All this time I’ve been sending résumés I’ve learned something: job hunting is like playing video games, which I’m fairly good at. And no, not because that’s all I’ve been spending my unemployed time doing. Let me paint you a picture.
When you start a video game for the first time, there’s typically a few minutes that is like a movie. It lays out the backstory and lets you know what your mission is. In job hunting terms, that means the story begins where you’ve lost your job and go home to work on getting a new one. For video games the screen then goes black and inquires if you’re playing with more than one person. In my case, I’m Player One since no one is depending on me. This might seem daunting to go this alone but I find adding Player Two just confuses things and its difficult (though not impossible) to tag team.
Level One of the video game usually has you collecting items as you move through the board. A sword, coins, information from random characters; in short there’s no adversarial aspects and it’s a jumping off point. For job hunting it’s updating your résumé. Nothing scary about that and you’ve collected worthwhile things. Knowledge, letters of reference, coins.
But just like a video game gets slightly more difficult as you continue, so too does the job hunting. Level Two of video games still has you acquiring items but there are a few bad guys to slow your progress. When job hunting this is when you to get a few calls about your résumé but nothing to email home about. That’s like losing all your lives and having to start over.
Most video games have a ‘secret’ area that can be difficult to find. It’s usually an area that gives information, more coins and extra weaponry. Many gamers ask other gamers for tips. In the employment game, you ask for help too. I asked a friend of the family to review my résumé. She’s like my secret for dealing with the corporate world.
With her tips I restarted the game by posting my newly improved résumé online. I was then able to better navigate to other levels faster. And by that I mean I was getting calls for interviews with quality companies. I’m avoiding the bad guys (useless placement staff) and attempting to put myself ahead of other job candidates. Some of whom bear a striking resemblance to those mushroom guys in Mario Bros. I’m hoping to make it to the final level of the game, employment. In a gamer’s world, that means there’s an end battle of epic proportions with a lot of action happening but if you conquer the end guy (yeah they call it that) then you’ve completed your journey. However I’ve never given up on a video game without beating it and I won’t give up on this. I’ll just have to restart the game and continue.
Today’s lie: Thank you Mario, but our princess is in another castle.
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