Good News!
Well, I have a serious job possibility at long last......not a perfect job, but a much better than I expected job to be sure. :) I'll start at the beginning. After reading every want ad posting 26 times and realizing that everyone who was in the mainstream posting wanted a driver or someone with experience, I began the Dance of Pure Desperation last night. Granted I had an interview yesterday afternoon, but oddly enough, it just made me feel worse. Mainly because I interviewed well but it was just one of those situations where we both knew it was futile. I mean she told me she had many more of these interviews to do, and I possessed the bare minimum qualifications.
For those of you who haven't done it, The Desperation ritual goes something like this: you type a loose location and criteria for the type of agency you want into a search engine and skim absolutely every hit that comes up. If the agency looks at all compatible with you, you skim their employment page. Well, between last night, and this morning I must've skimmed over a hundred pages, and I've probably visited a good half of the social agency pages in the DC metropolitan area. Including some little low budget places that no one has ever heard of. By the end of it, your head aches, your phone isn't ringing after you've sent a dozen resumes, and I must admit, that for the first time in several years, suicide was beginning to seem like a plausible option.
But I digress: the good news is that I got a hit this afternoon! It was from an agency that I hadn't seen advertised anywhere and probably would NEVER have found in any other way called DC Community Connections. I say that the job is good but not perfect because I would be doing case work with adults instead of children, but i would be working with people with mental illness and would learn a lot. Better still, no one mentioned driving at all when they called me! I read on the website that all homes are within distance of public transportation for the ease of the clients. :)
The pay wasn't great but totally decent for a newbie like me: the offer was $34,000 (which for you Indiana folk is probably more like $20,000 in Indiana money). This isn't bad because though I really wanted $40,000, i was going to use about 5 grand or so to pay for clinical supervision, and that's a major perk of this position. I'd work on a clinical team, and supervision would be totally free! I'm psyched about that....I need a chance to grow and work with other professionals. They also offer full benefits and metro discounts....I think I'll like it there.
I don't wanna jump the gun, but Jack the head social worker there scheduled my interview for this Friday, so I'm thinking that I have a good shot and that he's eager to hire. I hope that I get the job...it would be grueling and challenging work but fascinating too and a chance to learn alot. Jack said that I would get heavily involved in the lives of 20-25 clients (which I prefer to having a caseload of over 100 that you rarely see.) The illnesses would range from mild bipolar disorder to severe schizophrenia.... talk about "out of the pan and into the fire"!
I feel good about this though. I think that the job sounds rewarding, but it's just thankless and underpaid enough that the competition won't be immense. Cross your fingers for me, and I'll keep ya posted! I'm sorry that Wendy's Great Job Oddessey is so boring.....it just doesn't have mass dramatic appeal, but I must say: it's kind of a relief to be dull. :)
For those of you who haven't done it, The Desperation ritual goes something like this: you type a loose location and criteria for the type of agency you want into a search engine and skim absolutely every hit that comes up. If the agency looks at all compatible with you, you skim their employment page. Well, between last night, and this morning I must've skimmed over a hundred pages, and I've probably visited a good half of the social agency pages in the DC metropolitan area. Including some little low budget places that no one has ever heard of. By the end of it, your head aches, your phone isn't ringing after you've sent a dozen resumes, and I must admit, that for the first time in several years, suicide was beginning to seem like a plausible option.
But I digress: the good news is that I got a hit this afternoon! It was from an agency that I hadn't seen advertised anywhere and probably would NEVER have found in any other way called DC Community Connections. I say that the job is good but not perfect because I would be doing case work with adults instead of children, but i would be working with people with mental illness and would learn a lot. Better still, no one mentioned driving at all when they called me! I read on the website that all homes are within distance of public transportation for the ease of the clients. :)
The pay wasn't great but totally decent for a newbie like me: the offer was $34,000 (which for you Indiana folk is probably more like $20,000 in Indiana money). This isn't bad because though I really wanted $40,000, i was going to use about 5 grand or so to pay for clinical supervision, and that's a major perk of this position. I'd work on a clinical team, and supervision would be totally free! I'm psyched about that....I need a chance to grow and work with other professionals. They also offer full benefits and metro discounts....I think I'll like it there.
I don't wanna jump the gun, but Jack the head social worker there scheduled my interview for this Friday, so I'm thinking that I have a good shot and that he's eager to hire. I hope that I get the job...it would be grueling and challenging work but fascinating too and a chance to learn alot. Jack said that I would get heavily involved in the lives of 20-25 clients (which I prefer to having a caseload of over 100 that you rarely see.) The illnesses would range from mild bipolar disorder to severe schizophrenia.... talk about "out of the pan and into the fire"!
I feel good about this though. I think that the job sounds rewarding, but it's just thankless and underpaid enough that the competition won't be immense. Cross your fingers for me, and I'll keep ya posted! I'm sorry that Wendy's Great Job Oddessey is so boring.....it just doesn't have mass dramatic appeal, but I must say: it's kind of a relief to be dull. :)