So I went back to school to get my paralegal certificate, unaware until halfway through the program of the near-impossibility of actually getting a paralegal job in this town.
Flash forward to today. I had a job interview yestrday through a placement service and was supposed to hear today. Didn’t hear anything so I called the agency. The agent tells me the interviewer told her that everything was great, he liked me a lot but he’s on the fence about hiring me because, with my paralegal certificate, he thinks I’ll get a paralegal job and quit. The agent puts me in the humiliating experience of explaining that I won’t quit to take a paralegal job because I can’t get a paralegal job.
Now that I’ve been humiliated I’m back to waiting to hear. Supposed to hear before 5:00 today but that obviously didn’t happen.
Dude, I don’t think you’re the one with the problem or any explaining to do: potential employers who second-guess your motives SUCK. If the interviewer had any question about your future professional plans, they should have asked you about it during your interview (or in a follow-up). I know that some employers have been burned in the past and feel that they have a right to be paranoid, but stick it out: I think you’ll be happier with an employer who grants you the benefit of the doubt from the get-go.
Yeah, I’m with Misnomer. It’s the worst possible thing to hear when you’re looking for work, but there are indeed jobs that you’re better off not having. The short-term necessity of having income again is definitely a big deal, but there is a much longer-term cost to your SOUL that comes from working at a place where management is so paranoid and you’re going in with a perceived strike against you.
If you keep hearing that you’re over-qualified, it sounds like this headhunter/job placement person isn’t finding the right positions for you. Can you switch to a different one? Are these temp jobs? A friend of mine is using a head-hunter to keep him in temp work while he looks for a “real” job on his own.
Their still having phone problems so I emailed my contact, who tells me that the job is mine if I want it, except oh, we offered you an afternoon schedule (4 10-hour days, 10AM-8PM which while not ideal is doable) but in the intervening 24 hours the company has had “staffing needs changes” and now if you want the job you’ll be working 2PM to midnight and still only four days a week.
The phrase “bait and switch” comes to mind. As does the phrase “evil mother fuckers.”
I ever-so-politely declined the bullshit hours change and ever-so-politely asked about other available postings, all the while trying very hard to remember that thing about not burning bridges and not including words and phrases like “horseshit” and “waste my time” and “what the hell is wrong with you that you think you can fuck with my life like this?”
We are the Big Giant Evil Corporation. You’re just some person. If you won’t eat it raw, perhaps we can find someone else who will.
And we’d be fools not to try and see if we couldn’t GET you to eat it raw.
Of course, this also tells YOU something about our ideas of personnel management, but you’re just some person, and therefore couldn’t possibly be bright enough to figure that out…
Otto, I didn’t know you were looking for a paralegal job. There’s been a paralegal opening at the company where I work for a few weeks. I don’t think they’ve filled it (since it’s still showing on our intranet) and the hiring process can be really slow and painful, but I can send you the job description tomorrow if you want. I don’t know anything about how the legal dept. is but, in general, it’s a pretty decent place to work. Very flexible, people aren’t constantly looking over your shoulder, etc. They offer domestic partner benefits, too.
Slight tangent, and just out of curiousity, but why is it so hard to get a paralegal job in Madison? If you’ve already discussed this in another thread just point me at it…
Because we have a law school here, and people who come to Madison for law school often decide to stay here. Law firms, given the choice of hiring an actual lawyer as a clerk versus hiring a paralegal, will often go with the lawyer both because of the broader range of tasks the lawyer can do and the higher rate a lawyer can be billed ($100/hr for a lawyer as opposed to $50/hr for a paralegal). So those firms that do hire paralegals or legal secretaries have their choice. Add that to a total lack of experience when they’re looking for people with two years or more of experience and trying to get a paralegal job in this town is largely a waste of time.
