The 405 Club

I remember sitting for lunch with some job hunting friends back in September or October, just before I left my last position. We were all discussing our job hunt, which, at the time, felt more daunting then ever.

We had been asking each other if anyone else was noticing a dwindling number of positions posted, which was something none of us were expecting to see. Eventually, someone looked at a calendar and pointed out a “Truth Of The Job Market,” one which, a few months later, I feel might be inaccurate.

Someone said, “You know, we have to get interviews in before Thanksgiving, because no one will hire us until 2010 if we don’t.”

Thinking about the amount of time that goes between the fourth Thursday in November, or really the third Thursday in November because if you follow their logic, who’ll be around to interview and hire Thanksgiving week, and the first work day in January 2010, this was a chilling thought. I don’t know how true that is, and since I wasn’t entirely sure then, I moved forward with reckless abandon in my job hunt. I didn’t treat a day as “two days before Thanksgiving” or “three weeks before Christmas,” I treated it as any old Tuesday.

I’d follow my job seeking agenda: make my to do list for the following day during Gossip Girl, watch some news before bed, and wake up ready to start the “work day” at normal “work day starting times.” I’m a big believer in optimism and positive thinking, and WHY would I tell myself, “Based on the day and month, you’re not getting a job. Time is stacked against you” before I even set down with my computer to search and send out my resume. I don’t believe in that, and I refused to let that job seeking myth impact my Holiday time job seeking mentality.

I knew my industry has been plagued with hiring freezes, is dominated by internal hires and essentially shuts down during the week between Christmas and New Years, so I knew, realistically, I had less days to get my name out there than I would have liked. The thing about me, though, is that I don’t shy away from a challenge. In fact, it actually energizes me.

By treating late November and December as “just any other day,” I’ve found the best reasons to be optimistic in my entire job seeking history. This time last year, people were worried about just how bad the recession and job market would get. Companies didn’t know whether they’d weather the storm, let alone when they’d be able to hire again. This year, it seems to be a totally different mentality.

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The majority of my professional experiences have been in various marketing capacities, and I thought that was it for me. I thought I figured out what I was going to do for the rest of my life by the time I was 20. And then I didn’t get a job in it, despite my internships, despite my networking, despite that Duke degree, so after months of searching, I took a position casting a reality show for MTV. And I loved meeting people, thinking creatively, not working traditional hours, and just getting out there. It was the thrill of being social, of outside the box thinking, of creating something tangible each and every day (a tape, filled with all the audition tapes I filled in the candidates’ homes) and the ability to see what I helped to create on television.

When that wrapped, I took a New Media marketing position, but swore to myself that it was the final test — was it marketing, or was it something more creative. While I remain passionately interested in creative marketing, specifically web viral campaigns, especially for music and entertainment, I’ve realized how much I love the creative process that was in my previous position. At my most recent position, many of my earliest responsibilities were to maintain a list of music blogs and blogger contact information. I turned a brief thing, into a daily occurrence — filling my Google reader with blogs and online news sources on everything, but most notably music and entertainment. And I realized - THAT’S WHAT I WANT TO DO.

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