Pennywise and Poundfoolish

Working at an oil refinery day 1: orientation

Today we had a safety orientation working at the Refinery.  Man, are they ever picky about safety.  They also seem to be picky about how they handle their waste.  In their safety manual they list dozens of nasty chemicals that they deal with and their "waste streams" (read: how to "properly dispose" of these contaminates).  Refinery work is without a doubt dangerous, lucrative, and severely oriented towards safety.  I would like to hear some numbers from the Shell guys and from independent reviewers regarding their pollution controls, and areas that need to be further improved upon in the refinery process.  If anyone has any numbers for me, please feel free to post those with links.

Again, sorry for the abbreviated posts, I'm dealing with a lot of irons in my fire.  Any user-contributed information would be very useful to the discussion.

New job, new schedule

It looks like they're going to be working me the graveyard shift starting tomorrow night.  If my posting is a bit sporadic over the course of the week, I do apologize-- I will definitely try to be on top of it all.

I will also be gone next week starting monday, so that may throw another kink in the works. . .  But on the bright side, I'll be trying to do plenty of writing while I'm gone!

Success! Finally a job!

I finally got myself a job!  It's working part-time at a security guard company.  From what I've seen of it so far I'm very impressed.  I don't know much about it, but I'll tell you how I found the job:

1. I attended a job fair and dressed appropriately.
2. Brought along something to hand out to the people at the booths (I would have preferred just a business card, but I didn't have anything like that so I just brought a resume).
3. I changed my attitude: instead of looking for a job from the people in the booth, I tried to get to know their needs and who they were looking for-- by talking to them.  If they were of interest to me, I gave them a resume if they would accept one, and took whatever literature they had of interest to me.
4. I brought something to contain all of my information in.  I didn't rely on their little bags that they handed out, I simply took a professional-looking zip-up padfolio.
5. I asked for an interview.  Either next week or tomorrow, I asked the people at the booth when they were available to meet for an interview.
6. I needed the job.  Believe it or not, people will not take job-searching seriously.  They end up looking like fools wondering why nobody will hire them, all the while not listening to what the person hiring them is telling them.  I can't afford not to listen to the hiring managers because my wife is pregnant, out of work, and we are very close to broke.

Read about my 5 steps to mastering the job fair.

5 steps to mastering the job fair

Yesterday I went to a job fair today at Gresham high school.  I was lucky enough to meet an old friend there who is in a position to set up a meeting next week for an interview.  This is the first job fair that I have ever been to.  There must be job fairs every month in the Portland area, and the chances of meeting somebody that I know, or who knows somebody that I know-- is an opportunity that I should never have passed up for so long. 

Score another one for taking advantage of opportunities that you didn't see coming!

This didn't just fall into my lap, though; I had to come to the event prepared for success.  To me this meant dressing appropriately, bringing plenty of resumes, business cards (if I'd had some), and being as practical as possible.  Reality takes precent here: I need a job, and that means that I need to fill out applications, pass out resumes, and make sure to know what to do in order to get those resumes read.  Coming out of the job fair, I had found two companies that I believe would be a great fit for me and what luck-- I happened to know a person at each of them!

Here is what I believe are the keys to getting the interview from a job fair:

1. show up--  Believe me, I'm not the kind of guy to want to go to these things, but the reasons will become clear soon
2. dress appropriately, not necessarily your best-- a $300 suit and tie with penny-loafers is more likely to intimidate than impress.  I have gotten hired wearing a hoodie and jeans, and a button-up shirt.  I've never gotten a favorable reaction from a suit and tie
3. resumes are just the beginning-- hiring managers "cannot use your resumes without an application to go with it".  Many of these companies understandably seem to rely upon the internet for their applicants, meaning that you can't just fill out an application right then and there.  Just pass your resume out knowing that will only be the beginning of your marketing efforts-- much like a business card.
4. The best business is not going to be done in the booths-- This is a tip from my old days at a private trade show company.  Be on the lookout for people to be standing outside their booths, milling about just like you.  Sometimes these are people that should be manning the booths themselves, but are either on a break, bored, or just waiting for some bright spark like yourself to saddle up to them and. . . and. . . this is where my expertise fails, but I believe the term is-- network.
5. Set up an interview ASAP-- This is what you are waiting for!  Should you be among the lucky few who hear those golden words "what time are you free next week?" pounce on it!!! (3 exclamation points)  This is why you're at the job fair to begin with.  Don't sabotage this by saying something stupid like, "I'm not available because I'm out of town for three weeks".  Instead, make sure that you're at the very least available for a telephone interview.