My lack of skills, or Why I still have no job

OK. The snow was fun. But I need to do something else now. You can only say so much about snow in two week period. Especially if all that' new about the snow is that it got deeper. All this time inside has given me time to think about my goal of getting a job, or career, or whatever you want to call it. I'm not even sure it counts as actual productive thinking though. Most of it was random things I thought while reading blogs this week.

First was What Do You Do on Tranquility du Jour. I have no idea how this happens, but it seems as if lately everything that Kimberly writes about is either something I have read about recently or something that I'm thinking about. Anyways, its about all of the things that she does, and how it's super hard for her to do that 1 minute elevator pitch that most career people say you need to be able to do. As I was reading through the list, all I could think about was, "Wow. This sure is a lot of stuff. How would you put that on a resume?" Which got me thinking again. "Boy I hate resumes." For the life of me, I could never figure out what exactly to put on a resume. Here's why.

They tell you to put the following things on your resume. places you worked - what you did - how long you worked there - what's your major - what's your GPA - where do you live - how do we contact you - what are your skills - what do you do with your time besides go to school (extra curricular activities for students) - references - when will you graduate. I don't think most of that ever made sense to me. Especially since if ask different people they will tell you to leave out different things on the list. Which is also why I hate career centers. They say they'll help you get a job, but it doesn't always end up that way. It made me laugh to find a post about college educations and career centers by Penelope Trunk. It appears as if she dislikes them more than I do. But in any case here is what they tell you to put on/leave off your resume.


If your GPA is crap leave it off so they don't know.
-but what if i don't care what they think. i chose my major because it was difficult and the best way to learn how to do it was to get other people to teach me. isn't that what school is for anyways? if i could teach myself easily why would i pay others to help me learn?

Just put that you will graduate 4 years from when you started. Until you get to 4 years from when you started and realize you don't know when you'll finish, then just keep putting next year.
- i'm convinced that this shouldn't even be on there until you are applying for a full time job for which you need a degree. it's just depressing to those who don't graduate on time and makes all freshman feel like getting out on time is better than taking the time to actually learn everything they will need to know when they get out.

Put your current school address, even if you move every year. Just change it on your resume when you move.
- but what if i want them to be able to find me? i have had over 5 different addresses since i started college. three on campus, one off campus, and my parents house in nj. even if they wanted to hire me they probably couldn't.

Then there's the part about leadership positions and skills. I hate this part. Mainly because most of my leadership positions have nothing to do with my major. They never quite look like they belong on my resume. How do you explain to a hiring manager that you are one of the vice presidents of a dance group and that is a reason to look deeper into hiring you? The worst for me is unnamed positions. I tend to have unnamed positions a lot. I don't like it when things obviously need to be done but nobody is doing them, or when meetings are unproductive because nobody knows what its going to be about before they get there, and i can count. I end up being an unofficial secretary, meeting coordinator, or treasurer sometimes. But unofficial positions aren't really traditional resume material.

And skills. What are my skills. I have about 100 of them. But most of what I do on a daily basis isn't really work worthy. Not unless you completely reword what I say that I do. For instance, since I have been home I have,

Started a blog = learning html coding,
Written posts for my blog = Researched topics
Taken pictures for my blog =
Gotten rid of 40 or so things that were no longer needed = simplified work processes
Updated my Twitter and Facebook statuses = social media guru
Checked my email about 50 times a day = easily reachable
Read 2 self-help books =

I don't even know how you would turn those into marketable skills. Maybe I just need to figure out how to use words better. If I can turn what I do into something that needs to be done, maybe then they'll hire me. Until then, can anybody suggest any skills that I either have now, or can work on without having a real job?