No Snoggy, you are *not* whiny and absolutely not a bitch <3 You have every right to be frustrated and upset, and yes, I do think sometimes applications are difficult to sort proverbial wheat from the chaff. You can do this. You are brilliant. *HUGS*Ugh. So. I need to suck it up and do this thing. That is what you are saying. I actually have 2 of these really annoyingly structured/process applications. I mostly just feel like all of this is a fat waste of time. (and a depressing fat waste of time on top of it all) I am not learning WHY I’m not getting call backs, which increases the level of powerlessness. You know?
Librarian job-hunt problems. *hugs* There’s not much like the job hunt to make you feel like a useless piece of crap. IT’S NOT YOU, SNOG. And 99.9% of these people never give you a reply or a callback, let alone any kind of useful feedback. (I have never in my life gotten useful feedback on why an employer decided not to take me, and only once have I gotten a callback to notify me that I was not the choice for the position.)
There’s every chance that you are regularly coming up in their top five choices but that they’re narrowing it down to the top three. And every chance that the reasons they’re not deciding you’re in that top three are idiosyncratic, maybe political, possibly even bullshit head-on-backward reasons like “But we are secretly prioritizing librarians who can also code in Java” or—deargodwhy—they’re letting HR filter apps by ancient standards and keywords that have no bearing on what a really good librarian can and should bring to the table today.
But I know, all that means you’re still left sitting in a lightless pit of no information, and I know it’s SUCH A FIGHT to keep your spirits up and keep telling yourself that it’s not that there’s anything wrong with YOU. (Because there isn’t, BTW.)
And you know, I bet you ARE regularly coming up in their top five. So you just hang in there, Snoggy, because you only need that one time when you come up #1! Keep working to stay positive, and don’t feel guilty that you take these breaks when you need them, and don’t blame yourself when you get to feeling ground down by a process that is pretty much designed to grind you down, and DO come to us when you need an ego boost or comfort, and in the end you will land an AWESOME job that is just the right fit for you.
In closely related news: folks, snogandagrope is a librarian. I have like 15 kajillion librarians who I hang with here on Tumblr, so 1: If you would like to add to your crew of awesome fandom librarian peeps, do follow Snog, who is adorable and smart and entertaining and kind as all hell. And 2: if you know of any open librarian positions—especially in Louisiana or other parts with minimal cold and snow—please do drop her a line!
She’s got school media chops, so while she can do most librarian-type things, stuff in instructional technology/educational media/digital libraries kinds of veins are particularly tasty.
