The oldest trick in the book

WARNING: dear readers, this post might be a bit exaggerated. I did that on purpose on, it's a powerful device of expression. Please notice I'm not trying to present you the universal truth. You are clever enough to define your own truth and reality. :)

Hunting a job can be a pain in the neck, right? That's what most of our conversations are about at the moment. We have come to notice, some years ago, actually, that nothing, absolutely nothing, can guarantee a good job in today's quickly changing world. Nothing can guarantee any kind of job. Jack of all trades of the business world, i.e. people like myself are just creating unemployment statistics and figures. Institutions of higher education keep producing over educated bachelor's, master's doctor's degree holders who lack any kind of practical and employable skills. For any job opening there are 200 applicants and 200 jobs have been relocated to cheaper countries. Try to stand out from the crowd. You might as well try to win the lottery.

Speaking about winning the lottery. If I ever win it, I'll spend my life in a place like this

We have decided to try different methods of finding a job here in Australia. Back in Europe we always went through time and nerve consuming recruitment process for every job we landed. We were often thinking how other people seemed to easily find interesting and rewarding jobs and every time the answer was the good old nepotism. It's the ugly truth that the ones with right kind of relations and network get the most interesting job offers. I suppose that's how  most companies find their employees. The ones without any useful personal contacts will struggle to get even the most simple jobs and will be competing for the positions that couldn't, for some unknown reason, be filled by someone's godmother's sister's neighbor.

So we set our minds on trying to find a job by using the oldest trick in the book, networking. I have never been any goo at it, so no wonder I feel like I never hear of interesting opportunities. Speaking to strangers just terrifies me and I get all tongue tied. Makes me feel anxious and I can't figure out how to advertise myself as the best woman for the job when I don't believe in it myself. I'm ordinary. Girls like me are 13 in a dozen.

Airlie Beach 

So we have started to advertise our unemployment. It's a challenge we decided to accept little by little. First we visited every second Airlie Beach hotel, asking if they have need for workers and gave them our CVs. It's the low season at the moment, so no luck there but we got to practice. After all it wasn't that bad, speaking to people I don't know. We went deeper in to the world of contacts and dumped Mr Google as the source of information. Now we ask the local people if we need to find out something.

First we went to the local market on Saturday. We bought zucchinis and capsicums from a toothless, slightly scary man and told him we are unemployed backpackers looking for a farm job. He directed us to a certain farmer who's always looking for volunteers to help him at his place located close to Airlie Beach The man himself happened to be at the market and we got to speak to him. We are going to his place on Thursday, It's not a paid job but we won't need to pay for accommodation and food. This being the first sign that we are doing the right thing, going out and telling the willing and even the unwilling audience that we need to find a job. Well, a little luck was also involved in our getting this volunteer thing. You just need to be in the right place at the right time.

Anna is interested in working on a oyster ship. When we saw a stall selling oysters she went to ask where they get their oysters from. We learned that there are no oysters here in the north, so it's no use trying to google jobs in the oyster industry. Googling the info would have probably taken us more time than asking the oyster man.

New marina, new boats

Then we started chatting with our cleaner ladies. We heard that swimming in the ocean is safe this time of the year as there are no jellyfish. They also told us about an amazing beach nearby. Even my anti social, avoiding-all-human-contacts self has noticed that it's beneficial to step out o the comfort zone and just try to make new acquaintances. For the naturally social and talkative the achievements described above are probably things they do every day but believe me, for me it's like walking in the moon. And the entire Airlie Beach knows we are looking for a job. Someone's gotta need us at some point.