Please Feed The Animals

I could always tell when another bloodletting was about to occur – Human Resources would be in the office past 5PM on a Friday (they always had layoffs first thing Monday morning), scurrying around with pursed lips, going in and out of offices with closed doors, carrying stacks of folders.

It was like a giant storm cloud had taken up residence over our building. People turned on each other, the gossip was out of control … it had gone from a fantastic place to work to, what I called, The Death Star.

Eventually, my day came. I had a feeling the week before it happened. I just sensed it. So I began bringing things from my desk home and copying all my personal files to discs.

After the initial shock of the actual words, “your position has been deemed redundant” I thought – “Well, it’s almost summertime. I’ve got my severance and unemployment to live on. I’ll look for work, casually – maybe take on some freelance projects – and I am sure that by fall I’ll have everything under control and be working at a new job.”

How wrong wrong wrong I was. I never could have anticipated what, in reality, I was in for.

I found one very short-term freelance job that summer. As the weeks passed, I became more and more frantic. I couldn’t sleep, so I’d get up at 5AM, sit at my computer and scour all the job postings. I would guess I sent out, easy, 25 to 30 resumes a week. It was very rare to get a response, though. It was as if I had jettisoned my resumes off into some giant black hole …it was infuriating. And disheartening. And frightening. I couldn’t even get work through temp staffing agencies because I didn’t have enough (or recent enough) administrative experience.

What became immediately apparent to me was that all the available copywriting jobs were in the interactive environment … and I had no experience in that arena. Print, radio and on-air — you bet. And sure, I had dashed off some quick banner copy for the in-house new media department (as it was called then … quaint, huh?). But I had never gotten any samples or screen grabs. It never occurred to me.

Sometimes I’d see a really great posting for a position I wanted, but it would turn out they wanted someone much more junior (read: cheaper). I got a few long-term freelance jobs and would just about beg to be considered for full-time. But the response was always the same — “You’d get bored and as soon as a better-paying job surfaced someplace else, you’d be gone.”

So, now it is 6 years later and, gradually, I have freelanced all over New York City – there have been dry spells that scared the life out of me. For a good percentage of time, I had to live off credit cards and I am now in astronomical debt. But, I finally got my foot in the interactive door. And learned that writing for the web really isn’t much different than writing for print. I find it easier, actually.

The most important thing I learned, though, is to look for work in industries you might not have considered before. When I first started job hunting, I focused only on the television network industry. But there are only so many senior level writing jobs in those venues, and the people who have those jobs aren’t budging. They just don’t open up. I kept knocking on agency doors … it took a while and it felt like a huge waste of time on some days, but I got some work from them … valuable work, too. Work that grew my creative repertoire in the right direction. You simply cannot be a one-trick pony anymore. Employers are looking for creatives that can do it all … cover all the message delivery options. Interactive being the big one.

I have also scored some great jobs simply by talking. I volunteer with an animal rescue agency, and I meet a lot of people. It always comes up in conversation, at some point, that I’m job hunting. People are surprisingly willing to help in any way they can — if they have connections they are delighted to help set things up. A few weeks ago a woman adopted a kitten I’d been fostering. I delivered the kitty to her home and, as we were talking, she told me there was an opening for a position where she works — the Fire Department of New York City headquarters. At this point, with the economy the worst it’s been since my layoff, I am open to anything … I am in total survival mode.

She helped arrange the interview, I went and, in the course of speaking with the people I’d be working with, they responded with great enthusiasm for my writing background. They told me that they send out a lot of communication to the firefighters who were part of the World Trade Center excavation — offering physical and mental health programs — and that they really need someone to write all these elements (mailers, email blasts, newsletters, maintaining the website copy, and so on). They completely rewrote the job description to include copywriting and my application is in the process of going through their personnel department.

What’s nice is that, after 6 years of frantically running around, trying to keep afloat, cranking out banner ads for air fresheners and direct mail hawking phone / cable / internet service packages, I am now going to be working on something that has real value. Something that will impact the brave men and women who were the first to selflessly arrive on 9/11, placing themselves in immense danger. I never — not in a million years — would have envisioned myself in a civil service job, but I am glad it’s happening. After having sold my soul to the advertising monster, this is a truly rewarding reprieve. And I am SO relieved that I’ll get a break from pounding the pavement, hustling for freelance work. The job doesn’t pay as well as others I’ve had, but I am looking at this as an adventure … an adventure that’s going to add to my range of experience and open up a whole bunch of new doors. And that, in itself, is priceless.