About my job hunt


Fig. 1. Yeah, this is me. The sign says, “If you’re whining about a labor shortage, STOP ignoring my job applications!” And the QR-code leads here. Photograph by author, January 16, 2023.

To develop this page has been exceedingly difficult. The task is to channel an incandescent rage into coherence. It is undated as I continue to develop it.

Introduction

Fig. 2. Cartoon created with the New Yorker’s “Create your own cartoon” tool on July 27, 2020. #DIYNewYorker

I have been looking for a real job (which I define below) since 2001. My search has failed and, at some point, one must accept that I simply can’t be so awful at job hunting as to account for this failure. Something else is going on and this page coalesces my thinking on what it is. From this page, in subpages, I consider each of the following:

  1. Grievance as fury

  2. Poverty, as a constraint on networking opportunities, as a constraint on social mobility, and as rationalizing dehumanization, but also as a perspective on what I am expected to do to find work and its absolute futility.

  3. The transparent absurdity of my job search since 2001 and, after over twenty long and infuriating years, the inescapable conclusion that yes, the job market really is a scam.[1] and that I face discrimination, it which it is apparent that there is nothing I can do to overcome biases arrayed against me.

  4. The denial of my human rights and therefore, my reduction to subhuman status.

  5. That which I am not, whether or not neoliberalism or any other expression of power relations requires it.

  6. That which I should be, largely as a consequence of my education.

  7. That which I am, including my résumé

  1. [1]David Benfell, “About that alleged ‘labor shortage,’” Not Housebroken, May 12, 2021, https://disunitedstates.org/2021/05/09/about-that-alleged-labor-shortage/↩