Just finished updating my resume today. I always wonder how my resume stacks up against the throes of the many others in the pile. About 1 year ago, I rehauled my resume so that it wouldn't be as painful to do when the time came to actually find work again. I wanted to write things down while they were still fresh in my mind. So now I'm looking at the one I redid a year ago and am just making final adjustments and changes to it. Because to be honest, even I forgot what I used to do. I can't even imagine sitting down today, here and now, and trying to recall what responsibilities I took on, what projects I did nor what my day to day functions were. It really has been much too long. [btw, thanks to those who sent me their resumes last year when i asked for some guidance. they all really helped!]

I was reading in the LA Times the other day about how if you're still using the same resume format as when you got straight out of college, you're probably not going to get the job. Well, no kidding. Everything changes with the times, including resumes. Although mine doesn't look too drastically different from my very first one, there are some major changes in it, such as alot more text. Remember your first resume? It was pretty blank wasn't it? You tried to move things around, enlarged your margin and shifted some text size in order to make it look like you had alot of experience. But man, weren't we all experts in "padding" back then? And now, I can barely fit everything onto one page let alone keeping the font at a readable size. I sometimes think I should send a magnifying glass along with my resume for their perusal.

What really depressed me was looking at the classifieds section of the LA Times last week. I have never in my life seen such a THIN wimpy classified section. Just holding those meager pages in my hands revealed how poorly the market is and how truly difficult is must be to find a job now. I remember back when the classifieds covered 3-4 thick sections that you can barely get through and now, everything is compacted into 1 tiny section. Doesn't do much to bolster my confidence you know?

Last week, I went into a store and asked for an employment application. Now, I haven't done that since I was 16 when I went to apply for a gourmet yogurt place. So you can imagine how new this was to me since I have through the years only found jobs through the newspaper, internet, word of mouth but never from walking in a asking for an application. The funny thing was, a couple kids were there asking for an app as well and I looked at them and saw how young and naive they were. Wouldn't it be nice to be young again and not know how tough finding a job really is? The thing about asking for an app is that the person you ask always does a "once over" on you to see if you are deemed worthy of working there. My god, I'm not applying to work at Fred Segal for christ's sakes. It's just a lame local retail place which I'm sure I'm way overqualified for anyway. *snort* So the gal limply hands me the app and I go on my happy merry way thinking to myself, 'do i really want to work there?'. Well at least I'm trying.

So, wish me luck.

Did I mention, I *really* need a p/t or f/t job?

I'm out.