Days of Yore: The Epic Quest for a Job

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

- Don Quixote de la Mancha
The Man of La Mancha, music by Mitch Leigh and lyrics by Joe Darion

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

As a fan of both musical theatre and high adventure, "The Impossible Dream" seemed an appropriate start to this post. The job search has been the great quest that most adults encounter at some point in their lives and careers, in some cases multiple times. The means of the quest have changed over the years.

Continuing with the theme of musical theatre (since we all know how extremely accurate that is), the musicals Thoroughly Modern Millie and How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying give us a glimpse into the methods of job search in the 1920s and 1960s, respectively. In Thoroughly Modern Millie, Millie Dillmount physically goes to different businesses to speak to them in person. I am guessing her aim in wanting to find a boss she could marry was likely not typical, but it does indicate the need to go physically and search that way. In How to Succeed, J. Pierrepont Finch ("Ponty") is also going to businesses on foot to find a job. But he has obtained a book with specific instructions, not only on finding a job, but also on getting to the top quickly (which he does within a few days). That show is satire, so again, much of it is not typical, but it also shows that the job search was more of a physical endeavor than it often is today. Of course, even today doing it that way doesn't hurt (at least i don't think it does), but things have changed considerably.

In 1935, the US government created unemployment insurance to help job searchers while they were searching for work, by temporarily providing a salary to help in paying bills. These days the requirements vary by state, but you generally have to be actively searching in order to get it. Washington State requires that you do at least three job search activities per week (which could include sending a resume, doing an interview, taking a course on work-related skills, and other things) and keep a log of it. Every week you have to file a claim and report what job search activities you did that week, in addition to certifying that you were "able and available" to go to work, and a few other requirements.

How did we search for jobs in the past? As mentioned above, people generally went to businesses and talked to the people there to find out if they were hiring. Newspapers had a "Help Wanted" section where businesses could advertise job openings, providing brief job descriptions (usually only a few words due to space restraints and per-word charges from the newspaper) and contact information. Many people searched the Yellow Pages in the back of their phone book and called businesses to find out if they had openings. When I was in college, our career center on campus had bulletin boards where they posted job openings sent to them by local businesses, as well as on-campus jobs. Colleges provided "work study" positions as well, so that students could have an income while attending classes. This was also nice because work could be scheduled around classes. I worked in the libraries both at Edmonds Community College and Seattle Pacific University when I attended. When I returned to Edmonds Community College, I took advantage of a "worker retraining" program related to unemployment, where I had an income from the state while attending school. This did not replace tuition, but it was a big help. This program is related to unemployment insurance, but differs in that you are learning a new skill to become more marketable, rather than searching for a job.

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

Even in the old days, there was a lot of calling potential employers. In the past, it was when responding to want ads. On the phone you could schedule a time to come in and bring your resume, possibly schedule an interview. While interviews were almost always in person in the past, it has become more common to do them over the phone in recent years. However, it is still common to do them in person. An interview would often consist of questions to assess a person's fit with the company and how well they might do the job in question. They may also include assessments either on computer or using a typewriter or other means to show how well the candidate can do the job. Most commonly, the phone interview these days is used in the initial screening process. If the company wants to proceed with the candidate, they may schedule a second interview in person.

Another option that worked for me in the past was going through staffing agencies. They contracted with companies looking for temporary workers, also called temps. Companies would need temps for various purposes, such as a limited project that will only last a short time, covering for a worker out on vacation or maternity leave or other kind of leave, or for any number of other reasons. Some temporary positions were considered "temp to hire," in which case the company would contract the person on a temporary basis to get a more practical idea of their fit. If they do well, they can be converted to a permanent employee. Most of my positions in the past have been with the help of staffing agencies. An agency placed me at Wireless Advocates in 2017 for a "3-4 week" position, which ended up getting extended multiple times, and finally became permanent at the beginning of 2018. It lasted until the beginning of 2023, when the company went down. My initial interview for Wireless Advocates was over the phone. I would have another interview, in person this time, a few months later when they were considering converting me to permanent employment.

While I was working at Wireless Advocates, COVID changed everything. We transitioned to working from home in March of 2020. This was a new experience for me, and I was impressed how well our team adapted. It was also great, as I have been taking care of my parents, and I was more available for them while still being able to devote much of my time to my job, often even doing overtime. I was thankful to have a steady and dependable job when so many people were unemployed due to the pandemic.

When Wireless Advocates folded, I once more filed for unemployment, and found a changed method. Many of the requirements were the same. However, in the past, we were required to go to our local WorkSource office for an orientation session. They didn't ask me to do that this time (though they did state there was a possibility they may require me to go at some point). Methods of hiring had changed. Staffing agencies post their openings on their websites, and I didn't have as much success as in the past at contacting them. For the first time, much of my job search was done on LinkedIn. In the past I had posted my resume there, but I hadn't done much job searching there. LinkedIn has also added some excellent courses that I have taken to help with job skills as well as blogging.

Years ago, I often used online job boards, such as Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, and others. This time, I used LinkedIn, indeed.com, and a few others, but didn't have as much success on the boards that worked in the past.

Image by New Africa on Adobe Stock

When doing interviews this time, more were over the phone than ever before. Rather than do it in person, some were done over Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other online video chat services. After an initial phone screen at USI Insurance in Seattle, I was invited to the only in-person interview I have done during this job search. I was truly excited with how well it went. This one seemed a perfect fit. My amazing previous manager was a tough act to follow, but this manager seems an excellent candidate. Following that in-person interview, I had another interview over the internet with a manager in another state.

All that to say...

Today I start my new job at USI Insurance! I am super excited for this new adventure, and I can't wait to get started!

Days of Yore: Telephones

Once upon a time, telephones only had one function, and they could not be taken everywhere. I realize this may be surprising to some people today. Years ago, people called others by picking up the receiver on the candlestick phone (so called because the phone was shaped rather like a candlestick). There was often no way to dial a person's number on the actual phone, so when the caller picked up the receiver and put it to their ear, the voice of the operator on the other side asked who they would like to call. The caller then spoke into the mouthpiece attached to the main body of the phone and asked them to connect them to the person they were calling. The operator would then connect them.

Businessman using a candlestick phone
1913

Telephone Operator at her switchboard
everettovrk on Adobe Stock

That was before my time, but there were some remnants. By the time I came around, people generally used the rotary phone. The numbers were arranged in a circle, with a hole over each number. You would put your finger in the hole for the first digit, dial it around, wait for the dial to go back into place, then repeat the process until you had dialed the whole number. (They still call it dialing, even though it isn't generally literal dialing any more.)

Rotary Phone
(This one is fancier than the
ones we generally used)
Photo by Himanshu Ranpara on Unsplash

I remember when we got touchtone phones. I thought they were cool! We didn't have to turn the dial and then wait for it to scroll back. We could just push buttons for the numbers. Dialing was faster!

Though I am told there weren't as many issues with party line in the '80s in the US, we had it in the Philippines, and I know it was a thing in previous decades in the US. With fewer phones in the world and only so many slots in the operator's switchboard, several houses were on the same connection. The individual phone number only went to one house, but sometimes we would pick up the phone and hear a conversation in progress at other houses. We had to hang up as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt the conversation, and wait for them to be done before making our call. Sometimes it took several times checking before they were done. (In an emergency, you could ask them to call each other back later, but that was generally considered rude, so I don't recall ever doing that.) It was a bit annoying at times. We also sometimes had to be careful what we said over the phone, in case someone at a different house happened to be listening in.

By the '90s, we still had a phone operator, but their role had changed considerably. By this time, they didn't just answer when you picked up the phone. If you wanted the operator, you had to dial "0". I generally called the operator when I wanted to find someone's phone number, particularly if they weren't in our city, and maybe weren't in our phone book.

Speaking of phone books, the phone company would deliver heavy brick-like phone books to our house annually. Most of the book had thin white pages with a long list of names and phone numbers, arranged alphabetically. It worked pretty well, unless several people had the same name. Good luck if you needed to call John Smith! The end of the book, the pages were yellow, and were thus called the yellow pages (I know, super imaginative name). They had phone numbers for businesses, and also included more information on the businesses, such as addresses and sometimes logos. Radio and TV commercials for USWest Dex phone books advertised that they were "The one that gets used." A choir in the ads sang, "Used! Used! This one gets used! This is the one that we use!" (or something like that) to the tune of the Anvil Chorus from Verdi's Il Trovatore.

As phones continued to advance, they introduced the wireless phone. This was very cool, as we didn't have to stay in one place due to the phone cord. I was jealous of people who had one. (One time I was talking to my friend Dan on the phone on April Fools Day and told him that we had one, following it up with "April Fools!" It was among my more lame April Fools jokes.)

When I was in high school in the mid-'90s, one of my friends in our choir had a new kind of phone that he carried with him. It was called a cellular telephone. The fact that he had one told me that he must be rich.

As cell phones became more popular, we started talking about cell phones and landlines to differentiate between cell phones and the old-school ones connected to the wall.

There were several phone companies. American Telephone & Telegraph (AT&T) went way back to 1885, way before my time. (In fact, some of my ancestors hadn't even immigrated to the US yet at that time.) There was USWest, which later became Qwest, which later merged with CenturyLink, which is now part of Lumen Technologies. When I got my first cell phone in 2000, I went to the VoiceStream kiosk in the middle of Northgate Mall (see my previous Days of Yore post about shopping). VoiceStream would later be purchased by T-Mobile. Bell Atlantic (named for Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone) and GTE merged into Verizon in 2000. T-Mobile acquired Sprint a few years ago. There were others.

Cell phones started out pretty large, about the size of your average brick. Nokia phones were known for being indestructible. Eventually, the Android came out. Previous to that, my only association with Androids was in Star Trek. (They were also called Droids, which I associated with Star Wars.) Somewhere around that time, Apple introduced the iPhone. Having never been a big Apple fan, I opted for Android, but people I know with iPhones love them. As smartphones started to eclipse "dumb phones", they got smaller. Then they started getting larger, as apps on the phones gave the option of watching shows, taking pictures, playing games, and more. Many "dumb phones" could take pictures. I remember taking pictures on my old flip phones. Some "dumb phones" also had the option of playing games. Smartphones, however, opened up a whole new world of possibilities. Read all of my Days of Yore posts so far and you'll see many of the ways I use mine. My grandpa was amazed at all the ways I used my telephone, when he just used his to call people.

Image by Sakurambo, Public Domain

Cell phones also gave the option of texting. They had the same arrangement of buttons as the touchtone phones, and the letters on them allowed for writing texts to people. At first texting was rather labor intensive. To type an A, you just needed to press 2. To type a C, you had to press 2 three times. To type an S, you had to press 7 four times. One of my last "dumb phones" had a nifty keyboard that you could pull out. That made texting easier. With the advent of smartphones, they had keyboards built in. That made texting considerably easier, though smartphones still prove to be not so smart when they decide their predictive text and autocorrect make much more sense than what you explicitly typed. 

Shockingly, I don't use the old style of phone any more. I use my cell phone! I sometimes even use it to call people. I have a candlestick phone that works (it is a bit more modern than the traditional ones, in that it has touchtone buttons arranged like a rotary phone), but it's mainly a decoration now. I bought it as a prop for a play. For a long time we used it in case our power went out and our other phones that depend on electricity didn't work. We don't even have a landline any more.