My Triumphant Return

...To blogging and the frustrations of job hunting

Oh my! You thought I died in a plane crash on the way home from Milwaukee last summer, didn’t you? Well, I did not. I’m still alive, though I can’t really say “well.” I’ve been going a bit insane looking for a job over the past three months. I have a degree! I can write. I can edit. I can organize. I can use a copier, a fax machine, a scanner, the internet, and all your basic Microsoft Office programs. Now will somebody please hire me? I’ve had all kinds of things I could have written about in terms of my experience as a young person with hearing loss over the past few months, but I was either too busy working or too busy trying to find work and better techniques for doing so.

I’ve been attending workshops at the One-Stop (a place for job seekers organized by the state) and they all say that staring at job boards all day is not the way to go about getting a job. The real trick is networking. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, and I do the best I can using social media sites and whatnot, but what about real, human, face to face interaction? Let’s say I go to a job fair. There are a hundred people in one room, most of them trying to get a job, and all of them talking at once. My head is reeling. I try talking to a few people, but I just end up nodding as if I heard what they said, when I really didn’t hear more than a few words. The one thing I do understand is that they aren’t looking for English majors. I even joined Toastmasters and used this phrase in my first speech: “Job fairs aren’t exactly hard of hearing friendly, but then again they aren’t exactly English major friendly either.”

I can’t even manage turning ordinary social events into networking opportunities. I was at my cousin’s wedding reception yesterday. They had a DJ booming music inside. Most of the people outside were busy supervising children in the bounce house. Before the wedding I made a few business cards to hand out, but with my hearing loss and introversion I found it nearly impossible to talk to anyone who wasn’t already familiar with me and my hearing loss. It was quite frustrating.

Don’t even get me started on the difficulty in determining how much to disclose about my hearing loss to potential employers. I know the laws, and I know that they all claim to be “equal opportunity employers,” but I can’t help but wonder how much of an influence my hearing loss may have on their decision, consciously or unconsciously. My hearing loss (and my introversion) are what the people at the One-stop call “barriers to employment.” That isn’t to say I’m not in the midst of trying to overcome them, but it’s sure been a challenging ride.