The problem with being unemployed is that people just don’t understand why that is. Unless you smell like you just rolled around in a garden somewhere and then fought a pack of dogs, people just think that everyone should be able to get a job. I’ve been unemployed for 3 months now and people often look at me like I’m just not trying.

The unfortunate news is that while seek.com.au is one of my favourite job hunting sites, it’s also my least favourite. It loves to dangle the prospect of finding the perfect job with the perfect hours when you search for “all jobs, casual, my location”. However, when you click search, you find odd things that you aren’t qualified for or just wouldn’t attempt.

For example;

As much as wanting to be the person who says “I5 – You sunk my battleship!” over and over at the local diggers association, I just don’t feel it’s my calling. Sure, there’s nothing horrible about doing the bingo announcements, however, there IS something damn sure horrible about being in Logan while you do it.

Or perhaps this outstanding future career;

Firstly, I’m just not even sure what this job is. I hear that being a tree surgeon is quite demanding and takes years of hard work but something inside me thinks that eventually some hippies must hug so hard they start learning about trees.

What gets me most about applying for jobs is the things I have to say about myself. I find it difficult to talk myself up sometimes simply because no one likes to sound arrogant or boastful. There is also an extent to which you have to just put the buzz words in that every employer wants to hear;

As I’ve previously listed, I would fail dismally at meeting most of those criteria, such as “great work ethic” or “self-motivated”. But geeze, they don’t have to know that! The reason I’m looking for a job is so that I can somewhat become those things! I’m not even sure what “passionate about issues” really qualifies as. What kind of issues? I’m passionate about finishing the cryptic crossword currently sitting beside my toilet right now and hell, that’s been a huge issue in my household recently.

Sometimes I get frustrated with the job hunt. I’ve applied for over 40 jobs and been on 1 interview. That interview turned out to be listing the wrong details on seek.com.au anyway, they were looking for full time but said casual. It’s heartbreaking, soul crushing, buzz wordy work that takes a long time with very few results. Sometimes looking on seek.com.au does the opposite of providing opportunities – it provides a place where a small part of me thinks “perhaps I am unemployable.”

Ultimately though, it’s a good start. Seek.com.au wasn’t horrible advice, it was merely frustrating advice. Perhaps the fact that someone offered me the advice goes to show that not everyone thinks I should give up yet. Being unemployed definitely takes a lot more work, perseverance and resilience than you think.

I am a 19 year old Business Management student, single, living with my parents and unemployed. I have a decent number of friends, however, I don’t not have a best friend or a regular group. I am extremely lazy, slightly chubby and lack a lot of energy. I have proven to myself in high school that I can be intelligent, however, this has declined ever since I began university. I am disorganised, messy and sometimes scared to try new things.

So….wanna add me on facebook yet?

As someone with not a lot going on in their life, I hear advice all the time. I hear it when I don’t want to hear it and I hear it when I ask. Sometimes I even have dreams in which people or things give me advice. There is extremely popular advice that you hear all the time like the thousands of ways to lose weight or how to become more organised. There is advice that questions the very root of your beliefs like trying to be “spiritual”, refocusing your priorities or “finding God”. Sometimes people’s advice is to just stop trying – things will improve on their own.

As a 19 year old, I must admit, I’ve heard them all. This is when you get the most advice – when people talk to you because you’re yet to have all their life experience (even people younger than me feel this way). It could be argued that your teenage years is when you do a lot of learning and face a lot of problems. It’s where you have to make large choices about your direction in life and you have to make them quickly. It’s times like these where everyone has more than 2 cents to throw into the picture.

I never know which advice to follow, whether its good enough or whether I should just stop listening. When I told my friend that I was overwhelmed with sheer amount of advice in my life I received a piece of advice in return – “Why don’t you try writing about it?”

Is any advice worthwhile? I’ll have to wait and see.