How to Sell Yourself

So phase one of the multi-step moving process is over.  I have relocated with one backpack and one piece of wheeled luggage to my partner's apartment just outside of D.C.  Ten boxes of my Stuff arrived last week at our soon-to-be new place.  The rest is packed and ready to go when we motor it down in just over a week.  Huzzah!

Life is much improved.  The stress of teaching is over, the worst part of my own packing is complete, and at last I have left upstate New York and am in a climate where the summers are appropriately sweltering.  I feel as though I have escaped something.  Indeed, I know I have.  I just haven't spent much time dwelling on the magnitude of what I have just escaped, and I won't be dwelling on it in this post.

Instead, I'd like to talk about another emergent dilemma.  Unemployment.

It's not the joblessness that's bothering me...at least, not yet.  And I've been in the game long enough that it probably should be bothering more than it is.  I've been flooding the market with my cover letter and resumes since mid-April, but beyond a few phone calls, I've yet to have any biters.  (In an ironic twist, I started to have more luck once I turned to unpaid internships, but this has only exacerbated my dilemma.  Do I commit to an unpaid internship for several months and risk not securing paid employment, or do I risk losing any possible job experience at all and ensuring I continue to not secure paid employment?)  I crossed my 120th application mark a few days ago, and I feel surprisingly at peace with it - a bit of a dark chuckle directed at myself, perhaps, but at peace.

Really, once I arrived here, the pressure to be employed suddenly lifted.  Money is worrisome, but it's not worrisome at the moment.  I have some savings to subsidize the next couple months if need be, and my partner is prepared to cover most of our overhead for a little while.  Gaps in employment histories are inconvenient, but I really don't know if I ought to be working right now; quite frankly, there's been so much to do lately that having a job would really get in the way.

It's not so much the getting a job part that is bugging me, but rather the process of getting a job.  While a fully competent and capable worker, I have found myself to be completely ill-prepared for the unique subculture that is the D.C. job search.

My first problem is learning how to spin it to win it.  I was at my partner's annual office party in May, about a month into my job search and still in the middle of my final semester of courses.  I struck up a conversation with a very nice couple who inquired about "my story."  Hm...my story?  What does that mean, exactly?  I told them about being originally from North Carolina, but now I am a grad student, how I was planning to move to D.C., find a job, work on my dissertation...

By this point I could already tell "my story" needed to be shortened.  They don't really want to know the full scoop, just the bullet points.  But there are some details they do want to know - and you are supposed to magically know to provide them.  When one of the women asked me what kind of job I was looking for in D.C., I just said, "Oh, you know, advocacy work."

"But what kind of advocacy?" she asked.

"Well, social justice advocacy, I guess.  Like in terms of women's issues, or LGBTQ issues, or anti-racist work."

"But what specifically do you want to do?" she inquired.

Um...hell if I knew.  All I wanted was a job.  You know, one of those things where you show up and do stuff and they write you a check.  I hadn't really gotten to the part about what kind of tasks I thought I ought to be doing.  I realized then that one does not only need a "story," but also to be able to provide a genre of employment.  Here, there are code words for the kind of work you do, and you are supposed to know where you fit.  Code words like policy.  Lobbying.  Communications.  Programs.  Outreach.  Membership.  Events.  Development.  She was looking for those words, words that help people in DC make sense of each other, and I didn't know to say them.

When my partner visited me last month, she helped me draft out a quick way to say what it was I wanted to do.  Well, first she helped me figure out what it was I wanted to do, then draft out a way to say it to other people I might meet at, oh, say an an office party.  Now, when I say things like, "I'm interested in transitioning out of the academy and exploring new opportunities," everyone seems to know what I'm really saying (whatever that is...I'm still not entirely sure, but they all seem to get the cues).

The second major problem I've encountered are qualifications.  I have some, but minimal, non-academic work experience.  On the other hand, I have considerable academic work experience that I see as directly transferable to non-academic work, but this isn't how employers see it.  Having a master's and being in a doctoral program means my application gets tossed out very quickly.  The expectation is that I will use my higher education as leverage for better pay or a better title, and in the ideal world, I could do that.  It's hard to do that when they skip that minefield by just not offering me a position.

I've adjusted my tactics to try and trick employers into seeing my work experience first rather than my credentials by moving my education to the bottom of my resume, and switching my graduate student work with my most recent non-academic job.  They still aren't deceived.  I have been told by several leads that I'm just too overqualified to be considered for their positions, and I was repeatedly cautioned in one recent unpaid internship interview that the work I'd be facing would be far too "mundane" and "not challenging" given the rigor I'm accustomed to.  (The rigor of what...grading papers?)

After all that time and dedication and abysmal compensation, my higher education is now working against me.  I might have more of a shot if I was just fresh out of college, or even if I'd been working for the past three years.  But if I had been working, I'd probably be thinking I need a master's right about now...so this is one of those gambles with a payoff I won't really know until the years to come.  Right now, though, it's kicking my ass.

My third, most recent problem are my clothes.  D.C. culture is extremely conservative as far as workplaces go, and I knew all of this going in.  I'm not a bad dresser, but I haven't had the funds to invest in a power wardrobe beyond some select Clothes Mentor purchases or Christmas presents.  Still though, I have decent taste and nice pairings...I thought.

I'd like to think I know what is appropriate workplace attire, but this morning I had that awkward moment at a temp agency where I was offered a flyer for a reduced price monthly business clothes sale.  Sadly, I was wearing one of my more professional summer outfits at the time - I suppose I made the mistake of dressing for the humid weather, rather than to be on L.A. Law.  The temp agency placement worker told me, in the nicest way possible, that sweaters were to only be worn with sweater sets (I was wearing a sweater, but I did not buy it in tandem with my shirt), that I could only wear business pants (I was wearing business capris) or formal skirts or dresses, and that I should invest in a matching suit, or at least a blazer, for interviews.  She added, with a glance at my flats, that I should wear heels...I told her, in the nicest way possible, that I do not wear heels.

Bless her, she also told me I was extremely overqualified for the agency's positions....overqualified and under-dressed, apparently.  We hit it off, as she took a maternal approach to my woeful wardrobe decisions. I had also made the mistake of not bringing in my resume because I'd already emailed it to her (I guess I'm supposed to bring my resume everywhere, like a flyer for a yard sale), so I think she took pity on me as a recently relocated charity case from upstate New York.

Sociologists tell us we know are breaking social norms when we encounter resistance, and I keep stumbling along headfirst into these gaffs.  Tell us about yourself, but in the right way.  Tell us what you want to do, but in the right way.  Tell us about what you've done, but in the right way.  Do business attire, but do it the right way.  Don't be too educated or too inexperienced, be just right.

When so many seem to tell you (as politely as they can) there is something wrong with you, it can be difficult to keep a healthy perspective on what really is right and wrong.  So far, I've been more or less zen about the rejection.  Today's clothing potshots stung a bit (I thought I looked so good today!), but I know they are part of a long, bumbled and brier-strewn path of learning how to sell myself.  I've been through the 'professionalization' machine of other sorts, and this is just a new version of the same old shtick.  Except this time, instead of publishing in the top tier journals, I'm supposed to rock Anne Taylor and summarize my resume in twelve seconds.  I just have to keep in mind, just like before, that professionalization is far less about me and way more about what they want me to be...and some rules you can bend (heels), while others you can't get away with not following (blazer...once I find one of those).  It doesn't take much to figure out what those are - people seem to have no problems telling you.

I should also conclude here by saying I brought this all upon myself.  This full-frontal confrontation with deficiency-inducing judgement is entirely of my own volition (another chuckle in my direction).  I came here for this.  I came here, I should say, to be with my partner, and to take on whatever repercussions that decision brought with it.  So this is a path willfully chosen, a path I've bought into for the time being, even if it's not yet sold on me.