Wednesday, March 9, 2011

The Talker

On Sunday the sun was mostly out, although it was still a bit cold, and Spring felt almost here so I was fighting a strong desire to do Spring cleaning. I figured it could wait until next weekend after the time changes. Since it went from Fall to Winter overnight when the time changed last November, I figured it should go from Winter to Spring overnight this weekend. Then Monday morning, right before I was to leave to host the IWS show at the Capitol building, it started to snow. This feels like some kind of new rule, Shelly has to go out, it starts to snow.

Hosting the IWS show was fun. I hosted with Joyce, who has been an IWS member for a long time and I convinced her to join me in picking our own Best of Show. This show was not judged and there are no awards, but the last time I had to host a show the Best of Show was so bad that the woman I hosted with that time and I picked our own. Joyce knew about all of the other artists and gave me some background, and she was also pretty articulate about why she liked what she liked, and expected me to do the same.

Then I went back to the resume writing workshop to have the instructor look at my new resume, and it was a different instructor. She was from Bosnia and hard to understand and could not manage The Talker. You know The Talker, there is one in every meeting and every class, the guy who poses questions that are really designed to tell everyone all about what he knows on the topic and he will not shut up. He monopolizes the whole meeting until you wonder why the instructor is even there. In this class there were 3 Talkers, although one quickly fell asleep, and the other appeared to have only been encouraged by the first Talker's success. Managing The Talker, so he does not take over your meeting or your class, is a skill. This week's instructor didn't have it and I wanted to shout, "if your resume is so great, why are you here!?" I could see why the guy didn't have a job. I left early.

Tuesday morning (as it started to snow) I went to the technical branch of one of the employment agencies I went to last week. The girl I met with seemed awfully young. I don't know how productive that meeting will be, but she gave me the names of a few companies that they do not represent.

The next door neighbor's grey cat is named Pierre and my neighbors just noticed last weekend that he is infatuated with Spit. He is either sitting in the neighbor's kitchen window or on the trash can outside my dining room window looking for her. The feeling appears to be mutual and Spit often runs to the dinning room window looking for Pierre. I was glad to see my neighbors, I have not seen much of them in the last two months. Everyone in Boise seems to hide indoors from Christmas to February and doesn't come out until the Crocus do.

This morning I put on a suit, printed out another copy of my resume and my cover letter that I sent to them last week, and went over to ClickBank to try to hand it to a person. There was a guy working on the receptionist's computer and I told him I was dropping off a resume, but that I was hoping to also talk to someone in Human Resources. I was a bit persistent and he sent a message to the HR Director and she came down to meet me! I had to talk to her there in the lobby, but I handed her my resume and she remembered me! I had a few questions planned and a few comments I wanted to make about my experience and she seemed to be interested. I have her name from their website, so I will send a thank you for her time, otherwise that is my very best effort.

The girl that I sat next to at the good resume workshop was some kind of great companies in Boise goldmine. Every one that she suggested has a reputation as a great employer and is some kind of software developer. They all have really silly names that you would never attribute to a software company and the best name, and the company with the very best reputation as an employer, is Ballihoo. Ballihoo did not have an appropriate opening, and I was told they are almost impossible to get into, but I emailed resumes to the others today. I like my new technique of emailing a resume and then going over to drop off a printed one and trying to talk to someone. This seemed to work when I gave the employer a bit of time to look at resumes they received, including mine, so I will give these a few days. I still like ClickBank the best.

The commission painting is at the point where I really want to work on it and it is getting close to done.

No comments:

Post a Comment