Finding a job, suit proves difficult task

Over the summer, the Career Services Office was kind enough to send me a timeline telling me when I had to complete each step of the job-finding process.

I quickly found out that since I was getting a random liberal arts bachelor’s degree, there was no way I was qualified for almost any job. To be anything from a paralegal to a real estate agent, you had to take classes not offered in my College of Arts and Sciences. There was something called a dictaphone that appeared to be of employment relevance and tons of software not even my most complex environmental modeling and statistics classes had remotely mentioned in the route of my academic failure.

Every job listing required experience, connections or some form of transportation outside the bounds of the T. All I could think of was how it was going to suck that I spent my college life working my life away at my major, minor and plethora of internships to turn my part-time retail gig into a full-time profession – if I was lucky enough to get benefits other than my employee discount in the process.

Eventually it occurred to me that I could tackle the job process the way I eat my Reese’s Pieces – I could pick at every part before eating the whole: I would perform every aspect of the search except the actual applying and interviewing, avoid the juicy, rich turmoil of facing employers and breaking my risk-averse comfort zone. I would tweak my résumé, but not actually post it, sign up for every online job search site, register into temporary agencies, chose cities and apartments on Craig’s List and make lists of places I would like to work but would probably never actually apply to. Through all the lists and timetables, advice and networking, there was one crucial element to my job search that no one had warned me about. I needed a suit.

I know non-profits, newsrooms and everywhere I would ever want to work or had any intern or volunteer experience working with did not require employees to come to work in a suit. I did learn from years of retail, theater and scouting for a modeling agency that if you do not look the part, you are about as useful in the office world as a Post-it that’s lost its adhesive. I had to at least look superior, professional, determined and well tailored.

I had been flirting with a certain suit since it arrived early in the fall at my store. It had discreetly gingham charcoal print pants with a matching two-button blazer. One day, I went so far as to try on the pants, which looked gloriously professional, but we had sold out of the coat. I waited a day or so and someone returned a suit top in my size, but as Murphy’s Law always wins, the pants had sold out before I had a chance to buy them.

A few weeks passed and December break was nearing. I had not applied to one single place and was bargaining on my internship for the next semester to find me the right contacts in fear of the fateful day my Boston University tenure would run out and I had to begin paying my own rent.

As luck would have it, some good soul had returned a pair of fabulous lightweight wool gray pants with subtle white pin stripes placed far enough apart to add a hint of character. And then I saw it. The suit top. Pant and suit. Romeo and Juliet if they’d had better timing.

I’d been paid that morning, and I saw my whole paycheck going right back into my store as I ran my debit card to the nearest cash register. The next half-step to employment would be mine. I could wear it through April, with the faux pas of wool in the spring curbed by cool Boston weather. And by April, I calculated, I should probably have found gainful employment.

Your first suit is your first commitment to an orthodox adult working life. I knew at this point in my life, I would never be a rock star or a trophy wife or a manager at McDonalds. It was too late for me to join these paths. My dharma was to be an urban career woman: most likely never leaving Boston until I was married in my very late 20s, avoiding offspring at all costs and spending my time schmoozing other business people and stressing that the Starbucks line was too long after my T commute from Brighton every morning for the next few years. The suit committed me to that socio-economic status. I was ready. I could always be a rock star when I retired.

And now second semester begins, and that résumé tweaking and online registering has paid off. I begin interviewing soon, and how many other girls can already say they know exactly what they are going to wear?