“It was just a Toyota that he hit…”

Remember when I told you guys about that quotethat someone said on the FOXSports.com boards after the Daytona 500? I couldn’t help but think of that again after the end of the Coke Zero 400 Saturday night. Think about it – Kyle Busch got spun just like Carl Edwards did at Talladega for the Aaron’s 499 back in April, and both times the winning car was a Chevy. Of the 12 different cars that have visited victory lane this year, Chevy has put 6 different cars there while Toyota has been there with 3 cars, Dodge with two cars and Ford has put one car there.

Does anyone else need more proof as to which car company produces the best product? For my money – well, what little money I have left – it will always be General Motors.

GENERAL MOTORS RULES!!!!!!

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I know that some of you out there have gone with Temp Agencies to try to find jobs in the hope that a Temp spot will lead to a full-time gig. For some of you who have done this I know that for the most part it is a long-shot at best. Let’s face it, Temp Agencies are not exactly the most reliable way for us to get a job, let alone find one. Unfortunately I speak from experience. When I was first venturing out into the job market over 6 1/2 years ago, I also went to several Temp Agencies in the SoCal area hoping that they could help me out. I went to at least a dozen different agencies thinking that they would be a way for me to gain employment after I had been laid off.

I was wrong – not only did they never help me out like many of them promised to do, but they wouldn’t even accept my phone calls when I tried to find out just what was going on. They would always give me the same “when we find something for you, we’ll let you know” excuse, and then never contact me ever again.

Because of those experiences – and because most of the time these agencies would post ads that made it appear that you were applying with a company that was looking to hire in a ‘bait and switch’ maneuver – I am really dubious when it comes to using places like this to find employment. They seem to be all talk and not a lot of action or results to me.

So I rather surprised myself when I answered an ad at CareerBuilder for an Office Manager position with Office Team. I applied for the position last Friday, July 3rd and hoped for the best. Well today I got another rejection e-mail which read:

OfficeTeam would like to thank you for your recent application.  After reviewing your information, we have determined that your skills and experience are not the exact match for the needs of our clients at this particular time.

We appreciate you contacting us and wish you great success. As your career develops we may have a need for your skills and we invite you to contact us again as we may be able to assist at that time. For more information, please visit us online at www.officeteam.com. Thank you.

Now here’s the part that I have to have explained to me: how am I supposed to gain experience or improve my skills without a job? In fact, that’s exactly what I asked them in my response…

I am at a loss to understand why my skills and experience are not a match for any of your clients. I find it difficult to believe that I do not have any skills that at least one of your clients may be looking for, nor do I believe that I do not have enough experience to justify employing me in some capacity. I am also at a loss to understand how I can gain more experience without becoming employed, and how you can assist me at a later time if I have gained no further experience nor skills.
 
I would like further feedback as to how I may be able to further enhance not only my skills, but also my experience without having gained employment. I would like to know how I may accomplish this without expense to myself as I have no income, and within a limited time frame – that being less than a month – as my home may soon go into foreclosure and I desperately need employment to prevent that.
 
I eagerly await your feedback.

Now I seriously doubt that I am going to hear back from them but the question remains…how are any of us supposed to get better skills and more experience when we don’t have a job? I know that some of you are saying that we should go back to school, but for some of us that is not an option as we have neither the time to devote to classes, money to pay for them, or both. In my case there is no time as I need to find a paying job yesterday because we are already behind on our mortgage and equity payments. If I were to take the time to go to classes someplace, by the time I was done I would have already lost my house – so I need a job now, not classes.

Now for those of you who do have the time and money to go then I say go for it. Get some additional skills if you think it would help.

But just be wary about dealing with the Temp Agencies – as far as I’m concerned they are nothing but a waste of time.

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I know that a lot of us are also on sites like Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc.

I also know that the companies that we are trying to get work with are checking us out on those sites to see if there is anything embarrassing that they can use against us. That is why I have been taking some time to make sure that my online profile is clean(ish) so that there is nothing that could come back to bite me later. I have tried to keep my actual identity separate from this site because I don’t want to run the risk of losing a job because of something that I’ve posted here. That is why I am advising all of you to be very careful with your online “footprint” as it were.

There is an easy way to see what, if anything is posted or said about you online – Google yourself and see what’s out there. If there is something out there that you feel is going to cost you a job then see what you can do to clean it up. And even though posting the pictures of that wild Spring Break Party in Cancun seemed like a cool idea at the time, a potential employer might see that and conclude that you are irresponsible – and it could cost you a job.

Is it right? No, it is not right! It ranks up there with using a credit report to figure out who should and who should not get a job. Unfortunately it is another tool by which HR can use to make sure we remain “unpersons” and Teabaggers can say that we really don’t want to work. I consider that to be their failing, not mine. Because a true professional would not use something like a blog post or a Tweet against a job candidate who was qualified for the position and would be an excellent fit for the company.

So I challenge all of you in HR to judge us by our qualifications instead of our online profile or posts. Instead of assuming that we don’t know how to act on the job through whatever it is you find online, how about giving us the benefit of the doubt and taking a chance on someone who might pleasantly surprise you in the end?

Or is that just “a little above your pay scale?”