Wow...I really need to get on and write more often! I can't believe it's been another 10 months since I posted anything. It's not that I don't have anything to say....people who know me know I always have something to say! It's more like I just didn't have time to say it. Well....I have a moment and of course, I have something to say!

If you have never been unemployed or helped someone who has you will most likely not be familiar with the job hunting sites. Lucky you! 2011 was not the best year for us losing our dog Mocha and Lucy not handling it well...(we finally had to start crating her when we leave), but to top it off the second week of November Jon lost his job. Thanks to a "downturn in customer demand" translation...the government cut defense spending and like the Hummer Plant his company was hit hard and some one had to go! I of course, did not handle this news well. The last time he lost his job was back in 1983...another recession in progress and his company closed. It took 2 months for him to get another job, and even then you had to know someone to even get an application turned in. This time it's not that easy! Employers don't pay attention to their employees any longer. They don't care that a good employee with an impeccable work ethic may know of someone who can help their company as well. The only thing that employers care about is the bottom line.....!! No matter how hard you work, how much time you give them (and if you are salary you know it's much more than 40 hours) or how much you go out of your way to make things work the way they want it to (impossible though it may be) if you make too much money or they listen to the wrong people, the best person for the job may be the one who goes! Yes...I am a bit biased...but I am also married to a person with an impeccable work ethic who will also go out his way to make things work the way his employer wants it to. He has succeeded in pretty much every task ever given him by his employers. His biggest downfall? He doesn't have a piece of paper that says he knows what he is doing. Experience apparently doesn't count for much without a piece of paper that has a degree listed on it....no matter how successful you are! Someone once said to me that a degree doesn't say that the person knows how to do the job...it says they can be taught!! Well....I say the person with a successful record of 20+ years doesn't have to be taught....at least not how to do the job.

Anyway....that is not where I had planned to go at all! My beef this time is with the job search sites. You know...those third party sites that employers seem to be using these days. They screen the applicants and the pass along the resumés to the companies that listed their job openings with them. However, the sites that are suppose to be helping people seem to be more of a pain in the butt!!! They send and resend and resend again the same old job openings day after day week after week....including the ones you have already applied to....or to top it off they send you job postings that have already been filled by the time they even send it to you!! They waste your time by linking you to places you don't want to go. They even get you stuck on questions that are irrelevant, but you have to answer in order to go any further in the application process. One such site asked about furthering his education. Jon clicked on it thinking that he had to and then realized that he didn't have to do that when they said clicking on this will not hinder your application...so he clicked off of it....TOO LATE! even though he never hit send on this option he got a call from them...they seemed impressed with his resumé, but still tried to push the education stuff. The result??? We never heard from the company...not necessarily their fault....however, it does leave one wondering if they company ever got his resumé after all when he turned down the education part of things...(we need a job..people) that's why we applied to this posting!! However, what we did get was one school after another calling us.....at all hours of the day...and evenings including weekends!!! I didn't think we were ever going to stop getting calls from these schools! This went on for weeks...not sure if we still get them...since we have caller ID and most of them just hang up now instead of waiting for the machine and now that it's political season I suspect that we will not stop getting calls from all these strange numbers till after November!

So anyway...Jon gets on his e-mail regularly and of course, as I said....new postings in the subject line..only to find they are the original jobs listed back 2 1/2 months ago! Oh there was the time they were so gracious to send him a birthday greeting! Yep.....thanks for thinking of him...how about a legitimate job posting!!?? There was even the one site that linked us to a job application process that had to be bogus! Jon began the process of filling out the application on line only to put in the area code for our phone number and it said it was invalid. So...he tried again...and again "invalid." Hmm...I told Jon to put in the former area code and it took it. We haven't had that area code for at least 10 years probably longer! Wouldn't you think that a valid site would know that the area code was indeed valid? Especially after 10 years or more?? Not a site I would want to list my job postings with and certainly not one I would trust to have my personal information!

What happened to companies accepting and screening their own applications??? What happened top listing the jobs in the newspaper and letting people come to the company itself and either filling out the application or dropping off the resumé? Oh wait....they have downsized to the point that they don't have the manpower to read all the applications and resumés themselves. They would rather pay for a service company to do the screening for them....all the while they are making a buck on the side as well by linking to all these other obscure sites and taking applicants to who knows where? Is this how they screen? They send you into cyber space and if you manage to get back to them without getting stuck in cyber world or have your computer lock up entirely...you get your resumé successfully sent to the company...and even then I would be skeptical. I am sure they get kick backs from schools, insurance companies etc. In fact, one site actually listed a job for the Post Office.....a janitorial job, but it required you to still take the Post Office exam. Of course, you had to pay $39 for the study guide and they even had a button to click for you to purchase said guide....How Convenient! I have to say I wouldn't want to purchase anything from these sites and I wonder how many companies trying to save money by outsourcing the service of screening applicants are actually being taken to the cleaners by them!?!

I am not saying that all of these sites are crooked....but I have my suspicions that a good number of them are!! I mean how do we know that they didn't just copy the info from another site, list the job just to sell you something or get your personal info?? I think if companies want to get the most for their money and know they are getting what they pay for...they need to check out all the sites, use only one or two sites and list those sites under a heading on their own websites. It would save the person looking for a job a bunch of headaches not to mention time...and would most likely save the company a lot of money!

Well....as you can tell it's a very frustrating and exasperating experience. I wish I could say those days are done and Jon is now employed again...but that's not the case! If you have never experienced this...again...lucky you. It's unnerving to know that you have a steady paycheck one day and the next it's gone....and along with it, all financial stability not to mention insurance! In this economy it's not likely that Jon will even come close to the wage he was getting at least not from where we can see! However......our God is bigger than all of this....He can take an impossible situation (and believe me we have one) and fix it as quickly as it was all taken away!

Someone I admire and respect has a phrase he always uses and it fits for this situation for sure. "God is seldom early and never late!" I keep holding onto that as we continue on this scary journey through unemployment land! I can't say that I am always confident in it.....in fact, if I let myself see the reality of it all I am scared to pieces (so to speak). But then there are times when I am sure that God has a plan in all of this and I almost get excited to see where it will lead. I can't say that I am elated about having to go through this....not at all. And the days of getting excited about him applying some where or submitting his resumé in hopes that they will call are diminished. I want to believe they will call and I wish they would call, but the skeptic ( or realist as I like to refer to it) in me says don't get your hopes up.....you know there's not much chance they will call. I want to believe that God will fix this soon.....but sometimes I feel like soon isn't soon enough! Yet....God is bigger than all of this and impossible situations are His specialty! After all He can turn water....plain old water into the most delicious wine!! He took something with no flavor and made it the best tasting part of the celebration!! If He can do that....He can most certainly pull victory out of the jaws of defeat! After all "God is seldom early and NEVER Late!"