You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting . . .

I haven't posted for a while, the main reason being for the last few weeks I have had the wind knocked out of me.

I have been looking for a job here in Utah since I graduated from Indiana University. I graduated back in December, so that makes . . . 8 months now. I started a little slowly, but we moved in April and since then I have been hitting it pretty hard. For a long time I wasn't worried about it, thinking, "It'll work out, what's the use worrying?" A couple of weeks ago it caught up to me.

I have now sent literally hundreds of resumes to companies here in Utah. Here is a non-exhaustive list of the companies to which I have sent resumes, some in Utah, some outside of Utah.

In Utah:
Interpace Industries, Inc
Anderson Development Services
Permier Mentoring
ISI
Encover
Tomax
406 Partners
Raylia Designs
Novell
Select Portfolio Servicing
Infopia
Ivory Homes
Ken Garff Automotive Group
The Modellers, LLC
GE Motor Credit
WorldStrides
First American Corporation
Overstock.com
Comcast
LexisNexis
XO Communications
Intuit
Omniture
U of U
Utah Retirement Systems
Zions Bancorporation
eBay
L-3 Communications
General Growth Properties
LDS Church
American Express
UnitedHealth Group
George S. May
CB Richard Ellis
ITT Industries
Sirsi Dynix
REMX IT Staffing
HealthPort
Investools, Inc
Cambridge Financial Center
Robert Half Finance and Accounting
Marketstar
Select Portfolio Servicing
Harman Music Group
The Generations Network
Wells Fargo
MonaVie
Anderson Development
City of Salt Lake
Rio Tinto
Attensity
Skullcandy
Wasatch Advisors
Avalanche Software
Cambridge Financial Center
Maden Technologies
HCA Physician Services
Myriad
CR England
StoryRock
Morgan Stanley
Goldman Sachs

Not in SLC:
Countrywide
Deloitte
D & B
Cisco
Google
Apple
Omniture
Microsoft
Nordstrom
Amazon
HP
Dell
Nvidia
ATI
Ocean Tomo
Disney
EA Games
Motorola
Broadcom
Logitech
Nordstrom

There are many more, these are some of the more commonly known companies. You can see that many of them are tech companies, I like tech.

Of all these I have only been invited to interview twice, TWICE! I'm not really sure what it is about my resume that won't get me in the door. I have a couple of ideas, but they are just speculation.

I have applied for mostly business analyst, financial analyst, db analyst positions. What one does when you work in these positions is take information, numbers mostly, analyze them using all kinds of statistical techniques, and gain insights into how the company is performing. Sometimes this process results in profound insights that can help a company get a real advantage, usually it simply results in a small, but significant improvement in profitability. I am good with numbers and this is the kind of thing I like doing.

I have tried to avoid going into the practice of law, it just doesn't fit my nature. But, it is one area that is untapped. I haven't applied to any law firms yet, and I think that I will have more success if I do. So, I am going to apply to take the bar in February and if I haven't found anything else soon, that's the direction I will be going.

This is me, failing, and giving up. I am accepting that I cannot go in the direction that I have wanted to go, and so I am taking a job that I can get, but that I don't want. I am exchanging happiness for pragmatic, responsible misery. I am ashamed and embarrassed. Hopefully it's only temporary, but how do these things usually go?