[MISC]: Looking for Work & Roommates

Short version: It stinks.

Mostly for being mind-numbingly boring. Yesterday, I spent a couple hours going through 110 matches on Roommates.com, filtering out the 19-year-old girls, the folks who didn't want a place until at least September (although at the rate I'm going, I'll be checking them out again in a month), or the people who, despite entries saying no pets, actually did have a flying squirrel that would stay in their room, honest. Then I'm left staring at the people with $2000 as their maximum rent. Are these people who are in the market for the type of apartment that could double as a sitcom set, or people who just didn't fill in that field when entering their information?

Similarly, mornings are spent going through on-line job listings on Monster, HotJobs, and BostonWorks, trying to figure out which of the "new" job listings are actually new. I have probably sent my resume to KForce about twenty times for the same job on BostonWorks, but if they're going to keep marking it as "added [today - 1]", they're going to keep getting my resume.

Now, at this very moment, I am pondering the "follow-up call". This is the call made after an interview, apparently to make sure that the other person is still aware of your interest. I can't imagine how useful it is - if a company hasn't called me back, I would assume that it is because they have someone they believe would be a better fit. What possible good is calling going to do? Do hiring managers really get swayed by that and think along the lines of "well, we were going to go with that guy who had used C++ more recently than his junior year of college, but you're so eager that we'll go with you instead"? The only use I can think of is that if they've got a number of equally qualified candidates, the one to call first is probably either the most organized or the most desperate for work (and thus willing to take the lowest salary).

Well, that's me, no question about it. And I don't mean "organized".