I was browsing around monster.com today, and noticed a feature called "Success Stories: I Found My Job" meant to help guide the confused job seeking masses who forage through the site wondering what exactly it takes to find a dream job. Monster's "Success Stories" series profiles successful professionals who have found their dream jobs, and outlines their trajectory to professional fulfillment.
You can read these stories and model your job search after ordinary, everyday winners, like Alexis, who landed a job as the head blogger at Alicia Keys's new website. And boy does she make it look easy! All Alexis had to do was work super hard in high school to get full scholarships to college, presumably freeing her up to explore foundational occupations like internships in her field, rather than settling for the menial service industry jobs many college students fall into. She got her first big break right out of college, writing at the Village Voice. As a follow up, she spent the next couple of years as an editor for Martha Stewart, and then headed finally to Monster.com to collect her Dream Job. In other words, she did a bunch of shit "you, the reader/job seeker" should've done years ago but didn't, but hey, it's not too late for you to enroll in one of Monster's many for-profit higher ed sponsors. What'll it be, hmmm?
I'm not actually knocking Alexis (or Monster). In fact I think she should be commended for achieving so much, and for being willing to share her story in the hope of inspiring others.The problem is that Alexis's story, like so many other success stories, promotes an uncommonly straight, narrow path and doesn't offer much guidance or inspiration for the countless job seekers whose personal histories are complicated by familial, financial or other obligations. We've all heard over and over that the road to success begins with a single SAT score, that the way to make yourself stand out is to go beyond the basics and add volunteer work, internships, and apprenticeships to your portfolio. But what advice do we have for people whose dance cards are full? People with children and debt and sick parents and dead parents and minefields of social discouragement to navigate?
I think it's fantastic that Alexis was able to make all the right moves, at the right times, and that things worked out for her as a result. But what about the kids and grown ups who have to do it differently, whose roads are more a murky irridescent collage of spirals and zigzags than a clean sturdy highway of yellow bricks? Alexis's story is pretty cool, but it's also predictable, conventional and very, very boring. What I'd really like to read would be a series called "Success Stories: I Found My Unique, Bizzare, and Improbably Perfect Job"
