September 23, 2005
(Updated) Hey Powell's People
A Market-Targeted Post
Note: This post has been updated. Any and all updates appear at the end of the original post.
We must have readers on the inside at Powell's somewhere. So here's our question: How high up the chain are you? Got your hands on any strings that can be pulled?
Over the long course of the eight years we've been in Portland, we must have submitted at least a dozen job applications over there and only once got called in for an interview, and that was for some website advertising position which we probably would have found maddening anyway.
The currently-available "Temporary Entry-level - Retail Distribution Center" would work just fine, for example.
Hey, it's worth a shot, right? Ain't too proud to beg and all that.
September 23rd, 2005 Update
Forgot to provide some background. You'll notice that on the Powell's application they request ten years worth of job history. That's where things become problematic.
For the past three years it's been this site. Somewhere in there we spent a few months helping the Great Northwest Bookstore move.
Prior to that, and to this site, there were several months working for a company that had a contract to do cutomer service for a cell phone company. As far as we know at this point, the company we worked for no longer exists.
Prior to that we owned the Millennium Cade for two years, and that business no longer exists. For a short time during that, we also worked at a company called Quando which got bought out and moved to Seattle and no longer exists.
Prior to that we were in San Francisco where we worked for a document management company who in theory we could track down again if we rummaged madly through all of our storage bins. And before that we worked on the "24 Hours in Cyberspace" project, and that was a one-off thing so who knows whatever happened to that company/group.
And that takes us to the end of 1995 and the ten year history Powell's requires.
Not much in there by way of job references, since it's mainly either companies that no longer exist, or us running our own stuff.
Hence, the call for string-pullers. You want references? We'd be willing to be we could open a thread here for references and have dozens of readers, random City staffers, and people in the local media pony up something all nice and shiny about us.
But that ain't employment references. It's just, well, street cred (for lack of a better term).
Again, hence the call for string-pulling. Such a call doesn't really cost me all that much, and if we fill out the Powell's application for the umpteenth time, it's going to look like a joke.