The Lemon Life | online magazine offering a fresh perspective on post-grad life.

Words by: Niki Bartl

Image by: twid

The night I arrived home in Ottawa, fresh from graduating with no job prospects, my Dad dropped a bomb on me at the dinner table.

“Looking for a job is your new full time job.”

This statement, delivered while he was helping himself to another serving of meatloaf, pulled me out of my reverie of spending the hot summer months sunning myself by the pool while my mom brought me freshly squeezed lemonade and Vogue magazines.

My dad was nothing if not firm about it and promptly woke me up at nine the next morning. We had breakfast while reading interesting articles from the newspaper together after which he turned to me with a firm smile and said “Get going.”

I spent the next weeks from 9 am to 5 pm, with an hour break for lunch, at my computer putting together a spreadsheet of jobs I had a applied to, with a column for a contact name, whether or not I had an interview, and when that interview was. This helped me keep everything on track. I read advertising blogs, Marketing Magazine, and familiarized myself with every agency under the sun.

Things started to pick up and I stopped looking longingly out of my window at the sunshine and focused on the task at hand. Interviews began to flow like the freshly squeezed lemonade my mom would bring to my desk and I landed my first real job. Well, okay, my first real unpaid internship.

Four months later, I’m living in Toronto and my three month unpaid internship, which was supposed to turn into a full time paying job, has actually evolved into… a four month unpaid internship. Mustering up my bravery, I informed my bosses that I wouldn’t be staying for month five and found myself unemployed again.

But now Dad wasn’t around to keep an eye on me. Finding my days rather empty, I went to museums, walked around town, had lunch dates with friends, and convinced my boyfriend to call in sick to work so we could play Xbox all day.

Looking for a job had become a hobby for me. I spent about an hour a day looking, but lucked out because we were still in a stable economy where many agencies were growing. I nailed three out of three interviews and ended up at a great agency. All in all, my time out of work lasted about three weeks but it was incredibly fulfilling and enabled me to take a crash course in the best Toronto had to offer.

At the end of my second jobless experience, the question popped up in my mind: should looking for a job be a full time job? There’s no real black or white answer. It depends on a lot of factors: how much you need work, how long you’ve been out of work, the state of the economy, and maybe even whether or not there’s a parent looking over your shoulder.

I wouldn’t change either of the experiences I had – the first to get me out of Ottawa as quickly as possible and the advantages of dedicated full attention to a job search – the interviews come quicker, are more numerous, and you learn a lot about the industry you want to be in. The second let me enjoy my time in Toronto and allowed me to have a stay-cation before putting my nose back to the grindstone, a luxury which people don’t necessarily have. If I had to do it all again? I’d probably go via my Dad’s route – after all, fathers sometimes know best.

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