Just a recipe on how to make lemonade ...

Hi! I am Elvi. I live, work and play in New York City. Initially I started this blog to share my experiences with the world about my breast cancer diagnosis and the chemotherapy afterwards, but now (knock knock on wood) I just write about my everyday life encounters. I believe, that every experience in life can be turned into a positive one, hence the title ... When life gives you lemons make lemonade! (And I've made lots of it already!)

Friday, February 23, 2007

You can keep your jobs: I had a good laugh already! :)

CENTRAL RECRUITING, BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEXIN"

> HR BUSINESS SUPPORT- GENERALIST
> Cust#: 0
>
> Internet reply
> Thank you for your interest in employment
> opportunities at Bloomberg. We strive
> to find the right person for the right opportunity.
> At this time, we will not
> be pursuing you as a candidate for the position but
> would like you to keep
> Bloomberg in mind for future career opportunities.
> We appreciate your interest
> in Bloomberg and wish you success in your future
> professional endeavors. We
> encourage you to remain current on our career
> opportunities by visiting
> http://careers.bloomberg.com. Kind regards, The
> Bloomberg Recruitment Team
>
>


Dear Sir/Madam,

I was the right person for the right position!

Thank you for your time and attention and I will
certainly keep you in my mind for future career
opportunities.

Should you find out, that the current right applicant
for the right position does not work out, please keep
me in your database of exceptional candidates.

Wishing you likewise success in your future business
operations.


Kind regards,

My signature :)

Job hunter in action

My lemonade is turning sour again as I keep spending hours and days by looking through job adds, attending interviews, writing cover letters with ZERO end product!

Yeap! I am still stuck at this place that I'd like to forget! Keeping up with the score I must have sent out about 20 resumes by now, with the outcome of 2 phone calls from actual companies, four from recruiters and one "I'dBeSurprisedIfTheyEverPickedUpthePhone". I f-d up!

This is how it went: I found a job of my dreams on idealist.org.
"WOWWIEWOW" I thought as I imagined myself in the big executive chair behind a huge black desk calling my secretary to make me a cup of LATTE (skim milk only!)!
I was the perfect candidate having every single one of the requirements checked in my mind and so I started drafting up the cover letter, gave a face lift to my resume carefully plucking in the keywords that they will want to see! Once I finished I realized that in addition to the standard cover+resume they also want me to create a project telling them 5 ideas for fundraising.

Now, if you vaguely know me, you also know, that fundraising is my strength (just think of the annoying AVON emails that you kept getting last year) and I certainly don't lack imagination, so keeping this in mind I worked 4 days on the project!
I was ready to WOW some unsuspecting HR director, who will certainly not going to let this unique opportunity of a lifetime pass by him and will invite me at least for an interview!!!!

Here we go ... I put together a PowerPoint presentation including not five, but 8 ideas!!! I read it to Geoff, till he couldn’t stand me any longer and nodded with his head after every single sentence in agreement - accompanied by admiration of my creativity, cleverness and talent. I tap myself on my shoulder, copy paste the letters and spit three times on the computer screen for luck (just a little superstition that never works, but wouldn't allow sending a single resume without this ritual) while clicking the "send" button. All I have to do is wait for the Pink Panther song on my Nokia with an "Unknown" caller and surely it will be THEM! My prospective job, my way to power and fame, my self-actualization as I hazily remember Maslow from Psych classes.

Friday AM I get to work still feeling proud of my work done self assured of my geniality. I open the self-sent file for this position just to "double-check" ... Cover letter looks great, resume is also in a good shape and then I open the presentation, the one that I am most proud of. I added not only my amazing ideas, but also graphics mostly from google search.

As page three opens I see that the Starbucks coffee cup that I pasted in the middle of the page originally looks a bit different ... I then proceed to view the presentation across the entire screen and to my surprise a second later the coffee cup, which I so carefully picked out of the 500 that I found on the search starts turning around ... Needless to say I was surprised, however this feeling only exploded as I read the quote on the other side of the coffee cup that came to life ...

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that same mistake. Life is too short."
Armistead Maupin

* * * * *

Yeah .. They never called me .... Surprised? I am not, especially now that I am a self-proclaimed gay who is advertising her sexuality through job adds ...