starry night

fanart for the fursona, who prefers they/them pronouns and is cool with cis people, prob has a girlfriend

And solar panels can literally be built into roofs of buildings and in empty areas like deserts. The sun strikes the Earth with the same amount of energy in an hour that our civilization uses in a year.

But yeah, it would be impossible for us to ever have enough energy from clean sources.

‘You must include a cover letter’ does not mean ‘write a single line about why you want this position’. If you can’t be bothered to write at least one actual paragraphs about why you want this job, I can’t be bothered to read your CV.

Don’t bother including a list of your interests if all you can think of is ‘socialising with friends’ and ‘listening to music’. Everyone likes those things. Unless you can explain why the stuff you do enriches you as a person and a candidate (e.g. playing an instrument or a sport shows dedication and discipline) then I honestly don’t care how you spend your time. I won’t be looking at your CV thinking ‘huh, they haven’t included their interests, they must have none’, I’m just looking for what you have included.

Even if you apply online, I can see the filename you used for your CV. Filenames that don’t include YOUR name are annoying. Filenames like ‘CV - media’ tell me that you’ve got several CVs you send off depending on the kind of job advertised and that you probably didn’t tailor it for this position. ‘[Full name] CV’ is best.

USE. A. PDF. All the meta information, including how long you worked on it, when you created it, times, etc, is right there in a Word doc. PDFs are far more professional looking and clean and mean that I can’t make any (unconscious or not) decisions about you based on information about the file.

I don’t care what the duties in your previous unrelated jobs were unless you can tell me why they’re useful to this job. If you worked in a shop, and you’re applying for an office job which involves talking to lots of people, don’t give me a list of stuff you did, write a sentence about how much you enjoyed working in a team to help everyone you interacted with and did your best to make them leave the shop with a smile. I want to know what makes you happy in a job, because I want you to be happy within the job I’m advertising.

Does the application pack say who you’ll be reporting to? Can you find their name on the company website? Address your application to them. It’s super easy and shows that you give enough of a shit to google something. 95% of people don’t do this.

Tell me who you are. Tell me what makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work and feel fulfilled. Tell me what you’re looking for, not just what you think I’m looking for.

I will skim your CV. If you have a bunch of bullet points, make every one of them count. Make the first one the best one. If it’s not interesting to you, it’s probably not interesting to me. I’m overworked and tired. Make my job easy.

“I work well in a team or individually” okay cool, you and everyone else. If the job means you’ll be part of a big team, talk about how much you love teamwork and how collaborating with people is the best way to solve problems. If the job requires lots of independence, talk about how you are great at taking direction and running with it, and how you have the confidence to follow your own ideas and seek out the insight of others when necessary. I am profoundly uninterested in cookie-cutter statements. I want to know how you actually work, not how a teacher once told you you should work.

For an entry-level role, tell me how you’re looking forward to growing and developing and learning as much as you can. I will hire genuine enthusiasm and drive over cherry-picked skills any day. You can teach someone to use Excel, but you can’t teach someone to give a shit. It makes a real difference.

This is my advice for small, independent orgs like charities, etc. We usually don’t go through agencies, and the person reading through the applications is usually the person who will manage you, so it helps if you can give them a real sense of who you are and how you’ll grab hold of that entry level position and give it all you’ve got. This stuff might not apply to big companies with actual HR departments - it’s up to you to figure out the culture and what they’re looking for and mirror it. Do they use buzzwords? Use the same buzzwords! Do they write in a friendly, informal way? Do the same! And remember, 95% of job hunting (beyond who you know and flat-out nepotism, ugh) is luck. If you keep getting rejected, it’s not because you suck. You might just need a different approach, or it might just take the right pair of eyes landing on your CV.

And if you get rejected, it’s worthwhile asking why. You’ve already been rejected, the worst has already happened, there’s really nothing bad that can come out of you asking them for some constructive feedback (politely, informally, “if it isn’t too much trouble”). Pretty much all of us have been hopeless jobseekers at one point or another. We know it’s shitty and hard and soul-crushing. Friendliness goes a long way. Even if it’s just one line like “your cover letter wasn’t inspiring" at least you know where to start.

I’m actually a somewhat notable blogger in the aro sphere, but because I’m also an otherkin, I don’t necessarily feel comfortable talking about this completely there, as the person I’m known as. 

I’ve noticed that there are a lot of people who doubt that aromantics are actually queer, and even some who doubt that we face oppression. And I think in part that’s because we don’t have a slur to point to. I mean, we experience things that are just as bad, if not worse, as the things that queer allosexuals face, but we don’t really have a slur to point to.

And that’s where my idea comes in. I believe that because, once we’re found out to be aromantic, people usually call us robots or imply that we don’t have feelings, we actually do have a slur to point to.

ARObots. That’s basically what they’re calling us. And because I firmly believe that slurs should be reclaimed, and only by those affected by the slur(queer), I think we should all start to reclaim this slur. 

People who want to believe that they’re “allies” to the aro community should take heed: Don’t you dare fucking use the word arobot. (Unless you’re a robotkin, which I think is a whole different set of oppressions, and also if you are, we should be friends! Hi!). 

To the aro community: in order to make people see that we’re in fact oppressed, I think it’s important that we make it clear that arobot is a slur, and something we’re reclaiming. No one else, (save robotkin) should be allowed to use this term to hurt us. We’re reclaiming it, and people who use it are actively participating in the oppression that keeps us marginalized. They are arophobic.

Basically: Here’s a slur that applies to us, and that people have been throwing around and claiming isn’t a slur, and here’s us reclaiming it and making it clear that anyone who calls us this, who isn’t aro, is in fact an oppressor and has to check their alloromantic privilege.

Used in a sentence:

I’m arobot.

Yo, what’s up my arobot?