Welcome to How to Be Jobless.
Sorry about the mess.
If you’ve never been here before, take a look at the About page, or watch the video for a general idea of what you’ve wandered into:
This video started as a note on my phone when I felt a complete nervous breakdown was imminent. That’s what people do when suicide is starting to look like a logical option, right? I had exchanged all my money (and then some) for a Masters in journalism, and not only had I not found a job, I hadn’t even managed to get a human response to a single application. As often happens when I write my way through a potential mental collapse, reading it back to myself I realised it was really quite funny. And thus, the idea for How to Be Jobless was born.
I started this blog anonymously, in the hope of making someone else laugh. I tweeted joke tips, like “Turn an internship into a job. Put crack in the boss’s coffee. All they’ll know is things are just better when you’re around.”
The wonderful careers site GoThinkBig.co.uk spotted my tweets and gave me a weekly column called My Week in Joblessness (the first of which is here), during which I covered topics such as why you’re not as behind as you think you are, reasons to let jobseekers be negative, when an internship is and is not ok, and things interviewers do wrong.
Eventually I got an interview at the Guardian, and not long after that post went viral I got the job.
The response was overwhelming.
I made this video to celebrate:
I carried on writing for GoThinkBig, this time a column series called Grad Scheming (the first of which is here). I wrote on topics such as why young people need to fight for change, the exhausting task of maintaining the perfect online presence, how Tories get around paying interns minimum wage and why you shouldn’t be grateful for a job.
Now, I’m a features writer for the Guardian, but I’m still running the blog and taking pitches.
So thanks for stopping by. If you want to chat you can find me on Twitter @howtobejobless or my real identity @ericabuist (for the last time…I’m not a man). This includes if you’re despondent over being jobless and need someone to make you feel better. I get those a lot, and I always answer.
Happy (or at least healthy) job hunting. Keep going. They can’t shut you out forever.
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