Raritan Valley Community College: The Lion's Den

Whilst trying every conceivable effort to find employment, I have enrolled in a couple of courses at the nearby Branchburg, N.J.-based institute of higher education serving Somerset and Hunterdon Counties. Enter good old Raritan Valley Community College and all the nicknames we had for it in high school (i.e. Harvard on the Hill, UCLA - Upper Clinton Lower Annandale, and I'm not sure, but somebody must have thought of this one before I did: BC - Branchburg College). Raritan Valley might have been the butt of many of our jokes, but it has a very strong and respected academic program among community colleges and a well-experienced faculty to boot. Combine that with the inexpensive tuition and the great transfer potential to a four-year college and you got the educational route I should have followed in retrospect (although you couldn't tell me that when I was 18).

The campus of RVCC is sprawled out over several acres on the hills which lie between US Hwy 22 and I-78 (at Exit 26). It has every freedom which seemed like a faraway fantasy of academia during the years I was cooped up in elementary/middle/high school, waiting for the hall pass to return so I could dart to the bathroom (without running of course, and given the fact that I had my student ID displayed from a lanyard wrapped around my neck like a leash). It's got multiple buildings that feature: classrooms and labs, a theater that doubles as a planetarium, a mutli-story library (get it? no??), computer labs, athletic fields, a sizable courtyard, a cafeteria, an athletic building consisting of a gym and a pool, and vending machines at every turn--the epitomic portrayal of a cinematic high school set in southern California during the early-'90s.

I took my only other class at RV during the summer of 2006, between my sophomore and junior years at my four-year university. I had previously withdrawn from Quinnipiac's algebra classes twice because the professors at the math department saw you as more of a number than as a student (showing your work didn't matter, if you screwed up any part of the test question, it was wrong--no partial credit, case closed). I was wasting my time taking a math course at QU, so I made up the credits at Raritan, where my teacher would stay after class as late as she could to answer any questions and also to make sure we understood the material (aka, she cared about the students' progress and growth in the subject).


Well hop in the DeLorean, set the flux capacitor, and floor it to 88--flash forward four years to 2010. At age 25, I'm feeling an awful lot like Billy Madison rolling up for class amongst the many fresh-faced undergraduate teenagers. During this semester, I will be taking a free one-session "E-Commerce for Small Business" seminar later on in October--can't hurt if it's free! Right now, however, I am exploring the realm of computer programming by taking a class in database management software called "Introduction to Oracle: SQL and PL/SQL."

Job Applications from Hell: Can Companies Please Cut the Paperwork & Toss Taleo Where it Belongs in the Trash?

I am not adverse to a long, hard day's work, but some job applications are absolutely ridiculous!

Upon applying to many jobs over the last few years, I have noticed something: Corporate America and the bureaucratic nightmare that is the U.S. Government have seemingly become one-in-the-same with the amount of paperwork they obligate the masses to fill out. I recently sent my resume, along with a customized and carefully-tailored cover letter to express my interest in a position that I wanted.

"We're good, right? You'll thoroughly review my credentials and be in contact, correct?? No??? You need me to fill out more paperwork?!?"

Many companies have degenerated their application process into a redundant migraine for the job-seeker by using a "human resources," or "talent management" software from a Gestapo-esque company from California called "Taleo." This dehumanizing piece of garbage requires the prospective employee to fill out fields which include personal data such as: applicant's name, address, e-mail address, phone number, home town/county/state/country or territory--one such asinine option, according to the Official Taleo Sucks Blog, is the Heard/McDonald Islands (an uninhabited group of barren, volcanic islands located in the southern Indian Ocean, just a mere thousand-mile stone's throw north of Antarctica), educational background (including high school or university attended, year graduated, GPA, Major/Minor, clubs, etc.), employment history (incl. last five jobs held, dates employed--often down to the exact day!--duties carried out, and so-on-and-so-forth), just to name a few.

"But didn't you receive all that information already? What's with the need to repeat the information I previously divulged to you after uploading my resume??"

As I said, many of these companies, especially larger corporations are using this time-wasting travesty as a way of "screening" candidates (while the esteemed members of their HR departments are too busy Tweeting, Facebooking, G-chatting or YouTubing to be bothered to review job apps--this, of course, after spending valuable company time talking to plants or perusing screens of a different kind: Fantasy Football or pornography at the office).

Also, in addition to your resume, cover letter, AND Taleo process, if you luck out somehow and land an interview, some companies have a little gift waiting for you--a small token of their appreciation in their lobby before the interview: MORE PAPERWORK! Name, address, phone number, date of birth, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, last three jobs/supervisors/dates employed/duties held/reasons for leaving/references, etc. Okay, they haven't even hired me yet and they're asking me for my SSN on a hard-copy piece of paper?? They now have your life and personal data by the cajones; and who knows, a disgruntled worker who could be fired in two weeks can steal that information from their former company on their way out and start an identity-theft ring, involving your name with every swipe of the credit card!

And the last thing you can do is point out that you've already submitted this information multiple times at this point--you don't want their first impression of you to be that of a complainer. So, in total, you could submit your personal data and intricate details of your employment history a total of FIVE TIMES between the resume, cover letter, Taleo application, pre-interview app, and the actual interview.


I digress, back to Unholy Taleo. Taleo claims to have your information saved so you could bypass that long process, editing it if need-be, to avoid completing the entire application again. However, in my long, storied career of looking for a career, that is an absolute lie. I've had to fill out an entire application each time I've had to subject myself to this mind-numbing tediousness. It's obvious the people that designed this painstaking software have never had to use it to apply for a job--they must have one hell of a sales team, using strong-armed mafia tactics to push this on all the companies that they've sold it to thus far. To my utmost surprise, Taleo is highly unpopular among job-seekers being used as lab rats with this redundancy, who knew?!? According to Amplicate.com, Taleo Hate scored 92%, compared to people who feel the opposite.

Ready for a particularly gruesome fact? On the Company Profile section of Taleo's website, they brag about such things as revenue and their performance in Nasdaq; but they also have a statistic that points out their lack of success in getting candidates hired. They list that, by using their software, there have been a total of 7,000,000 hires in a pool of 200,000,000 candidates. That's a success rate of 3.5% for the job-seeker, and in our terrible economy, the latest unemployment rate in the United States was estimated at 9.6% in August, 2010. Way to go, Taleo! According to their site, "On a peak day, Taleo processes more than 39 million transactions. That's far more than Burger King orders and far less than Facebook page views." So you compare compounding people's unemployment misery to fast-food and social networking, while there are ever-increasing layoffs and house foreclosures nationwide. Is Satan your CEO?


MY SOLUTION: Relocate Taleo's corporate headquarters to Heard Island and McDonald Islands with a television crew for a new reality TV show with a twist. Call it Survivor: HIMI, and require the CEO, upper management, sales & marketing teams, and Taleo's designers to use this software to attempt to be "hired off the island," and see how they fare with it.

I Want My, I Want My, I Want My Flying High: Moving For Nothing...Flags (or beers) For Free

Wow. What a week in Clinton, N.J. The building was sold which was the location of my dad's retail store since 1999--we shared our space with an Austrian kitchen-and-bath designer, whose skill made my parents' kitchen look as good as it does now. Our former landlord is 81 years of age, and a mess of a situation involved a rival kitchen-and-bath designer buying the building, and thus, drove us out.

So every day we would move our inventory from store-to-storage--a mind-numbing process which made me harp on the whole unemployed comedy/tragedy over the course of the last couple of years. The very thought that people with college degrees (like me) are fortunate enough to have jobs in the city and now live there, away from the restrictions of the mom-and-dad scene, and are able to socialize there on weekends is enough to drive one up a wall in this type of back-and-forth, Atari Pong-esque situation. It's like a party that you're observing from the outside, looking in at the scene with envious eyes.

The subtle idiosyncrasies of the mind take over when the crossroads of angst and eye-gauging boredom become the domineering factors; and when potential isn't fully utilized (for years), new mental outlets become as sought after as the Holy Grail of Sanity.

I had a very-cool co-worker from my brief seven-month stint at a local State Farm agency. One of those people who makes a lasting impression on you; one who you hope you keep in touch with, but will remember regardless. She is in her forties and is a HUGE fan of Dire Straits/Mark Knopfler. I met her husband when he came in on September 11th as he purchased a couple of flag sets (also very nice--good family all around). It was extremely hectic that day as most of what we still had left was out on the lawn. Despite heavily-discounted merchandise (people poured in from all over to look and buy), we had one of our best sales days in years, all while moving in a haphazard fashion.

As I was saying, my former co-worker loves Dire Straits, and it got me thinking of their 1985 hit "Money For Nothing." My dad used to play it quite a bit at parties in the '80s at our house in Fairfield, Conn. He played it so much that it caught on and resonated with my older brother and he used to sing it ad nausium. So anyway, I played it for him earlier this year, and gradually increased the volume to sneak into his subconscious. It must have put him into a time-warp to the time of the Chuck Taylor Converse All-Stars, Rubik's Cubes, Ghostbusters, Smurfs and Care Bears, because he started mouthing along to the lyrics.

I made a Weird Al-type parody of the chorus, as I said the mind looks for any type of outlet while doing this type of work:

We got to install poles and mailboxes,
Custom flag set deliveries.
We got to move these authentic models,
We got move this inventory.

As it turned out, with the help of our neighbors, a few of our trustworthy handymen Glenn and Brian, and my friends Myles and Mike, we got the job done. We finished vacuuming and ultimately bid one final adieu to the place which served as Flying High's home for over a decade at around 10 p.m. when the deadline was at midnight after September 13th.

A few career-related articles on in descending order from useful to useless.

I'm going to hold off starting this cyber career road trip to post an e-mail that I received. I subscribe to many job-search websites, which contain information on job leads and articles that could be useful in my hopeful quest to find what I've been looking for since May of 2008 (with one sizable hiatus earlier this year, as previously mentioned).

This e-mail is from JobCircle, a site on which I don't even bother looking for jobs anymore because I haven't gotten even one e-mail back from any of their listed companies/job descriptions, let alone an interview.

I couldn't help but noticing their three featured articles listed in the e-mail.

Best Questions To Ask In Your Job Interview

This article, written by Caroline Howard, lists a number of questions that you can ask that you can ask to a prospective employer during a job interview:

1. How would you describe the ideal candidate?

2. How do you envision this position supporting you?

3. How does this position fit into the company’s long-term plans?

4. How would you define “success” for this position?

5. What can I do for you as follow-up?

This was definitely the most useful of the three articles listed. These questions also went on to provide brief elaborations of each question and it's importance--pretty advantageous in order to gain an edge by subtly psychologically leveling the hiring manager.

Also listed are 12 questions that you should not ask; mostly questions involving inquiring about the salary, leaving work early, a timetable of promotions, sick days, etc. I've seen other sites like this. These are mostly common-sense and redundant (I think only an easily-wowed kid would ask a potential boss how many people they've fired and how often they can stay home from school "sick"--save it, Ferris); and it seems like these questions are little more than a way of attempting humor to impress their fellow colleagues in their industry. However, this article was useful overall.

What Every Professional Needs In Her Desk Drawer

This title (written by Jenna Goudreau of The Other Half) immediately loses personal interest with me because the article targets female professionals when I am a male job-seeker, (What is this, Sex and the City?) So I might as well just give it a chance anyway, here's some of the list:

Hand Cream: Ok, I guess it's sort of useful. While I see the need to avoid dry skin and have clean hands, to devote an entire work day to periodic moisturization like you're in the shower or at Club Med seems counterproductive. The stuff may short-circuit the keyboard and start an office fire that will burn the bridges of your hard-earned networking contacts on LinkedIn.

Eye Drops: Most of us get dry-eyes or allergies, but what are you trying to hide, Tommy Chong?

Ibuprofin (and other pain relievers): Take for headaches, but the boss may get suspicious of your personal life with daily use.

Other listed things of importance are lint brushes, adhesive bandages and breath fresheners. I had to skip the sewing kit, the make-up and the hairbrushes. Article is sort of useful, but you can take care of some of that stuff at home. I don't know why it was listed as an article on my e-mail from JobCircle, because other articles are about things you can do to GET THE JOB, how can we maintain a proper workplace if we aren't working at the moment?

This next article, written by Susan Adams, was absolutely atrocious and gut-wrenching to read: Pimp My Cubicle.

Again, on a site that targets and caters to job-seekers that are looking to be employed into the American Dream that is the cubicle, how is this useful?

"When I need to be cool, calm and collected," he says, "I can just talk to my little bonsai tree." -Lee Burbage, Human Resources Professional at The Motley Fool

It's nice to know that when I spend 45 minutes to an hour on some job applications, the guy in HR is too busy talking to plants to read my cover letter in its entirety and thoroughly examine my resume!



This Motley Fool is pictured in the article with a mini-jungle set up around his desk. "Did you get a chance to look over my resume? No? Did Tarzan accidentally knock it off of your desk with his vine to be eaten by The Lion King???"

I know a day at work can be stressful, but damn! You wonder why the economy is in shambles and the unemployment rates are high across the board. When people are busy writing tips on how to 'pimp your cubicle,' inspiring many interior decorators-at-heart to disregard their tasks at hand to waste company time, potential production output suffers; and this college grad can't find a job?!? They say Hell is a place without reason, and reading this article makes me feel like I've jumped in the fire.

NFL Postseason: Wildcard Weekend Reflections From the Point-of-View of a Giants Fan

Disclaimer: This next post will combine facts with opinions, but it's my blog, so I can.

I am a die-hard New York Giants fan, so the progression of the 2009 NFL season started off great for the G-Men, me and the rest of the loyal fan base -- but then crashed hard into disappointing, gut-wrenching oblivion as the traditionally-ballin' defense of the Big Blue Wreckin' Crew accomplished little more than wreck their chances at another postseason, and now I'm bleeding blue. Now, the season is obviously over for Big Blue, except for the Pro Bowl (which I actually watch, judge me) and the Giants' lone representative for the NFC squad -- cue former public address announcer Bob Sheppard's booming voice: "The Center, numba 60, Shaun O'Hara, numba 60."


So now, all I can do is just sit back and hope the teams that I don't like/despise perish into historical obscurity by suffering the agony of defeat -- and the opening round of the playoffs certainly made me very happy, and here's why:

1) The Philadelphia Eagles: ELIMINATED! This matchup presented two NFC East teams that I hate/highly dislike: The Philadelphia Eagles and the Dallas Cowboys, so I had to make a choice, a lesser-of-two-evils kind of paradox (would I rather die in the electric chair or by lethal injection?) so I decided to side with Dallas. Going to high school in New Jersey, it was primarily the Giants and the Eagles as the two favorite teams (toss the Jets and Cowboys in there too). More-or-less, I noticed most of Hunterdon County's native-born football fans went for the Eagles, while most of the people originally from eastern NJ/NY/CT pulled for the G-Men.


Throughout high school (2000-04), the Giants were a very inconsistent team. They went 12-4 my freshman year (2000) and made it to the Super Bowl, but they mixed in sub-.500 seasons in that relatively short period of time, including going an abysmal 4-12 in 2003 during my senior year. The Eagles, on the other hand, displayed consistently good football in the early-mid 2000s.

Philadelphia Eagles fans are known for being very hostile -- they booed Santa Claus for cryin' out loud! Their home venue, Lincoln Financial Field, even has a courtroom where they conduct cases during the games for disorderly fans, which is necessary for your fans if they can neither handle winning nor losing with class. The Cowboys beat them 34-14 on Saturday night, ensuring the Eagles don't have a chance to win their first Super Bowl. Adios Philadelphia!

2) The New England Patriots: ELIMINATED! The Patriots used to be my second favorite team and favorite AFC team. I made my grand return to my native state, Connecticut, to attend college in 2004 and subsequently graduated in 2008, and lived (and made friends) with many people from Massachusetts, and here's where my cognitive image of the Pats took a turn for the worse. Many of the fans of Boston teams (Pats as well as the Red Sox) I met at Quinnipiac are very knowledgeable and classy when it comes to sports, but they like to rub it in when their team does better than your team (typical of fans of any team), but you can hold an intelligent conversation with this segment of Boston fans, so they have my respect.


But I also noticed that many fans of Boston teams are bandwagon fans (i.e. becoming fans of the Sox in 2004 -- and I won't even mention the 2007-08 Celtics). During my freshman year alone (2004-05) the Red Sox won their first World Series since 1918, and the Pats beat the Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX, repeating as the NFL Champions and winning their third Super Bowl in four years, so you could imagine how high-and-mighty the Boston fans (and Massachusetts) were at this time.

Enter 2007. My Yankees made the MLB playoffs as the American League Wild Card team, finishing second to Boston. Then the Yanks got utterly embarrassed by the Cleveland Indians after sweeping the regular season series against them. The Tribe then relinquished a 3-1 ALCS lead to those damn Red Sox, who went on to win another World Series -- good thing I shut my phone off in disgust because I had several voicemails and text messages waiting for me that would have blown up my phone, if I had left it on, to compound my frustration even more.

While this was going on, the Patriots were having an incredible season. Golden-boy Tom "Terrific" Brady and his faithful companion Randy Moss went on to break the single-season touchdown records (passing and receiving, respectively) while the team was undefeated and on ESPN every single day as a series of sappy feature segments of coverage conveniently alliterated as "The Patriots Pursuit of Perfection." It absolutely nauseated me. The Giants, meanwhile, were struggling. Head Coach Tom Coughlin's job was constantly on the line. Eli Manning's leadership skills at QB were questioned every day. They finally met in the Super Bowl and the underdog Giants got the best of them (how does it feel to choke, Boston?) on the grandest of stages (one of my greatest sports memories of all-time). The exclamation point was an unbelievable pass from Manning to David Tyree in which Eli narrowly escaped a would-be sack and tossed one up to Tyree, who made an unbelievable helmet catch to help move the drive along and ultimately allow Plaxico Burress to catch the game-winning touchdown pass. 17-14, Giants Win!


So this year, the Pats got destroyed by the Baltimore Ravens, and I couldn't be happier. Now I just need the Cowboys to lose next week, and that will be great. But I think a classic matchup for the Super Bowl would be a duel for the ages between two absolute gunslingers, Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts vs. Brett Favre and the Minnesota Vikings (I would've wanted Saints/Colts if they were both still undefeated, and I won't even play devil's advocate with the Giants because of how disappointing they were). Say what you want about Favre, coming in and out of retirement more than Michael Jordan for the purpose of skipping preseason training (which really is highly unprofessional of him), but he is a living legend with just about two full decades of greatness; and I believe Peyton Manning is the best quarterback in the NFL right now. After all, he just completed his fourth MVP season (take that, Tom Brady). That matchup would truly be a classic that would be talked about for generations.

Open "Mike" Night

My pal Mike Fortino has decided to take up a career in stand-up comedy. Vinnie Brand's Stress Factory in New Brunswick offers aspiring stand-up acts the opportunity to show what they've got like Seth Rogen in the movie Funny People on select Wednesdays throughout their calendar, so he has decided to go on 1/6.


He debuted around the time of Halloween a couple of months ago at my other friend Bernie's father's 50th birthday roast where he had the crowd going with ethnic jokes (looks like MTV's Jersey Shore will provide a blowout of new material with this one), towns in NJ where people are from and why they turn out the way they do as a result, his own struggles with alcoholism, and the dick & fart jokes inspired brilliantly by his heroes Jay & Silent Bob - New Jersey's Finest. At the roast, he pushed the envelope but couldn't go much beyond that because there were children and grandparents present (the same grandparents I chugged Sambuca in front of during Bernie's high school graduation party...class, class, class). At the Stress Factory, however, there will be no holds barred.


The stakes are high during Open Mic Night. Careers can be launched if the comics steal the show and the laughs flow like wine and beautiful women instinctively flock like the salmon of Capistrano. Or dreams can shatter in five uncomfortable minutes of jeers and comments from a tough crowd (they don't call it the "Stress" Factory for nothing). New Brunswick is located on Route 1, by I-287 and is very close to Rutgers - chicks bro, chicks - and according to Marilyn Monroe, "If you can make a girl laugh, you can make her do anything," - anything, eh?? However, if the roast was any sort of a preview for Mike's performance this coming Wednesday, it should make for a good show. Doors open at 7, $5 cover, and there's a two-drink minimum per person (except for the recovering alcoholic on stage). Come through, it should be a good time, and I won't be job-searching.

Picking it back up...

When we last left off, our fair protagonistic hero was taking a few months off from this whole blog thing in order to find full-time, gainful employment in the marketing/advertising/PR fields conducive to the fact that dropping over a hundred G's on college tuition seemed like a good idea at the time. I got some inspiration from a good friend named Kristopher to get a second-wind with this whole blog thing.

I have decided that I would like to become a marketing copywriter. I had a short temp-job in that field at an IT company in Edison that I got through my friend Mike's father. It was good experience. They presented the concept to me about what they wanted to market and I would put it in words, creating and editing content for the website presentation materials. I got a good recommendation but the temp period ended, so where's the next meal coming from???

I've had a few interviews, and I guess I'm not really good at them (must be due in large part to the fact that I average an interview once every six months, so I get rusty). I am still "Fear and Loathing After College." I just hit the 19-month plateau (on 12/18/09) since I graduated from Quinnipiac. No job yet.

But it's a new year -- 2010. A new decade at that. So with this change brings a renewed sense of optimism. But how optimistic can I actually be? Will I go a full two years (three years...five years...ten years...) since graduating college, theoretically increasing my chances at finding gainful employment? Should I dig myself deeper into a financial hole by investing in grad school as the noose of debt tightens more and more every day? All these questions have kept me up at night, the vast majority of nights as time drifts away on my 20s, the hourglass of my very youth is running out while I'm still unemployed and living at my parents' house.

Optimism is my only choice. But as my mind numbs daily on these countless job search engines, it's very easy to lose sight of the big picture. How many resumes do I need to amend? How many different cover letters do I need to draft until I reach my goal, and will I reach it? This story has had the same ending for a while now but I must carry on. Until next time, be good.