You Live and You Learn

This post may be more aptly titled, "Thoughts, Questions, Discoveries, and Life Ponderings Whilst Conducting My First Ever Big Girl Job Search." That seems a little long, but I'm not ruling it out completely just because... I mean, how often does one have the opportunity to say "whilst"?

1. Stating a desired salary is the most awkward thing, ever. Let's be honest, I've spent the past four years working as a part-time coffeehouse barista and summer camp counselor just to put gas in my car -- anything over $5,000 a year is an insane amount of money to me at this point. Beggars can't be choosers, people. I simply desire to have a salary. Please don't make me continue to fill in the desired salary box.
2. Finding a grammatical error/typo on a company's job listing should automatically guarantee me the position, right?
3. When I click "full-time" under the search criteria, I do not mean "full-time for the next three months, and then you'll have to find another job." Bummer.
4. There are graphic designers who work with print and layout design, and there are graphic designers who work with web design. We need distinct, completely unrelated names that do not overlap in the slightest, because it's slightly discouraging to find ten "graphic design" positions and then realize that the majority of them require flash/animation/computer coding skills that I do not possess.
5. Victoria's Secret is currently hiring a graphic designer, if anyone is interested...
6. Pretty sure my favorite requirement to even apply to a job (thus far) is 300+ friends on Facebook and over 200 followers on Twitter. It baffles me to think that simply could not have existed five years ago... or to think that somebody could be denied a job for not having enough Twitter followers.
7. For whatever strange reason, I've always loved filling out surveys, so oddly enough, the whole job application thing is growing on me. If I try really hard, I can almost pretend that I'm spending hours filling out a bunch of surveys... all about me...
8. I understand that for most jobs, the overall importance of the resumé is the content, not the layout & design. But let's be honest: my resumé is all about the looks. It's kind of the whole point. However, it's slightly frustrating when companies won't accept a PDF file... Word documents only. How am I supposed to express my creativity in a Word document? Certainly not like this:
Yeah, that's what I thought.
9. While everyone older than me has already come to this conclusion, I felt the need to reiterate its truth: I don't already have 30 years of experience in the design field, so I'm horribly under-qualified for every position I've applied to thus far. Who knew that "entry-level" actually meant "a minimum of 3-5 years experience"?
10. Everything would be grand if somebody would pay me a desirable salary (whatever that's supposed to be...) to live in North Carolina and design cards and invitations of all sorts: save the dates, wedding, birth announcements, birthdays, parties, holidays, etc. [I'm looking at you, Tiny Prints. Why are you in California, and why are you currently not hiring? I could make every single one of those designs and we both know it.] If you know of anyone who could make this happen, send them my way. I'm getting really good at filling out applications...
Let's go, #jobsearch2012 :)