The 5 Stages Of Getting A Job

Imagine you’re in a sweet shop. Laid out in front of you are all your favourite sweets. Skittles, Zappers, Nerds, they’re all just lying there on a table right in front of you waiting for you to pick them up. Never has the prospect of cavities been more enticing or oddly erotic! Imagine however as you reach out to grab a bag of skittles some dickhead comes out of nowhere, slaps the bag out of your hand, says you can’t eat them unless if you’ve 2-3 years’ experience of eating them before and then spits on you. Now imagine this happens every time you pick up one of the sweets. This is essentially what job hunting is like for anyone under the age of thirty and it’s probably the most soul-destroying thing you’ll ever have to do. Going through the process of Job Hunting is like going through the process of grieving. There are stages you have to go through before you can get out the other end of it a better and often still unemployed person.

Over-Confidence

Everything starts off so well. You go onto jobs.ie or whichever site you use for job hunting and see hundreds of them going! You start to wonder if maybe this recession that everyone is going on about is just something invented by your parents to scare you away from their wallets. You start opening tabs left and right of the jobs you know you’re a shoe in for and you start thinking about all the stuff you’ll do and buy with your minimum wage. “How much is a pimp coat?” you ask yourself. “Could I pull off a Monocle?” you say, knowing full well you look awesome in a monocle.

Damn I look good.

Depression

Just leave me to die!

Your confidence soon takes a hit thought as you read through the first job post you opened in a new tab and it says 2 years’ experience required. No problem you think and move onto the next tab. It says the same thing. So does the next one and the next one and the next one. All of a sudden the minor inconvenience you thought it was becomes a full blown epidemic and you start panicking! You curl yourself into a ball and weep at the fact you spent your youth getting an education and having fun rather than start working at the age of two to get the experience needed. This deep dark pit of despair you’ve fallen into can last from anywhere between a few to several minutes before you move onto…

Pain

While curled up in the foetus position you soon begin to think of all the things you won’t be able to do or buy now that you’re terminally unemployable and will never have money. The dreams you have of the Pimp coat vanish and the monocle you’ve always wanted smashes into a million pieces. How will you be able to go to Electric Picnic this year? You can’t hop the fence due all that extra summer weight you put on while doing nothing but eating. All your plans are now ruined and the best summer of your life now looks like a pretty shitty few days of sunny showers. But those tears that were streaming down your face and all the pain you were feeling soon dries up as you realize who caused you all this pain and you prepare yourself for…

Anger

“Fuck those guys” you scream at your computer monitor. You didn’t even want their shitting job taking orders in some two star restaurant where everyone spits on the food and no one washes their hands. When you’re famous for being the inventor of edible cheese clothes or for being the first person to take a poo on the moon (You haven’t decided yet) then you can buy the place and fire everyone for rejecting you! Never again will they underestimate your abilities as a waiter or porter. With all of that out of your system your rage slowly dies away though and gives way to the final stage of Job hunting…

Acceptance

Kinda...

After spending the entire day going through the stages you finally just accept the fact that every job wants experience or a car or some other request and just decide to apply anyway! But not without first bending the truth a little on your CV. That one week you spent at supervalue for work experience back in fourth year turns into a year of being a waiter at some fancy restaurant that you googled. Sure everyone does it you tell yourself as you email your CV to every job vacancy in the county of Dublin. This is your revenge for them causing you to go through more emotions in One day than that time you watched Bambi straight after The Lion King. You then repeat these stages until one day you’re finally given a chance and the hope of one day owning a pimp coat looks ever more realistic.

Soon my pretty... Soon...