Lucky you. I'd been dragging my feet on putting up that ===> post from The Job Stalker, because, frankly, it's a real downer. Not only is about my NOT getting that "ideal job" but also having to "walk the plank" at the Census (oh, and just today I found out that I wasn't there long enough to get Unemployment from it), plus featuring a lovely story about the big increase in suicides among "husbands and fathers" ... which obviously struck a note with me. It was one of my Friday "link dumps", so there's lots of info on it, but I wasn't exactly jumping up and down to drag that in here (I think you've heard most of the bad news already).
Frankly, today sucked. Had some more BAD bad news, that I have no clue what to do about, aside from the lovely news above. It's getting to the point where I'm probably going to have to look at Starbucks or one of the book store chains, just to have something coming in (aside from The Wife's salary, which is only about 1/3-1/2 of what we need).However, <=== this also showed up (click the thumbnail to go to the site). Now, I'd heard that this was happening, as the gal who writes that site had contacted me with a questionnaire some time back, and I was, frankly, wondering when it was going to break. This afternoon I saw a Tweet from a guy on Twitter that he'd come in #11 on this, so I followed his link over there to see what was what. I figured, given my minuscule audience and my non-Pro status, that I'd be in the 80's or 90's on the list of 100, so I started to scan up from the bottom, and was, by the time I got into the 60's, starting to despair that I'd ended up not making the cut ... so it was with excitement and not a little incredulity that I discovered that I'd just barely made the "top half" of the sites listed, at #48!
Needless to say, I was thrilled about this. I'm just a guy trying to find a job, and somebody out there thinks what I'm doing with The Job Stalker is "better" than 52 other blogs on the job search. As I noted in the questionnaire, I don't have any "credentials" for writing this thing, other than the "battle scars" of three long, frustrating, job searches. I'm not a "career consultant", I'm not some HR pro, I'm just a grunt in the trenches ... who made the top half!
Of course, this brings me to the "downside" of this. I'm getting other blogs asking me to do guest posts ... which is great, but what the heck do I write about for them? The networking events I've been to this week? I can get away with that addressing "my audience" over on Chicago Now, but who wants to read that in Phoenix? I have never had any desire to become a "job expert", so most of the attention that The Job Stalker is getting is the "wrong sort" ... unless, of course, there's some recruiter out there that figures if he/she gets me a job their blog will move up the rankings!
Anyway, do take a clicky-clicky off to the grim stuff on the right and the fun stuff on left ... who knows, enough folks come check me out, I might make more than a buck and change this month.