So, after less than six months at my first grown-up job, I’m back on the prowl for another one.
I never expected to stay in my first job for less than a year, let alone less than six months. (I promise I’m not a flaky person– I’ve held jobs longer than two-years each during high school and college, which one could argue are the flakiest times of a person’s life.) But it turns out, internet ad operations is draining work. Internet ads are the digital version of infants… Ad trafficking requires constant numerical vigilance, and one can never be away for more than a few days. And unfortunately, internet ads (and advertisers) don’t give a fig about weekends or holidays.
(There are a few other reasons, the most important being that ad ops is not even remotely my passion.)
So, gentle readers, I have been on a slew of interviews after what has been (so far) a relatively short search. Luckily for me, Northern Virginia is the East Coast version of Silicon Valley, and people with mild-to-medium technical skills such as myself are in short supply. Supply and demand, it seems, are working to my favor for once.
Nonetheless, it’s been an exhausting couple of weeks, which explains (but does not excuse) the lack of blog activity. I’m sorry Penelope, but this doesn’t feel like stability. I feel constant agitation from the job search process (in addition to the day-to-day grind of spreadsheets and ad servers). Never before in my life has eight hours of sleep been not nearly enough.
But I’d like to think this whole experience has taught me a few things about myself:
- I’m bold and uncompromising. I’m not the kind of person who settles for an unhappy or unfulfilling situation. My parents have both described to me feelings of being trapped by a job for years and years… and I am just not willing to accept that. It’s not the kind of life I’m going to lead.
- I’ve got marketable skills. It seems even basic HTML and CSS knowledge (coupled with a respected liberal arts degree) is enough of a foot in the door for the types of jobs I am considering.
- I crave human interaction. I don’t think I could ever be happy in a career that has me trapped in spreadsheets and analyzing data for hours on end.
- I love the Internet industry. Even though advertising operations (as I know it) isn’t a great fit for me, I do enjoy working on the web.
That’s it for now! Time for another batch of interview thank-you letters.
Hi, AJ! First of all, thank you so so much for the kind words at Queercents.
And second, good luck on your search. I think you’re right–there are more jobs that require technical skills than people to fill them. I work in web content mangement, a little HTML and PhotoShop–it doesn’t really require much background at all, but just the little bit I had (in, like you said, the context of a liberal arts degree) opened so many doors. And it sounds like your experience is even more specific. Sounds to me like you’re well on your way!