Sweets

The more you suffer, the better the reward. Unfortunately truth. Nothing comes easy, at least to me, but at the same time challenge makes my life testier. Yummy, yummy, yummy... I have some tasty challenges tomorrow for breakfast!

Hard and soft

My head is aching, my coffee is cold, my eyes are red and I can't find the better description for myself than as dead as it gets. It was about midnight when I finished writing my cover letter yesterday and I asked my half-sleepy boy-friend to be my proof reader.

After speding some time with my newborn CV and a cover letter he said that he would hire me.

- Why? Because I'm awesome?!

- Yes, and because you're sexy.

Fair enough. That why I love him so much. He went to bed but I spent a bit more time to checking applying and being nervous. It is not surprising that I woke up today absolutely jaded... I was dead... tired and sick. This is what happens to those who work and apply for jobs. 8 hours of work + 5 hours of looking for jobs = dead...

The good thing about it is that my effort were not useless. At the very same day I received 5 job calls (hell yes! five!) and I went to a one very nice interview during the lunch time. Apart from it I needed to work which was exteremly impossible. My eyes were closing and my brains were getting me down. Phone calls - worked, interview - worked, my actual work did not work at all. Luckily my boss was carried away by his recent holliday so he didn't notice anything. On the contrary, he asked me to join a corporate St. Patrick's party after work which I voluntarily accepted. God knows I need a glass of wine!

Now I'm at home dead but happy. May be this is all about feeling alive? When you are exhausted but you keep calm and carry on. We will se, will see but so far... SLEEEP!

Inspirations and perfume ad in your CV

The day before yesterday I went to the meeting with a very cool marketer, he's the founder of Saatchi & Saatchi and the CEO of a few dozens other marketing firms. What else can say...I had very controversial feelings about his presentation. On the one hand, he was talking about true marketing communications, something that I used to do as a PR Manager in ESET Russia... long long time ago. On the other hand, this guy did not have any clue that everything he says is very far from what today's graduates have to face in their first jobs. I know it quite well.

However, one thing I really liked during the presentation was the Ernest Hemingway' s quote: "Never mistake motion for action". The speaker used it while talking about evaluation of marketing results but it definitely can be applied to everything. I heard it before but this time it gave some kind of inspiration. I have a job which is not definitely my dream job, so I keep applying for other positions and getting nothing but silence and refusals back.

But at that moment I've just realised that probably "sending as many CV's and cover letters as you can" is not the best policy. So I stopped and decided to focus not on finding a job but on my CV and a cover letter first. I found some consulting agencies in the internet and ordered a free CV review. I even decided to visit this useless event called Graduate Job Fair. If you want to ask me whe useless... because I've never met a single person who found such event helpful in terms of finding a job.

In fact, my CV was reviewed for many times by university career centre workers and they found it quite strong. Some of them suggested that I make it more creative (because I'm a marketer!!!), others claim that it has to be more professional (so... not creative). Such a mess! I know that my CV is strong (I have a job, you know) but suddenly it just stopped working... Luckily, at the same day I received a phone call from one of these CV review companies and for the first time in my life I actually heard something useful. The guy told me that my CV is very nice but it reminds him the bad ad for the perfume. It looks like as if the perfume ad says: Our product is so good because it contains 10% of alcohol, and XX% of chemicals.... The perfume ad has to create impressions, not describe chemicals, no one wants to know about chemicals, no one's gonna buy such perfume. And that was the beginning. Or at least I hope that it's going to be the beginning...

to be continued