I was twenty-three, a few months married, living in a village where I still didn't know anyone, and in the first week of January I decided that the problem was volume.
That's the only honest way to describe my sent folder from that month. On one Monday afternoon, between 13:16 and 13:21 — five minutes — I applied to be a secretary, a research assistant, and a television news anchor. Same CV, three times. "Hi attached is resume." That week: a call centre, an office manager, a youth centre, and at eleven at night, medical billing. I don't remember thinking any of these were me. I remember thinking that one of them would say yes, and that the one that said yes would be the answer.
A week in I applied for the office manager job again, and put a number on myself for the first time in my life. "I would like to make around 6500 per month. I think you would find me as an asset to your company." That's what I thought a whole month of me was worth, and I said it to a stranger at a Gmail address who never wrote back.
THE VERSION OF ME THAT WOULD EXIST IF SOMEONE SAID YES
I was in my third year of a music college, teaching kids scales in the evenings. On the 16th I found a new angle — the local anglo classifieds board had business listings — and between 16:37 and 16:59, twenty-two minutes, I wrote five strangers and offered myself. The line I'm proudest of from that whole month: "As an Anglo with a foot in the live music industry, I believe I have a lot to potentially offer a company like yours."
A foot in the live music industry. I was a student who taught scales. But I wasn't lying, exactly. I was describing the version of me that would exist if one person said yes.
The next day the first real recruiter finally called — and got nothing, because my phone was dead and on the charger. That's the texture of the month more than any of the pitches: a man applying for a dozen office jobs whose phone was dead the afternoon the first recruiter rang.
FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES
Then came a Sunday, and it took fifty-five minutes.
At 09:50 an email landed from the national federation of a sport I'd played and coached for years. They were accepting applications for a national-team coaching job.
At 10:14 I opened a blank document and built a CV from nothing. Not my CV — a different person's. At the top it said my name, and underneath it, two words I had never once put on a job application: the thing I actually already was.
Under SKILLS I wrote something I'd never written in any office application: "Passionate and knowledgeable about the game. Strong in building fundamentals. Capable of building teamwork, making every player count and contribute. Student of the game." Then years as a defensive coach — "built two very strong defenses who played in the championship game each year" — and the honours, typed in a run without punctuation, the way you do when you're not bragging, just counting.
Last edit 10:39. Sent 10:45. And I did not write "attached is resume." For the first time that month I wrote a covering line that assumed the reader would want to check my references.
THE LETTER THAT COULD HAVE ENDED IT
The next Monday the music college's collections office emailed to say I owed them tuition. Three bullets: the debt would bar me from end-of-semester exams, bar me from the ensemble week, and — the third line — my studies would be terminated immediately.
Six hours later I wrote to a distance university asking whether my existing courses would transfer. I don't think I was giving up that night. I was doing what I always do when a door starts closing, which is stand in a different doorway and check the hinges.
THREE OF ME AT ONCE
By the last week there were three of me running. There was the salesman, cold-emailing strangers on behalf of a company that funded building renovations. There was still the music teacher: twice that fortnight PayPal told me a mother had sent twenty-five dollars for her son's lessons. Fifty dollars in a month, from one family, one kid.
And there was the coach — the only one of the three building something instead of asking for something.
I wrote to the league commissioner: "I just wanted a list of the requirements. The more detailed the better." Three lines came back. Thirty-five players minimum. A certified coach. Affiliation with a registered organisation. I replied the same day with the only question that mattered: "How does one become a certified coach?" Days later I sent him everything else I didn't know, in one unashamed paragraph, ending on the line that is the whole month: "Is there anything else I need to know about that I might have left out?"
Meanwhile a guy was quoting me eleven hundred for helmets and shoulder pads. I was costing out a team with no players, no organisation, and no certified coach.
WHO ARE YOU, PLEASE
So on the 30th at 20:11 I stopped costing it and posted it. One line, to the whole village mailing list:
"Flag football is coming to the village! To sign up, email me."
Thirty-eight minutes later the man who ran ultimate frisbee in town wrote back three words: "Who are you, please?"
And I answered him, and it's the sentence I'd been failing to write in every cover letter for a month: "Hi my name is [me], and I recently moved here. I am a coach and a former player in the league."
No attachment. No salary expectation. No "I think you would find me as an asset to your company."
Someone asked what ages. Ten to fourteen. Someone asked what day. I didn't have one. The next evening a stranger wrote: "hey i heard you are starting a flag football league in town." Heard. From someone. Already.
The month didn't end with a job. Two days later I was still emailing that office manager address one last time: "I sent a CV and I never got a reply. I really think I can help your office." But that same afternoon I wrote to a local nonprofit and laid the football thing out like someone who already ran it — field time, transport, equipment, collecting the players' payments — and finished: "I can handle all of these responsibilities."
Two hours later: "I think we can move forward with this. Lets meet in person and talk."
Thirty-one days, north of twenty applications, fifty dollars earned — and one line on a neighbourhood mailing list that got more traction in a week than every CV I sent that month combined. Every other email that month was me asking someone to give me a title. That one was me announcing one.
Three things I took out of it and still use:
Volume is not a strategy. Twenty applications with the same CV is one application, sent twenty times.
The credential you already have beats the one you're auditioning for. I spent a month trying to become an office manager, and fifty-five minutes writing down what I already was. Only one of those got answered.
Announce, don't apply. "Would you hire me?" gets filed. "This is happening, sign up" gets replies from people you've never met.