Howdy, y’all. I’m fixing to do this working over again, due to feeling stagnant in my current employment, so I thought I’d post it here.
A little backstory - approximately 5 years ago, I was broke as a fuckin’ joke, working in restaurants (front of house), and couldn’t seem to land any interviews outside of the food service industry. Everyone tells you these skills are transferrable, and they sure are! But it seemed like HR departments and hiring managers disagreed. Since it was a long time ago, I’m not sure what the ratio was with regards to “thank you for your time, but” emails and just straight ghosting me, but it was exhausting, disappointing, and discouraging. If you’ve been job hunting in the last, oh, forever? You know the feelings. I’d done straight up Money spells to some success at that point, but I wanted stability, not windfalls.
So, I decided to try to boost my chances. The original spell I did 5 years ago was a jar spell, remember when those were all the rage on tumblr? Yeah, same. I think they’re back in vogue now, judging by my youtube recommendations. Anyway.
My first step was to really REALLY polish up my resume. Break out the thesaurus because I got FANCY with it. Host/server, okay. Was I seating and feeding people? No, I was managing capacity and precisely coordinating with partnering departments to provide optimal service to our clientele. Get it? Shit like that. Once I had that all fancied up, I got it printed at the kinkos on thick, tinted paper (I believe it was like 25% cotton with an ivory/cream tint).
Then, I went home, and on the BACK of the page, I wrote down exactly what I wanted. For example:
- Office environment
- No in-person customer interaction
- at least $XX/hour
- provides full benefits (health insurance, etc)
- ANYTHING BUT the restaurant industry
- clean environment (because the restaurant I was working at had a roach problem and like ew)
So, as you can see, I was pretty broad with it. It would be my first big-girl job (not saying food service isn’t big girl/boy jobs, but I desperately wanted something that would be more cushy and I wouldn’t have to close and open every Friday/Saturday/Sunday). Wide net. Gimme something. ANYTHING.
I wrote the above things in green because green = money, and I figured employment ALSO = money. I folded it up as tiny as it could go and stuck it in my bra during my next shift because I got sweaty at work and I wanted my DNA, link it to me, as much as possible. OH SIDE NOTE: I also timed this so it would be on the new moon because new beginnings.
So after that shift I got home probably around 11pm, the restaurant closed at 10 but sidework, you get it. I was pissed off, I was exhausted, and I felt just gross. Taking the little folded up resume from my bra and it was DAMP. And smelled gross. But it sure had my DNA all over it, so, good.
I put that in the bottom of an empty spaghetti sauce jar. My plan at that point was to put a buncha honey in there too, to cover the paper, but I was outta honey so I used off-brand maple “flavored” syrup (hey, I said I was broke!). The point of that obviously being to sweeten future employers to me specifically. Then I emptied some red pepper flake packets from Pizza the Hut on top, to light a fire under their ass and HIRE ME ALREADY. Then I dropped in all the loose change I had in my wallet, I don’t remember the denominations or amount, but it wasn’t much. Then filled to the top with some full-moon water because come on big money no whammies! Sealed the lid on the jar with super glue. I think I lit a candle on top but I honestly don’t remember.
What I did after that was shake that damn jar EVERY DAY, every morning before my shift and every night before I went to bed, and yelled at it HIRE ME HIRE ME HIRE ME!!! Like, all the rage and frustration I had towards my current job, went to that fucking jar. And then I continued applying to everything on Indeed and Craigslist and a local FB jobs group that I thought I was even MILDLY qualified for.
Interestingly enough, my first bite wasn’t even for a job I’d applied to online. One of my friends hit me up and said her work was hiring, it’s an office, it’s in an interesting industry, pay starts at a good amount, full bennies, the works. And that’s the job I got. I shook that jar like hell off and on from the time I woke up to when the interview was that afternoon, aced it, got the job offer a few days later.
Now, here we are 5 years later, I’m still here, but circumstances have changed dramatically and I’m no longer content at this job. There’s no more room for advancement. People who hit managerial level stay there till they retire. Good for the company, bad for me and my professional ambitions.
So it’s time to redo the work, and I think I’m making some changes. My spellwork has gotten to be more intensive and creative, and I find if I pour my ENTIRE SELF into it, it really fucking works.
Additionally, now that I have this experience within the office-work world, I know what I want, so my list of requirements is a bit less… open. Which might make this more difficult. I’d also be switching industries. My current job is actually pretty niche, we’ll call it Industry A. It’s fun, it’s cool, I like the subject matter, but there’s really not a lot of openings within the industry. If there ARE openings, they’d be an absolutely massive paycut, or I’d have to move to an area of the country that I do NOT want to move to. So we’re gonna hit up these transferrable skills again.
I’m also in a neat position where one of my absolute besties is an HR director, and she wrote my new resume for me, and it looks DOPE AS HELL. Unfortunately she ALSO works in a pretty niche industry, and it’s one that I have absolutely no interest in, otherwise she’d hire me right now.
Also also, I know exactly what industry I want to move into, and I know I’ve got the chops to do it, I just need like… a boost. I’ve been applying to loads of jobs, again, Indeed/LinkedIn/what have you. I’ve had interviews with three different companies, one went all the way to the 3rd round, but it was also in my current industry and I’m 99% sure they were mining me for competitor info, but I can’t prove that.
So here’s my improved plan. It’s still a jar spell because I like them.
- Resume
- Back of resume, list of requirements.
- Honey (I’ve got some really nice local honey I traded this lady some livestock supplies for)
- Brown sugar (further sweetening)
- Sewing pins (for gentle “corrective” action)
- Red pepper flakes again (same reason as last time)
- Cinnamon (further heat it up)
- Orange peel (success)
- white salt (to purify/filter out any negative influences against me)
- Full moon water (again, same reason)
I’m gonna do the same “fold it up and keep it in my bra” plan as last time, though I do get remarkably less sweaty at my desk job, and do approximately the same steps as last time, just more of them because more ingredients. I also plan to do a green candle on top again.
Oh wow this got REALLY REALLY LONG. Anyway, I’m going to do this on the next New Moon, and will HOPEFULLYYYYYYY have some good news shortly after that. Thanks for reading. Sorry I’m wordy. If you try it, let me know how it goes for you?
xoxo Bea