Can the job search be any more defunct? These websites don’t work the way that a website is supposed to work, and it might be because Google is broken? Or other reasons? Let me just share with you yesterday’s puzzling job search experience. The job sites are broken, I tell you.
Glassdoor has shown up in my recent job searches. I thought “Oh, what is that, exactly?” so I Googled and I got an answer. Apparently you can do a job search on there, and you can also get straight info on how a company treats their employees. Sounds pretty good.
So I sign up and do a few different job searches. My main search always has to do with being a copywriter and content manager, because that’s where I’m trained and hold all my experience. But I’m throwing out other searches for shts and giggles, I mean if worse came to worse maybe I could take a customer service job (no shade if that’s your jam; it’s just that I only have like seven years of customer service type experience as opposed to 20 working in copywriting.)
Or as I mentioned in this blog on other occasions, I have been applying for grocery jobs for the fck of it. Again: all love if that’s what you do, but I’m having to dig up archaic remnants of my work experience. I haven’t cashiered since I was 22.
I mean, maybe copywriter will be a dead profession soon, and I should find other options. I really don’t know.
So I go on Glassdoor, and I start with my old reliable hunt for copywriting and content manager jobs. I add “remote” to the search because I really just want to be doing my stuff from home. Something from Lahaska, PA comes up.
The title of the job listing says “social media manager.” The logo associated with the listing is the McDonald’s logo. The company that supposedly posted this job is Legacy Fudge, LLC.
What?
So I click on the company details, and now I’m reading something else about a branding company that starts with letters that I don’t remember right now. They’re talking about how they do branding for some local businesses in Lahaska, okay. It seems like a small outfit. Maybe they need a little bit of help which would work for me.
So I click into their website, find a form and apply directly from there. Because like I said. I don’t know what is up with the mismatch between the McDonald’s logo, the name Legacy Fudge, the job description and the name of the branding company that’s supposedly behind all this. It doesn’t make sense to me. Is the job search broken? What in the actual f?
So now I get an email saying “thanks for applying,” and I think I got the other email that says “let us help you apply” which doesn’t make any sense at all because why do these job sites tell you that they’re going to help you finish applying when you already applied? Why, like I said, is everything just a ridiculous shit show online, and people wonder why they’re not getting matched up to actual jobs where you can be paid to do some useful work?
So this morning I got another poke on email reminding me about the job which brings me back to the confusing listing. So I Google “Legacy Fudge McDonald’s,” thinking maybe that’s their fudge company, what the hell do I know. But then instead of getting a straight answer, a bunch of supposedly helpful alternate search options show up on Google, telling me that I might like to know about how McDonald’s discontinued their fudge sundaes, about how they changed their fudge to a crappier, more watery version, and all of these searches that have literally nothing to do with what I want to know, because that’s how the internet works now and because search engines are broken. Thank you, Google. xo
So, my next guess would be not to use Glassdoor anymore. But I guess if I want an actual paid role at McDonald’s doing what I was meant to do which is marketing, I’m going to have to go to their Careers page on their website, meaning the official McDonald’s corporate website.
I actually at one point had managed to get in touch with a lady who worked in PR for McDonald’s. She was super nice. It was actually great to connect with a human. But this has nothing to do with my job search, this was because at one point I was trying to alert McDonald’s corporate to an exceptional employee that we had in our area who mans the drive-thru in our town.
Between the very nice woman who worked in PR and myself, this local McD’s dude was almost featured in an article/video that McDonald’s was going to do. It was very exciting, even the local FB group was getting stoked for my boy getting some well deserved recognition.
But then McD’s decided to shout out some other outstanding employee in some other city, which happens. I think our guy got a gift basket and some kind of discount or something. So my point in saying that, which I know deviates from the main topic, is that you can actually reach people at the companies you want to work for, if you search for contacts on their corporate site… but it takes some extra effort to break through. But back to the main rant:
These job sites are beyond broken, like your ex boyfriend! Like those cheap sandals from Walmart.
Responding to the job posting in the way that they suggest you do it, is apparently not enough.
So since I’ve been talking about pitching companies for paid work. I really think that going back to what I know based on this response I had gotten from McDonald’s PR, is that you have to go in the side door. You have to hunt down the people that you want to work for, and write to them in a very customized way.
And I don’t know why, but pitching people feels so exhausting to me. But I’m going to try it anyway. Will you? I mean, what else is working? Apparently, nothing.
And I have a list of contacts in creative, communication, and marketing, that I created from major companies.
Sign up for Dina’s List and I’ll send you the pitch list.
If you sign up for my emails, you’ll get that list. And you won’t get much more, because this is not one of my email marketing sites. This is literally me trying to connect with other freelancers or other people seeking jobs who are as confused and frustrated as I have been.
People in creative are literally lost in their job search, and experiences like this are just sucking all the time and energy away from us that we never had in the first place for this type of struggle.
So yeah. Sign up for my list here, and band together with me as a creative or tech oriented worker determined to secure paid work.
I’ll send you the name of all those people at big companies that I personally looked up, along with their email addresses or LinkedIn pages.
I know that pitching is the answer. For some reason it’s just hard to get there. Keep hanging with me for more daily frustration.
Love,
Dina the Copywriter and Web Designer