odd phishing scheme from someone who failed to show up for a Skype interview. I still can’t understand how someone could bilk me or steal my identity if I add them on Google Hangouts, but I’m relieved I escape the scam unscathed.

Clearly my weak attempts to network on LinkedIn weren’t going anywhere, and my historical success on Craigslist should be classified as the exception and not the rule. I turned my attention to ye olde networking tool for the olds: Facebook.

Hey friends! I’m looking for work, let me know if you hear of anything interesting

A handful of people liked the post, as etiquette demands, and then a casual friend dropped the bomb that prompted me to delete the post and retreat to my darkened bedroom for hours:

What position are you looking for? What do you do?

Normal people, I thought to myself, can answer that question. It’s pretty straightforward. They can point to their major in school, lay out their last job description, highlight their specialty in an easily explainable field.

I could say: I’m looking for steady, pleasant work that challenges me in an environment that isn’t oppressive and dark, working for people who don’t want to micromanage or belittle or seduce me, who won’t stand behind my chair and fart or “forget” to invite me to staff meetings. But that’s a still a little vague, isn’t it?

I want to reply, “I can do lots of things, what d’ya got?” but the cardinal rule is that the job-seeker must present qualifications to check off in the game of mix-and-match that is a Job Hunt.

So, I have BA in a self-designed curriculum in a catch-all department at a commuter school I transferred to from a prestigious university a million years ago. Since then, I’ve been on payroll only a handful of times (often hourly without benefits) and have widely varying job titles to list on my resume: Web Master, Project Manager, Reading Teacher, Store Manager, Art Instructor, Editorial Manager, Assistant to the Director. I turned the true title of Temp into cutesy Mac Specialist.

No one cares about my years as PTA President or volunteering in the elementary school performing arts program, and we still haven’t figured out how to formalize, let alone appreciate, Stay-at-Home Mom.

My resume is a time-jumping mess of odd jobs.

In the early days, when I was an actual temp in the large city where I went to college, it was fun to be transient. I liked not having to commit to a dead-end job as a stepping-stone, able to explore different offices in different industries. It helped me discover what I enjoyed doing, what would pass the time easily and pleasantly, and what would drain every drop of joy from my life if I had to do it every day.

I found there was a lot in the corporate world I would not enjoy doing every day. At the large public relations firm, I filed press clippings and faxes for a younger girl who graduated from the prestigious university I’d fled. I had a flash of envy that she had an office with a door that closed and business cards with her name printed on them. Then I had to type up her flip-chart notes from a brainstorming meeting about celebrity promotions for Gatorade and thought maybe she was wasting her prestigious journalism degree.

I initially liked the Quality Assurance gig at the software company, but between staring at the beige carpet walls of my tiny cubicle perched on a high, swaying floor of a landmark skyscraper and getting hit on by one of the higher-ups, I was relieved when the stint was over.

The commercial real estate office gig was promising, with tasks that might offer variation and challenge. One of the primary brokers asked after my interest in helping him write a manual on how to break into commercial real estate. Had he sensed my deepest desire to write? It took two or three off-site coffee meetings to recognize that he was less interested in the writing project than in the off-site nature of meeting with me.

I was open to a steady job title—maybe even desperate for one—but nothing seemed to work out. The catalog production position lasted less than a week; the market research firm needed nothing more than transcription skills. I didn’t mind the web master position, managing hundreds of updates to a huge website across seven languages for a massive international nonprofit. The job lasted longer than most, until they had a messenger hand-deliver edits while I was projectile vomiting at home during chemo. My non-negotiables in a work position now include sick leave.

The irony that I used to turn down job offers when I can’t even get a rejection letter now, let alone an interview, stuns me. I wonder how much different my life would be if I had accepted one of those elusive job titles back then.

I can’t remember the job title, let alone the department or the actual business, that remains the hallmark of What Might Have Been. I was contracted to assist a team of young women (in human resources? Internal Communications? Is that even a thing?) produce promotional materials for a company-wide event in a few weeks. I want to call it MindScape, but that’s probably not right. Maybe BrainSomething, with lines suggesting a lightbulb above a swoop of a head.

I worked diligently and with a positive attitude, as I often do. I was personable and attentive, and managed to tie the right colored ribbon to the correct MindMeld gift bag, so naturally they wanted to onboard me. Two young women invited me to a meeting in a tall, windowed conference room nestled above downtown Chicago. They wheeled in a serving cart with soda options and fresh cookies. I listened and smirked, certain I would never say yes but curious for this glimpse into a life I believed did not fit me.

I’m still not entirely sure what doesn’t fit. On a surface level, I don’t feel at home in a corporate environment. I don’t own the right clothes; I most mirror the first Andie of “The Devil Wears Prada,” she of the chunky fake-orthopedic shoes and lumpy cerulean sweater.

Underneath, I’m still loath to commit to a job that expects long-term commitment. I loved those temp days of dipping in and out of a gig, learning new routes to a job, discovering untapped skills and honing stale ones. Temporary jobs might be stop signs on my resume, but they are green lights for someone who likes change.

Perhaps I shouldn’t try to fit myself into a job title that doesn’t, and can’t, define all that I can do. Maybe I should stop editing my credentials to hide my transient past and embrace it. I could even march into that creative employment agency and present myself as the best damn Temp anyone has ever seen. That’ll look good on a business card, right?