How Did You Get Your Job?

Details only

I love demystifying adulthood. When I was a teen and in my 20s, I had no idea how people actually found themselves in a place to buy houses, or know they should get married, or, frankly, GOT JOBS. Like I knew that you applied — I had been hired at jobs before, just not BIG JOBS. I remember wildly applying for jobs out of college and wondering: how does anyone get these (I certainly got none of them). In fact, a huge part of the reason I went to grad school was because the path to a J-O-B was legible.

Earlier this year, we did a sprawling thread on How Did You Buy Your Home?, which was by turns illuminating and infuriating (the answer, in most cases, was either family money or making an above-average salary in a place with below-average housing costs). Reading that thread is like riding a ferris wheel of emotions. But it did make me feel like I understood how things (currently) work better.

Now I want to attempt something equally complicated, with equal potential for that emotional ferris wheel, and talk about How You Got Your Job. We already did a thread on all the jobs you have (so enjoyable) so this is our opportunity to talk about not just what we did, but how we started doing it.

Depending on where you are in your work life, this might be a long or short story; you can talk about your current job or a past job, whatever you think is most interesting.

Some details to consider including:

• WHAT THE JOB IS. Is it full-time, part-time, contract work, freelance? You don’t have to, like, leave your business card, but describe the work you do.

• Did you apply? How rigorous was the application process? In hindsight, what were they looking for — and did you have it, or did you fake it?

• If you work at an organization, did you know anyone there ahead of time? How did you leverage that connection?

• How did your education level / degrees fit into the process? Did the place you went to school matter?

• Was there any part of yourself that you felt you needed to camouflage (say, as a parent of two small kids)?

• How much felt like “luck?”

• If it felt like “luck,” what parts of that luck were probably also related to parts of your identity and the performance of it? (Race, gender, sexuality, nationality)

• If you were hired by a company in a place where you don’t have citizenship, how did you make that happen?

• Think about all the words that companies/managers use when talking about a hire: “a good fit,” a “good bet,” “took a chance on you.” What did those words actually mean in your case?

• If you’re a freelancer, how did you get to the place where you felt comfortable going out on your own — aka, how did you hire yourself?

I’m sure there are more factors I’m not thinking of here, and I hope you include them, too. As I said with the house thread, if this feels slightly out of your comfort zone, think about why — and consider pushing yourself to do the uncomfortable thing. I’ll share my story in the comments, and look forward to reading yours as well.

I’m treating the comments as a private, subscriber-only space; I hope we can ask each other questions and answer them in good faith, with an understanding of our mutual goal of transparency and de-mystification. I’ll be monitoring responses closely.