#application advice

[desultory-suggestions]

Sometimes you have to commit to being wildly happy against all odds. Even in the face of terrible adversity we can find joy, beauty, and hope that will carry us forward.

[whispertree-coll]

so um. that elevator ri❌️

me regretting the elev❌️

shit um... she regretting my v❌️

she r❌️❌️❌️❌️

OKAY GOD DAMN. TAKE YOUR FUCKING WALLTER I GUESS. FUCK. SEE IF I CARE. UGH.

[bitchesgetriches]

Hypothetically if someone wanted to include their ability to schedule appointments, organize events and transportation, and meal plan and prep for their family on their resume how would they word that

We LOOOOOOVE the "how do I reframe unpaid labor on my resume" question. This is like Bitch bait.

Ok, so this sounds like you are an Organizational Specialist, or a Personal Assistant to a Head of Household, or an Organizational Consultant to a busy professional. List of responsibilities should include event planning, nutritional development, essential transportation, scheduling and booking, and administrative management.

Pick the corporate buzzwords that most fit with the job you're applying for, stare them directly in the eyes, and know that your unpaid labor for your family is VALUABLE WORK EXPERIENCE.

Here's more advice:

How to Frame Volunteering on Your Resume When You’ve Never Had a Job 

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[questionableadvice]

~ Frost’s Laws and By-Laws of American Society: a Condensed but Thorough Treatise on Etiquette and its Usages in America, Containing Plain and Reliable Directions for Deportment in Every Situation in Life, Besides One Hundred Unclassified Laws Applicable to All Occasions, by S. A. Frost, 1869.

[moldspace]

your wood sculptures have me absolutely obsessed and i would love to take a crack at the medium, but i have NO idea where to start. Any tips youd be willing to share out?

i use a scroll saw and poplar wood (a little nicer to work with than pine but still affordable and easy to cut) and honestly i would recommend watching a lot of youtube videos! there are a lot of people out there making videos of their woodwork and explaining how to get different shapes and cuts done. a big thing with the scroll saw is it's hard to make tight turns, so rounded edges are way easier to create than sharp corners. invest in some good sandpaper and some replacement blades because you WILL break them, and be safe with regards to hand placement! i think that's about all the insight i've got, haha.

[performativezippers]

This is a departure from what I usually do, but I'm hiring a bunch of people at my work right now and thought I'd leave you some tips in case you're going to be job searching anytime soon. Disclaimer: nothing applies to everyone, etc, whatever. I work in higher ed as a staff member which is big and bureaucratic and of like a dysfunctional nonprofit, but this will apply to many other jobs/industries as well.

tl;dr: make your resume relevant and clean, customize and personalize your cover letter, use every interview question as the chance to share an experience from a previous job that makes you look good, and remember the answer is never just "no."

Resume Tips

Include past job history for 5 years if you're young or 10 years if you're older. If your only experience isn't directly relevant (ex: you've only worked in fast food and it's a receptionist job), frame the duties in ways that make it seem more relevant, such as "customer service" instead of "500 hot dogs a day."

include dates of employment -- i fyou don't, i assume you have something to hide (you got fired after 3 months)

Each job should have 3-5 bullet points describing the duties. Don't lie, but you can make them sound cool. "Answered the phones" could be "First point of contact for all clients and contractors."

Format it so I can read it. I should easily be able to see position, company, dates, and duties. The page should have a decent amount of white space so my eyeballs don't explode, but it's very obvious if you have nothing to say and are making the margins big to make it look full. Don't do that!

Cover letter Tips

WRITE ONE, oh my god. We asked for resume and cover letter for the application and automatically rejected everyone who didn't write one. I know they suck, but if you're applying for the job, actually apply for the job.

Address it to the right person/job. We are hiring for a case manager, and we got several that said things like "i look forward to joining your company as a project specialist" or whatever. (a) not a company, (b) not a project specialist. I KNOW you use a template that you update for each job you apply to, but you have to actually update it, buddy.

Customize it. "I will bring valuable skills to your company" is nothing. That's meaningless. I ignore that. The cover letter is for you to tell me why you'd be a good fit for my job, not a job.

The format can be: "Dear X, I am writing to enthusiastically apply to the position of [job] at [company]." Paragraph on your related experience. Paragraph on why what you can bring is perfect for what they specifically need (include something you learned from your research on their website for bonus points). A sentence or two on what excites you about this job. "Thank you very much for your time and consideration, Your Name."

Interview Tips

Be on time. Dress in a way that demonstrates effort (like a button down shirt). If you have a natural resting bitch face, try not to for the interview.

If you're doing it in person (not on zoom or phone) bring something to write things down on, like a notepad. This is where you can keep your questions for them, as well as jot down ideas that occur to you as they're asking the question. Don't use your phone, it looks unprofessional.

Write down questions in advance that you have for them. DO NOT ask about pay or benefits or vacation (you can do that later). You can ask things like "what would a typical day in this role look like?" or "how would you describe the company culture?" or whatever. if you've done research, the more specific questions you can ask, the better. "I'd love to hear about the origins of X project, which I was reading about on your website." Nice.

Every question is a chance for you to share a specific story from your work history that paints you in a positive light. If they ask "How would you organize all of our client files?" don't say "in a filing cabinet or hard drive." That's because I know about filing cabinets and hard drives; assume the interview isn't stupid. You can say, "At my previous role, we had a lot of client files and what I did to organize them was ____." I KNOW you don't know how I organize my files, and that's okay because you don't work here yet. What I'm really asking is, "do you understand the ways that not organizing things is bad, and have you had experience with organizing similar stuff in an effective manner? Prove to me I can trust you with my files."

Do not ever speak about yourself or your previous job negatively. If they ask why you're leaving your current job (they shouldn't), be vague and polite. You're "looking for a new challenge," or "my current position has taught me a lot, and while it's really great, my future career goals are much more in line with [something this company or job does]."

If they ask about your experience with something you have zero experience with, like "have you used salesforce" and you're like, bro, no, i worked at wendy's, YOUR ANSWER IS NEVER JUST "NO." You can say something vaguely positive about yourself like "I haven't, but I learn new systems quickly and that's something I'm really looking forward to learning and becoming fluent with in this role" or you can mention something similar, like, "I haven't used salesforce, but my previous role used a different database to manage our client contacts and [some stuff you think is relevant about that and how good at it you are]."

Questions? feel free to ask!

[peachdoxie]

Your resume should include any relevant work experience and skills you have and it's good to include your volunteer work and internships (ideally four of them) as well as your multiple graduate degrees and the certifications you've earned during the process, and also your resume can only be one page in a font that's easy to read. This field is hard to break into because we have a lot of applicants for not a lot of openings and we'll keep them open for years until we find the perfect candidate. A great way to distinguish yourself is by taking any adjacent job you can find even if it means you have to work two or three part time jobs to make ends meet until a new opening is made. It's also good to tailor your resume to the companies and jobs you're applying for so that they know you researched the role and didn't send out mass applications, and oh, I highly, highly recommend that you keep your resume updated and a digital copy on hand so that you can email it to people at a moment's notice because it's good to keep an eye out for opportunities as they come up. Everyone around you has a master's degree and it's basically the new bachelor's and a PhD is the new master's and we really like seeing several years of work experience because there's a lot of stuff you can't learn in a classroom setting. It's a great field and I love working in it and you should pursue it if you're passionate about it!

[dragonboyteeth]

[chaotic-archaeologist]

I'm still a couple years off deciding if I want to go to grad school for real, but every program I've looked into mentions fully funding students. should I still expect debt in that case?

It depends. I wish I had a straightforward answer for you, but there are a lot of variables to take into account, including but not limited to:

Master's or PhD? PhDs tend to be fully funded, while master's often are not. Some programs will allow you to get your master's on the way to your PhD, which is the best deal, although they are often more competitive.

How much is the school actually paying you? They love to say "fully funded" when they mean about $25,000 a year, which is far below the living wage for many areas.

How many years will you be funded for? That "fully funded" is usually conditional, and you should read the fine print. Most programs will fund you for X amount of years, after which you will be expected to fund yourself through grants, fellowships, and outside opportunities.

What will you do for work in the summer? That "fully funded" does not cover the summer break in the academic year (at least in the US). There are often pots of money around your department/university, or you can find a summer job inside/outside of academia.

What is the cost of living in your area? Are you someone who can live with roommates, do you have accessibility needs when it comes to housing, do you have a car that would allow you to live further away from campus (where the rent is often cheaper)?

Do they offer health insurance? How good is it and are you someone who has a lot of medical expenses?

When it's time, check out my guide to applying to graduate school. One of the things I mention there is talking to current graduate students. We are the ones who will be honest with you about the financial reality of the program.

Another thing to check is whether the grad students at the university are unionized. A strong union can fight for better contracts for grad students.

But all of this being said—do not go to grad school if it will put you into debt (unless you are in a field where getting the degree will allow you to pay off loans shortly after graduation). A program that will not pay you enough to keep your head above water is not a program worth going to.

-Reid

[muffinlance]

Just realized that the solution to an outline issue was, as it frequently is: "need more children being eco-terrorists."

[takingasterix]

Should I mention animatics on my college applications?

Sorry for the random post, but I need some hyper-specific advice about applying to college! For context: I'm American, applying to undergraduate programs in the USA. I know I'm very academically strong (35 on the ACT, 4.0+ GPA, NHS, etc. etc.), and I have a decent amount of extracurriculars. Honestly, however, a lot of my free time in high school has been spent doing art and animatics. I've been advised many times that putting my art on a social media page and linking it on my application could help show colleges what I spend my time doing and show that I'm well-rounded. My only problem is that most of my art is fanart. I'm probably going to compile the best stuff into a portfolio and link that in my app, but I'm not sure whether or not to link my Youtube channel.

I have about 1.6k subscribers, which isn't anything in the grand scheme of Youtube, but it is significant enough to show the effort I put in/the impact of the videos.

However.

The problem is that my animatics are ENTIRELY fan content. They're horrifically embarrassing to the point that literally no one in my life knows the channel exists except for a few close friends. Worse, many of them are MXTX-related (which is a well-known queer series), and some of them are explicitly ship-related. I'm well aware that fandom stuff is considered weird by the majority of society, and all of it is a far cry from the professional image I'm trying to show on my applications.

That being said, I feel like I need to show colleges evidence of my art, and what I spend my time doing. I need advice! Should I just link a portfolio of the best, most "normal" art I have? Should I also link my Youtube channel? If I do link my Youtube channel, I would definitely polish my pfp, description, and banner... but should I go back and private the old, really awful animatics? Should I private every video related to ships? How roughly should I comb through it?

I'm well aware that my art is objectively bad, so I'd appreciate if you don't bring that up; I'm not applying to art school or an art degree, I'm just trying to show that aspect of my life. I just really want advice on whether or not I should link the channel, how to do that if so, etc. etc.

Sorry if this is a really stupid question!! It's actually wildly embarrassing to post something like this, but it's such a specific situation that I feel only tumblr would have the answer. I know this probably won't reach many people, but even if just one person has good advice, I'd really really appreciate it. Thank you! <3

[bitchesgetriches]

This isn’t really something that happened to me, but I want to know if it’s even legal. So a classmate was signing up for a summer job (for context we’re both high schoolers) and the job wanted to know how much money she had. like. stocks and shit. Are they allowed to ask that??? The teacher she was asking (it was first bell so that’s why I was there) said to not answer it but I don’t think it’s exactly very legal, is it?

Ah, a simple question with a complex answer!

Strictly speaking, in most states employers CAN LEGALLY ask for both how much your assets are worth (how much money, investments, property you have) AND how much you are paid at a current or former job.

HOWEVER... they cannot legally discriminate against you based on your answer. But according to the federal laws of Equal Employment Opportunity, it's incredibly difficult to prove that you were discriminated against in this way.

ALSO: many states are now making it illegal to ask both those questions, which is great.

The teacher was right: if you can avoid answering the question, JUST DON'T ANSWER. Here's more advice:

What To Do When You're Asked About Your Salary Requirements in a Job Interview 

10 Questions You Should Never Be Asked in a Job Interview 

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[wwpbviiid]

I’ve been relistening to TMAGP keeping in mind the theory that the audio glitches when people lie. I’ve only gotten through the first episode so far but just from that there’s quite a few examples!

Red is where I’ve noticed the glitches. All of them (arguably excluding Lena’s?) are fairly obvious lies, even without noticing the glitches.

(Disclaimer: I have auditory processing issues, so I’ve probably missed some, and I may have noticed some that aren’t there. If anyone notices any mistakes, let me know and I’ll correct them)

[anothermonikan]

Everyone in objectum tags asking whether they count under objectum or not, I have your answers: Objectum, like many other things, is a self-defined label and if you feel your attraction is objectum then you can call it such, you do not need validation (or non-validation) from Internet strangers

[nomsfaultau]

I was struggling majorly on an important scene for weeks. Every time I looked at it I’d get maybe a sentence in and mostly just stare at my laptop. I didn’t know how to write it. So I didn’t! I moved on to other scenes and hobbies, occasionally rotating the scene in my head. And yesterday, the monologue I’d been wrestling with just seemed to pour out when I finally sat down to work on it again.

Sometimes it just isn’t the right time for a scene to be written yet. Don’t beat yourself up about it! Getting frustrated or stressed will only make it harder for your brain. Instead, work on something that makes you happy. Maybe it’s writing something else, but maybe it’s doing something relaxing like drawing or playing a video game or doing a puzzle or whatever brings you joy. Writing requires so much thinking, and your brain needs time to do that. It has to build up the scene in order to flood out, instead of continually pressuring it for a trickle of words.

Good luck out there!

[just-gay-thoughts]

Piece of adult advice! If you're in a weird in between stage going from teen to adult one good thing to do when you feel ready is to try and get a credit card if you're able. Even if youre not spending a ton, you can build some good credit and make it easier when you start to become a full adult.