Excuses, excuses

Am I right to complain??

My only friend who knows my entire backstory thinks I have too many excuses and doesn't want to hear about them anymore. Which is true. However, it's not as easy as it sounds to decide what you want to do in life, learn everything that you can to get there on your own, and then get your dream job.

For example, we were discussing careers in marketing. I was saying I would love to do more brand management and consulting work, as opposed to the communications-based marketing roles that are available at most small and medium companies (i.e. communicating/negotiating with outside vendors, purchasing services and ordering materials, planning events, coordinating mailings and email communications, etc.). Unfortunately, I can't seem to get an entry-level position in any field, so all of this is theoretical (at least for me).

This is the basically how our conversation went:

Me: Most of the creative services at the companies that I've interned at were outsourced to outside marketing firms.
Friend: You should apply to those places then.
Me: I have, but they don't seem to be hiring.
Friend: I've seen lots of those job postings in that area lately.
Me: Those openings are probably in the design area. Unfortunately, I don't know many of those fancy design programs like Dreamweaver, Flash animation, etc.
Friend: Well, learn them.
Me: I can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a single program.
Friend: Learn them for free. Go on YouTube and watch the tutorials.
Me: But would that really count towards work experience for a job or even on a resume?
Friend: It would show employers that you are a go-getter. You make too many excuses.

The conversation ended with my friend saying: I don't want to have this conversation anymore.



This is why I have been blogging again--I've run out of people in real life to vent to.



I was talking with my other friend about how I believe the job market has picked up in the metropolitan area near our college. She replied saying nothing much has changed. I point out that everyone we know (including her) has gotten job offers very, very recently. She maintains that hiring hasn't picked up much, not really.


There's this phenomenon in psychology about how people tend to attribute their own failings to external influences, while blaming other people's failings on their own doing. Some may argue that I do it too when I claim I can't find a job by no fault of my own. I truly believe that I've tried absolutely EVERYTHING I could think of.

Examples of this phenomenon:

• "I can't find a job, but it's not my fault because I did everything right."
• "I just found a job, as did all of my friends, but hiring has absolutely not picked up in our area. We just happened to be a bunch of outstanding, highly-qualified candidates."
• "You can't find a job because you're not trying hard enough. Stop using the economy as an excuse."

From Wikipedia:

Self-serving bias: "A self-serving bias occurs when people attribute their successes to internal or personal factors but attribute their failures to situational factors beyond their control. The self-serving bias can be seen in the common human tendency to take credit for success but to deny responsibility for failure."

Fundamental attribution error: "In social psychology, the fundamental attribution error (also known as correspondence bias or attribution effect) describes the tendency to over-value dispositional or personality-based explanations for the observed behaviors of others while under-valuing situational explanations for those behaviors. The fundamental attribution error is most visible when people explain the behavior of others. It does not explain interpretations of one's own behavior—where situational factors are often taken into consideration. This discrepancy is called the actor-observer bias."

Not that I'm saying this has anything to do with my own situation.