Wanna B. Doctor

I have a former schoolmate who I graduated with. He told me that we wanted to be a doctor, but after being in one class with him, I realized that he would never be a doctor. He didn't have the discipline to make the grades. For this reason, I'll refer to him as Wanna B. Doctor.

Wanna has struggled to keep work, as there aren't many positions out there in the writing field in little old Idaho at the moment. After his latest contract ended, I have kept in contact with him via LinkedIn. This has been a useful site for me, and somewhere I can send people who I don't want to be friends with on Facebook.

Needless to say, Wanna B. Doctor contacted me the other day looking for job leads. I can't say I blame him. Here are some excepts from our conversation:

Wanna: I'm just curious if you know of any leads in the tech comm field, I've been lacking in that dept for some time. Anything helpful would be appreciated, just looking for a trail to follow! 

Me: I'm still here with my contract. I am coming up on my two-year mark in February, and so I am on the hunt as well for more permanent or temporary work that will last me for my 100-day break. Unfortunately, there aren't very many job openings at this point that I have been able to hunt down.  

What have you been up to since you left [your last position]? I took a peek at your profile page, and didn't see any updates since you were with [another department]. I know that [said department] was looking for someone about three or four months ago, but I don't know if the position is filled at this point. I have a sneaking suspicion that it has been filled.  

Drop me a line sometime, and I'll let you know if I hear of anything.  

 I figured that I would ask the question, "What have you been doing with your time?" to give Wanna the opportunity to redeem himself a bit in my eyes. Who knows, maybe a year without work has changed him. Maybe he has been studying hard to train himself and become more marketable. Maybe he really deserves a job, but he just can't find one because he is looking for that "trail to follow."

Here was his response to me:

Wanna: The project I was helping on wasn't renewed, so I've been away from that game for nearly a year now. Unemployment insurance leaves something to be desired, let me say, but it's given me more time to look seriously into the military (something I've considered since high school). Otherwise I try to keep busy, oh yes-- I reddit.com !

Thanks for passing along the word, in the future.

So, from what I can gather, Wanna B. Doctor has spent his time collecting unemployment insurance, looking into the military (which he has been doing for about ten years, might I add), and keeping busy all while playing around on reddit.

The only reason I might suggest him for a position is because I wanted to make sure my competition looked worse than I did. There are jobs out there in our field. I have a couple of resumes in right now that I am waiting to hear back on. It raises my hackles when people feel entitled to have someone hand you a job. Sure, it is nice when it happens, but it happens because of all the hard work you have put in.

Wanna B. Doctor sat in the same classes I did. He was given the same opportunities to learn how to job search. He participated in the same conversations I did. But he squandered everything. I enjoy helping people find jobs, but you have to do some of the legwork yourself. Things don't just fall into your lap these days. If they do, be leery of them.