Monday has come and gone.
Dilemmas have been fretted about and resolved.
The sun has risen and set…
and I am STILL without a job that I like AND the cajones to go out and get a better one! That’s right, folks, the era of the independent but utterly squeamish and softhearted careerwoman is here!
I’m short on the green stuff. The thing that makes the world go ’round. The paper that American dreams are based on.
This, I have figured, is what I NEED. It’s been decided, as of about a month ago, that I was going to start to get my skills noticed by coming out with an idea for a business–a plan, if you will, to do more than just toot my own horn. To find and establish my market, or at least a customer base of some kind.
Let me tell you business is TOUGH. You wanna try to get customers? Word of mouth is simply one of the best ways, in my area of business, to do just that. If you don’t have a customer base, who can testify to your product’s or service’s quality and worth, and how in the heck are you gonna be able to prove yourself? It’s very hard, because in this business, the work I’m offering to do for a fee can be done by people themselves. There’s no value added to offering a service or product that people can already do themselves.
It’s not like I can’t FIND a market, there is a market for my business, although small, and with a shell that’s tougher to crack than a tortise’s–But nonetheless, I am currently trying to tap into it. How do I know about this market? Well, there are people (small business owners, mom & pop business operators and others who, yeah, if they sat down and thought about it, they could handle doing this task, why in heck should they PAY someone to do it for them…on the flip side of that, there are still people who would rather have it done professionally and are willing to pay reasonably for that service. However, without some major moolah, I don’t know how I can pull this off. Without it, I have to do all this ‘word of mouth’ stuff until I turn blue in the face and believe me, blue is not my color. I’m an Autumn.
But I digress. Back to where I was.
Oh, yeah. I was just saying that there were people who are in need of my services, but unfortunately, most of these people are just the sort that would put me out of business. They are the ones who go out of their way to hire someone with a ‘degree in this or that or some such thing’ and don’t even give us people (some of whom are just naturally talented, and don’t need any framed certificate adorning our walls to make us feel good about ourselves in order to succeed.
O.K. This is where I get on my soapbox and go off in another entirely different tirade. Alright. In the last few years, all the way up to now, even, this is a common scenario: An employer is looking for someone to fill a job involving alot of creativity, given the choice between hiring the college grad w/the degree or the high school and/or trade school grad w/NO degree but w/work experience in that field, I bet you nine times our of ten, the employer will choose the college grad. Why? They go on the pure rationale that a person w/a degree in that field is automatically expected to be the better candidate, as opposed to one without the credentials. The one that doesn’t get the interview may have a better a handle on the job. Some or even lots of experience. But no credentials.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not biasing against the person with the degree, and not to say that a degree or schooling is a waste of time, or money, even. But that just goes to show you how these days, the hiring criteria used by employers nowadays just seems to largely benefit only those that have the advantage of a higher education under their belts.
Perhaps I’m a little bit wrong. I don’t have the statistics right on hand here, but I read somewhere about all kinds of successful people, some long dead and some still around, that did not go after a secondary education, ended up being just as successful or even more so, as those who did. Unfortunately, not only did these people find themselves having to bust their asses getting to where they are now, but they faced the same questions I am asking right here.
I am only justifying the nature of this ‘rooting for the underdog’, as it were, by saying that perhaps it’s more rewarding for those of us have-nots, that do end up getting the job, because it proves that a degree is not all that necessary. Especially if the so-called ‘less qualified candidate’ in question has a good work history and no evidence of being a slacker of some sort, and can also prove their worth. Just how they can prove it, however, is another dilemma, if this continues to be a major practice in the job market today.
Somebody back me up, here, dangit! Does anyone else agree with me that now, more than ever, freelancers, self-starters, entrepeneurs, volunteers, artists, writers and creative contributers of all sorts hang in the balance, hoping for the ideal gig?
Perhaps you are a person in this same hiring trap. All because of what is being termed credentialism, and I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.
