Job Searches and Unicorns

The headhunters won't call. The job requirements will be senselessly inflated. You'll get  interviews where they'll practically ask you to start that afternoon and then you'll never hear from them again. You'll labor over applications for jobs that are just being advertised so they can say they advertised and everyone (but you) knows Betty in Budget & Finance already has a lock on it. You'll use your network of friends and relatives again and again hoping to find an opening that won't draw 3,000 competitors. You'll scan job boards and search sites and apply for things you wouldn't have considered a few months ago and each rejection will be a knife in your heart. You'll fight depression and learn an upbeat patter to hide it because you know that getting a job is like applying for a loan and you only get an offer if they think you don't desperately need the dough. But you do, so you scramble about. You attend professional groups and do volunteer work and take a class or two so you can add them to your credentials and then one day, a unicorn shows up on your doorstep and you get a job and when you have a moment to sit down alone somewhere you wonder what you could have done to have landed it earlier and the answer is "Nothing." Just be happy that it happened and later, no matter how far you go in life or how good things get, never forget what it was like to send off a dream and wait for a reply.