I am caught in the rut. Again. I am sending out brutally polished CVs to companies whose names I can barely pronounce. I am writing motivation letters for jobs I am least motivated to do. I am blatantly exaggerating business skills I hardly possess. And worst of all, I am sitting through interviews with people I barely find bearable. All this for what? I am desperate for a job. Not "a job". "The job!"
Now before I go on ranting about how ruthlessly these companies have rejected my solid ten years of experience in the field of Communications, I must tell you that I have a slight mistake in my CV. Or at least that's how the HR/Hiring managers would have me believe. I have nothing to show from March last year to this minute.
Except that I had a baby. And I spent most of my time breastfeeding, changing diapers, reading books, feeling loved and appreciating the little wonders of life. I took a sabbatical from ambition. From greed. And it felt good. It made me more human. It made me a better writer. It made me a better mum too.
But I am caught in the rut again. I want a job that accommodates my child in sickness and health. I want a job that allows me leisure to read and write and grow. I want a job that adds meaning to my life. And as my bank statement says, I need a job that pays off my education loan. So basically I am talking about four different jobs combined into one for a semi-qualified candidate with no willingness to commit to any corporate values, or lack thereof.
By corporate values I mean I cannot stick around the office until the boss leaves. I cannot take on extra work for a promotion. I cannot go drinking with the team on Friday evenings. I cannot have an impeccable attendance record. I cannot waste time on office politics. I can't. Nope, hold on! Actually I won't. For I simply don't want to.
I need a job because I have a pathological addiction to be productive with my time. Like a lot of us do. A job gives me structure. Leisure only seems leisure when I have earned it after toiling through a myriad list of tasks. Being a mum, I have aced the art of finishing tasks at a lightning speed. I can fix breakfast, take a quick shower and get my baby dressed in layers of winter clothes under seven minutes. All this without a shot of caffeine.
So when these companies make me believe that I am perhaps a misfit for their fast-paced, entrepreneurial setup, I want to give them the CCTV footage of my morning routine. Talking about being entrepreneurial, I have created hand puppets out of spoons and spatulas, made bird sounds in the middle of the night to put my baby back to sleep and oh yes, I have set up PR operations in 20 different countries spread across four different continents in less than 10 months.
But I guess all they see is the mum label on my forehead. Which by the way, I am very proud of. A fellow mum told me that it gets better after the second one. How so? After the first kid, most employers suspect you'd have another one. So they see you as a liability, or a woman preparing to go into labor. But once you've had two of a kind, they feel more secure about your maternal instincts.
That being said, I still need a job before I go into labor again. The search is on. Please get in touch if you come across anything that remotely fits my profile. And pays handsomely too!