Interviewing for a job

About the time I finished school, a new bred of job placement companies had begun to spring up all over the place. The idea was for you to fill out a bunch of forms about your interests, education, and previous work experience (I had none), then talk to a local career placement person who would match you up as closely as possible with jobs in the area that needed to be filled. If that potential employer hired you, the placement company then received one-fourth to one-half of one month’s income as payment for their service.

Today government services have something similar for free, and so do Internet services. This sounds great, but the one-on-one rapport and local-to-local support is just not there. However, all the news about the jobless rate had given me no cause to pause to consider this until my now-grown children told me, “I don’t know how to get a job!” It occurred to me then that might be true for you or your now-grown children too.

Lord knows, Christians are worthy of their hire! In fact, the Lord says that clearly in Luke 10:7. The first step, however, is to know what God wants you to do. Perhaps that might be to go into journalism or host a Christian talk show or work on a medical team that will help you prepare for a mission trip someday. Or maybe you need a job to pay the bills but not drain your creativity as you focus on your writing ministry.

Remember, too, that Christian poets and writers have the joy of knowing that any job or career will give you something to write about, so nothing is ever wasted! And, in Christ, we especially need to remember – again and again in the Christian life – that all things will and do come together for good for those who love God (Romans 8:28.)

With those pivotal thoughts in mind, consider these suggestions:

Pray.

Listen.

Be honest with yourself about yourself.

Forget about money for a minute. (Yes, I know you need it. So do I, but this cannot be the guiding force in life, and you know why! To refresh: “No one can serve two rulers for you will hate the one, and love the other; or you will hold to the one and disdain the other. You cannot serve God and money,” Matthew 6:24. You can, of course, serve God and get money, but you cannot get God and serve money. That's just how it is.)

List a key word for anything you suspect you’re “good at” or feel drawn at all to do.

List your natural talents and God-given gifts, whether they seem marketable or not.

Also list any experience God has given you or education provided in your areas of interest.

Pray for God to bring all of the above together and to bring to mind job possibilities for what makes you uniquely you.

Look for work in that area, even if it's only a starter position.

If asked to apply online, follow the guidelines. Then arrange to follow up with a one-on-one, local-to-local meeting, so the potential employer can see you face to face and see that glow of God in your eyes. (If you care about God, you have it. I promise!)

Also, very important at any in-person interview, relax! Take that proverbially calming deep breath, and be yourself - your best self, of course :)

Most importantly, trust God your Heavenly Father to love you enough to know what you need, to close doors that aren’t quite right for you, and to give you a gentle nudge in the right direction – right because it’s right for you.

~~

©2012, Mary Harwell Sayler.

May God bless you and the work to which you have been called.

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Writing power outages

Poets and writers encounter down times in their writing for a variety of reasons, ranging from power outages to phone interruptions to feeling uninspired. Every time you get a new computer or upgrade software, you probably experience down times, too, as it takes time to save time working in and through electronic equipment that may be new to you.

Regardless of the reasons for the power outages in your writing life, those downtimes can bring uptimes for placing your fiction, nonfiction, children’s stories, devotionals, Bible studies, church curriculum, and poetry with journals, e-zines, book publishers, or your church’s denominational publishing headquarters. To do this:

Study book catalogs and back issues of periodicals and magazines you subscribed to, got at church, or bought from a newsstand.

Notice the topics, tone, style, and length of the manuscripts published in your genre.

In a word processing file, list every publisher who publishes work similar to yours. Add info about their editorial requirements and contact information. Or make a 3x5 file card filed alphabetically for each publishing company you like.

If your power loss does not include an electrical outage or lost hard drive, research literary journals, book publishers, church publishing headquarters, and e-zines on the Internet.

How?

Study publishing companies as you browse through titles in online bookstores such as Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, and the shopping pages offered by the publishers themselves.

Check out literary journals and e-zines readily found on the Internet.

You’ll find new publishing possibilities through social networks too.

When inspiration returns you to writing again, you’ll be ready to plug in your powerful words to the publishing markets you found during downtimes that cause upturns in your publishing credits or book sales.

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© 2012, Mary Harwell Sayler, all rights reserved.

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Looking for good when bad things happen

I admit it: Pollyanna stories shaped my thinking, and Psalms of trust and thanksgiving took it from there. Sounds nice, but this tendency to look for the good in bad situations can be a big, big problem – for me and you and other people too! How? Timing.

Looking instantaneously for good can squelch emotions and cover up unattended injuries before they're drained, cleansed, and treated, so wounds get septic instead of healing well.

Looking for good right away when other people go through hard times can make them feel frustrated and alone with no one to understand their anguish – sort of like Job felt in the company of his “friends.”

If we happen to give advice or write manuscripts meant to help, help, help people during difficult times, the above problems can make our words come across as unrealistic and syrupy or judgmental and holier-than-thou.

Back to that thing called Timing.

Immediately looking for good – first thing – before responding with sympathy, empathy, or some kind of kind acknowledgement seems, well, insensitive. That’s true for ourselves, too, as we face our own problems and concerns. For instance, telling ourselves, “It’s okay,” denies the facts and feelings at hand, making them seem in-valid.

The truth is: It’s not okay! But, thank God, it will be. Won’t it? That depends.

A good thing about bad things is having them remind us to reassess our priorities.

A good thing about bad things is having them to shake us up enough to look and pray for more options to broaden our search, get creative, and expand our views or borders.

A good thing about bad things is the opportunity to remember the goodness of God and how our Perfectly Loving Heavenly Father wants only the best and blessed for us.

Bible verses such as Romans 8:28, the Lord’s Prayer or Our Father, and many Psalms of lament that end in trust and thanksgiving also help us to remember what we believe.

Life can get really hard! Situations and worries can overwhelm. And again and again, we have to ask– and answer for ourselves – the most important question in our lives:

Do I trust in God or not?

Oh, I pray you do! And I pray I do, too, as I look for God to bring good from worries about family, interruptions at work, outcomes on medical tests, and recompense for a direct lightning strike last week that fried all of our electronics then struck our checkbook!

May God encourage us this day, give us the prayers to pray, and help us to see the good that only our Good God can bring.

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© 2012, Mary Harwell Sayler. Thanks for sharing these blog articles with your church or writing group and letting people know where you found them. For brief articles on a variety of Bible topics, see Blogs by Mary – and pass them on!