If I seem a touch distracted these days I’ve got an actual reason.  I’m looking for a job.  That’s right.  In this economy.  But income from writing has been, um, erratic lately, at a time when steady and predictable would be the preferred thing.  But I’m not here to today to talk about the vicissitudes of the auctorial lifestyle (hey, prospective employers, see how I toss those big words around?).  I am here to talk about How Jobsearching Has Changed.

The first time I looked for a job I was a wee-tiny Madeleine, living in Cambridge, Mass. with a former college roommate, in an economy we thought was pretty piss poor.  Hah!  Those carefree, giddy days when I was poor, unfettered, unmortgaged, and you got a job by looking through the paper, going to the HR departments at local universities, and taking typing tests.  It took me two and a half months but I found a job I loved, running continuing ed and summer programs at a university (of which Cambridge has a bunch–you may have heard of some of them).  Even eleven years ago, when I was downsized out of my job editing comics, it was essentially the same procedure: answer ads, sign up with employment companies that advertise as loss leaders (Oh, y’know, that job isn’t available anymore, but we have this terrific opportunity making angels dance on pins that would be a great match with your skills!), network (what used to be called “asking around”).

Not so much any more.  Yes, the papers have classified sections, but those are often for the kind of jobs I can’t afford to take (or for jobs that are so stratospherically out of my league that they must be advertised broadly so that the search committees can be sure they’ve done their due dilligence). Now it’s online.  UCSF and UC Berkeley and SF State have websites where you upload your resume and cover letter, establish a “profile,” and apply to whatever jobs take your fancy.  You can get them to send each week’s new listings so you can keep shooting off that profile to them.  Of course, there’s an unnerving sense of casting your bread the void; at least with a paper resume and envelope someone had to open the envelope.  No, on second thought, maybe they just dumped ‘em into the trash can.  So this might be just as good, or better.

Then there’s networking.  I suck at networking because I was badly raised.  “Don’t put yourself forward, don’t be beholden to anyone, you should do it all on your own, no one wants to help you.”  But now, through the miracle of LinkedIn, I have millions of contacts: people from jobs I’ve held, schools I’ve attended, organizations I’ve belonged to.  I’ve been recommended by people I’ve worked with.  People on Facebook suggest things.  People on my Livejournal email me with possible work.

Nothing has panned out yet, of course.  Job hunting takes time.  Avocado, who has no memory of me with a full-time job, keeps saying “when are you going to get a job?” as if I had some control over the process.  What I keep telling her is that it’s like taking a car trip somewhere you haven’t been before: you know you’ll get there, but you don’t have familiar landmarks to tell you how soon you’ll reach the destination.  You just keep driving.