writing letters

[deird1]

When stuck on the endless merry-go-round that is job applications, does anyone else have a distressing tendency to get easily bored... and far more creative than they should be?

Unfortunately, when I'm bored my sense of humour starts to emerge - and my sense of humour has this thing about getting me into trouble, especially with it comes armed with pen and paper.


To demonstrate what I mean, here is an excerpt from a job application letter, back in those far-off days when I still had optimism:

As an editorial student hoping to work in the field of educational publishing, I would love the opportunity to join your company.

(Nice, formal, stodgy...)


A bit later:

I would be very grateful if you would consider me for a position in your company, or for any freelance work you could offer me.

(This is when the italics start creeping in.)


Then:

I would like to explain, in simple terms, why I believe that I’d be good at this job. (Granted, this is pretty much the definition of what an application letter is for…)

Last week:

* Not, I admit, a necessary job skill. But it is pretty cool.

And then yesterday:

I'm contacting you in the forlorn hope that you'll take pity on a would-be editor if I can sound pathetic enough.

You see what I mean. As soon as I get bored, I get creative and increasingly silly. (In that last one, I also used the phrase "forlorn-ness (or should that be forlornity?)" and promised that I'd throw her a party if she gave me any work.)

Anyone else do this? Just me? Okay then.



So, anyway, I was wondering: what do your favourite characters do with their job applications?

Sokka never has any problem getting jobs. Which always surprises him - he keeps confessing, mid-interview, that he has no idea what he's doing and still has a lot to learn. And people keep on hiring him every time...

Faith never has to apply for jobs anymore (permanent positions rock!) but whenever she has to apply for stuff from the Board, she and Buffy swap applications and write each other's. Faith comes across as super-eloquent and formal, and everyone assumes that all the swearing means Buffy is stressed out and needs to be treated nicely.

Dawn was pretty sure her job interview would mostly be an opportunity for out-of-retirement stuffy Watchers to look down their noses at the 23-year-old American chick, so she was going to have to impress them right from the start. That's why she wrote her CV in Ancient Etruscan. Ancient Etruscan haiku.

Comments

[velvetwhip]

*giggles*


Gabrielle

[deird1]

*grins*

[silveronthetree]

Hee! I love Dawn's letter.

Having just sent off an application that required an epic revision of my CV, I feel your pain. My silliness never makes it past the first revision but I do do it.

[guy-who-reads.blogspot.com]

ugh. I sympathize. I hate looking for work, I hate applying for work, I hate interviewing for jobs, the whole thing is just hideous. I try to restrain myself from writing humorous letters when applying for things, and generally end up at the utter other extreme - carefully tweaking a basic form letter while not saying anything too overwhelmingly specific about myself. The whole thing sucks, and I hope your forlorn hopes bear fruit in the near future.

In the fiction that I'm muddling around with right now, my heroine is about to be offered a job as a fairy godmother. By her fairy godmother. Things are going to go downhill from there, I suspect.

[deird1]

In the fiction that I'm muddling around with right now, my heroine is about to be offered a job as a fairy godmother. By her fairy godmother.

*wants to read this, now please*

[guy-who-reads.blogspot.com]

That's possible - e-mail address? I'll send you what I've got. But I'm notorious for not finishing what I'm working on, so I can't promise that you'll ever see the end of it.

[deird1]

deird1
at
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[peroxidepirate]

As somebody who does hiring, I encourage you to edit out the forlorn/please-take-pity-on-me stuff before sending out your resume. Every manager's different, of course, but in my experience, we look for the best applicant for the job, and sounding pitiful really doesn't help anyone's case. Not to say humor is necessarily a bad thing, though -- depending on the culture of a particular workplace, that one varies.

As for characters... Willow rambles a lot, in a very formal manner. And Xander's had so many jobs that he can't keep track of all the dates and details -- but that's okay, since most of his references went down with Sunnydale, so he just guesses.

[purple_feenix]

As someone who has worked only at places that are no longer in existence (every single business where I have worked has failed, but I swear it wasn't my fault) I find that being "creative" on your CV is a must. Although ancient Etruscan haiku never occurred to me. Hmm...

[glorious-pancake-morning.blogspot.com]

Heh. An old application for "communications officer" (basically a copywriting position) at the Lost Dogs Home:

I have two pet ferrets myself. They’re fat and happy at home, but it’s been an eye-opener to hear about people who choose such pets without taking the time to learn about their needs.

I haven't been quite so goofy in any other letters, but gah, it starts to drive me crazy trying to sound eager and charming and skilled and talented but not up myself in every single letter.

Yesterday I had a really long talk with a friend of mine who is also desperately searching for work, and I've decided to stop tailoring all my cover letters so much, and just take the saturation approach. I put off sending them because I worry that they sound wrong.

[(Anonymous)]

Mime Paradox from Slacktivist here, and I am totally familiar with this, although not quite in job applications. Witness my entry test for my University's Translation Program, which, as the answer for essay question 2, included the one word answer "optimism", followed by half a page of space, the phrase "wait for it...", followed by the rest of the answer, including the explicit sentiment that I would have totally left the answer at one word, had I not been afraid that they wouldn't have gone for that. I didn't get in.