Tundras live: Dumb Dad Jokes, Incorrect Opinions, Relationship Advice, and Parking Etiquette

. Was surfing marketplace just this morning and clicked on a few manual daily drivers. I've always wanted an R32 Golf or a Focus RS.

 

I’ll lighten it up

time to surf!!

but, this thing can’t pass a gas pump!

1/2 a tank is 54 gallons

 

Dump all the ballast and just waterski.

 

Yeah buddy!! That's a good way to spend a Friday!

I missed surfing this year with the injury. The boat didn't even come out of storage.

 

Look here

you are lucky to get me upright surfing

I’ll leave the ski’s to the flat-bellies

 

Wrong. Surfing is where its at.

 

yup

low and slow

 

How to say you're a communist without saying it.

2017 Subaru WRX Limited with a manual. Go buy one. I promise you'll love your daily drive so much more.

 

Yuhp, studded Nokians in the winter and...

 

The wether up here the last few days has felt like late fall. Cool days, overnights in the mid 30's. And lots of moisture. Much needed for sure.

 

You wrong so often, you ain't neva gonna be right.

 

Incoming wall of text:

Every job market is unique depending on geography and career field. So my experience is really based on where I live, what I do, how much of a commute I am willing to take on etc...

I'm almost 100% sure I could have landed a job months ago if I was willing to commute 50-70ish miles each way into San Francisco and surrounding areas. I take a lot of meds that cause side effects like dizziness that just makes commuting on the freeway first thing in the morning a non-starter for me. I also don't want to be a manager or supervisor anymore. I hate to say this but the kids coming out of college have their head up their asses, have zero critical thinking, aren't willing to earn anything and aren't the sort of people I want to lead.

Some observations:

Tariffs are causing firms to scale back on initiatives and headcount. I think tariffs have brought a ton of uncertainty into the business world and really cooled the job market.

Remote jobs were a complete waste of time. Hop onto Indeed and you will see non-stop pages of remote job listings. 97% of them will ghost you and never get back to you. The decent ones will eventually send you a message saying you weren't selected to move forward. Most will just never get back to you. If a candidate took the time to apply for a job with you, out of professional courtesy they deserve a canned "thanks but no thanks email". Out of months of remote job applications, I had 1 recruiter level interview who later ghosted me.

Your resume has turned into an Instragram account where if you don't include certain buzzwords, the AI program scanning it will reject it and it will never get looked at. I personally think this is terrible. It almost feels like you need a paragraph on the bottom with a bunch of #phrases.

You are competing with a ton of unemployed/underemployed people. You used to have to put a job listing out there for a couple of weeks to a month to get a good number of candidates before you could perform application reviews. Now you will get 50-100 candidates applying in 3 days.

Recruiting firms were pretty much useless. They always had a great sales pitch but never delivered. I was working with 4 different recruiting firms in my area and over 5 months they got me a total of 1 interview, with a place I didn't really want to work at.

The pay scale for many of these jobs don't pencil out. I decided early on that I wasn't willing to accept a job for the sake of having a job to only have to keep applying for jobs after getting hired because the pay wasn't in line with the duties, experience and education being required.

The easiest way to find a pay range for your area is to go to your biggest local city or county HR page and find your most applicable job title there and see what the pay range is. They are required to post that information to the public. Expect that to be a guide for the lowest level of pay you should be willing to accept. Ex if an accountant makes $80k, then don't accept a job paying $75k in private industry. Chances are you aren't getting a pension and benefits typically aren't as good as gov't jobs.

All the above being said, consider the following:

Pace yourself. Now that you know the majority of employers will act like a bunch of chucklefucks and not give you the time of day, set time every day to scan the job listings. Apply to the jobs that are interesting to you and add them to an excel spreadsheet to track. Have a separate column for the employer, job title, pay range, date applied and result. It's ok to go for a few days without applying for jobs if nothing currently out there interests you.

Prioritize local employers over remote. The pool of applicants will be smaller for local jobs compared to one that is recruiting nationally.

Leverage professional connections. If you have friends in the industry, reach out and let them know you are in the market. Send them your resume. Them handing your resume to HR with the comment, this is a solid guy I personally vouch for, goes a long way.

Use recruiters. They may not get you an interview but they have looked at a crap ton of resumes and can give you feedback on yours.

Know yourself. Be honest with yourself, what you want out of a job, the responsibilities and pay. These are your principles, don't compromise on them.

Example, I have built dashboards in Tableau and PowerBI. It's not on my resume and I don't apply for jobs that list experience asking for that. The reason? I don't want to spend all day building dashboards in Tableau and PowerBI. Yes, I understand it is a valuable skill currently in demand but I will eventually hate coming into work if I have to spend the majority of my day doing that, fiddle farting around with data warehouses, processing cubes, validating data, troubleshooting, etc...I'm tech savvy but not your IT guy.

Watch out for scammers. Some of these job listings are completely fake and are designed to steal your identity and banking info. I knew this from my time in banking as we had customers that were straight up scammed for their info. I personally had two separate occasions where they contacted me this go around.

Don't let the constant rejection demoralize you. Every employer that says no or ghosts you is just something you take note of and move on from. Mark it down in your spreadsheet and don't apply there ever again. If they treat you like dogshit during recruitment, how will they treat you down the line?

Take a look at who is recruiting, how often and what positions. Over 2-3 months you will see jobs taken down because they were filled and then posted again. Chances are they hired someone who came on board, saw what a cluster the place was and left. Mark these employers down on your spreadsheet knowing if you accept a job with them, it may just be temporary.

Life is a journey. You will have good days and not so good days. Remember no matter how bad something is, it is not forever and the same is true for how good something is. Take it all in, learn from it, grow and be a stronger person for it.

Good luck to everyone out there. It's rough but you will get through it with time. I'm pulling for all of you guys.

 

Fantastic insight and advice.
I hope I never have to go looking again, but if I do, I know whose brain to pick.

CONGRATS!!!!

 

With the cooler weather and rain, Sal is out digging holes.



He’s in the second pic in a different place, just his head is showing, but you have to look for him.

 

Skiing is easy. At least you're riding forwards instead of sideways.

 

I bet he listens to Ride the Lightning on his drive home with the car too.

 

No no no. Fuel. Definitely Fuel.

 

This

 

I really like this write up and advice.

It definitely confirms how hard it would be to just get a side gig, and that the speedo gardening cams are probably my best option.

 

I'm pretty sure we have worked at the same State Agency in AZ. Obviously not at the same time. You don't need to share it publicly, but it was something I realized a few weeks back and found hilarious because it's a small world.

 

There's no such thing as rush hour anywhere within 100 miles of you...

 

Dude, it's only because of his age. Unless you have shot hips and a rolodex of prescriptions, a manual is totally fine.

 

I am about to go into month three of the job search... Took a break from applying today to hang this sample up... I like it...

ignore the mess... I have a lot of little projects I am working on..

 

Baby is down for the count, we just ate some red snapper tacos and I think I am going to go chop some wood and then work on my boat since its only 90 today... Just need the wife off work so I can go out into the yard.... fun fun... hope yall are having a great day!