Ridiculous things I've tried or considered trying in order to land a political or journalism job in D.C.

1.) Accosting Barack Obama's children with my resume
Status: Untried, but seriously considered

As some of you may or may not know, I wait tables at a chain restaurant in NW D.C. The restaurant shall remain nameless to protect the innocent. Either way, the Obama girls and their grandmother Marian Robinson are actually occasional customers at our fine establishment -- to the point where they were visiting on a fairly regular schedule. I've seriously considered bringing a resume to work and asking the girls to pass it up to Rahm or Michelle or David Plouffe. Points for creepy creativity and persistence, right? I wonder if the Secret Service would actually let me do that...


2.) Friending D.C. journalists and politicos on Facebook
Status: Completed

I've "cold-friended" random journalists whose work I enjoy at the Atlantic, NPR, the New Republic, the National Review, Slate, the Washingtonian, and the Washington Post on Facebook. For the most part, they seemed happy to accept my friend request -- particularly the ones from NPR and the New Republic. One of my status updates actually got one of them to start a conversation with to me on Facebook chat, and I asked about the possibility of an internship.

Result: I landed an interview at one of the above publications for a real position, only to ultimately lose out to someone with more experience. Repeated further applications to said organization for unpaid internships have gone unanswered, even though I thought my initial interview was good. #epicfail


3.) Making stupid jokes @political journalists on Twitter
Status: Complete

When Slate advertised for an internship a few months ago, I tried Twitter as a place to network and show off my wit and social media savvy. Slate seems to be the kind of publication that would appreciate such a gesture. As a result, I tweeted at Slate's Chief Political Correspondent John Dickerson:


Result:: John Dickerson didn't answer me by tweet. Then Slate sent me this email:
#EpicFail2.

4.) Stalking the former Slate intern on Facebook and asking her to recommend a total stranger for the position.
Status: Untried. Came one keystroke away from sending a message to her, however.

Slate again--they are after all one of my favorite online publication. It would be a dream to intern for them. Right before I moved to Washington D.C. in 2008, I was on an internship application binge. I came across this item in searching for information about Slate:

"Based on my quick review of the list of past and present Slate interns, I can tell you that the very best strategy to become a Slate intern is not to know someone powerful or rich, but to know a Slate intern."

Tired of writing boring stale cover letters, I came up with this crazy idea that I would find out who the current Slate interns were (easy, they wrote a lot for the site) and send them a blind Facebook message with my resume, clips, and a cover letter attached, and then ask them to recommend me.

I decided against it, ultimately. Probably wise.

5.) Accosting the appointee to Secretary of Health and Human Services with my phone number and email during her inaugural White House tour
Status: Untried, and not really seriously contemplated

I was on a White House tour the morning that Secretary of Health and Human Services nominee and former Kansas governor Kathleen Sebelius was also getting a VIP tour of the White House. I had a passing notion that I would walk up to her, tell her that I was a young whippersnapper looking for a job in the Obama administration and that I would love to pass on my resume to one of her staff members. I would then smoothly hand her my info and walk away.




6.) Asked the people I was temping for to get me a job interview with one of their clients, and then accidently insulting their client (who is a member of Congress) on the Internet before the interview
Status: Definitely completed

I was temping for a consulting firm and they seemed generally pleased with my work. At the end of my assignment, I asked them if any of their clients (who were newly elected members of Congress) would be willing to give me an interview for an Staff Assistant or Legislative Correspondent position. They promised that that was something that they could arrange. Two months went by and I didn't hear anything. On my other political blog I made an off-handed reference to one of their clients in a post. Little did I know that they had a Google Alert on the Congresswoman's name, and my blog post came up. Also little did I know that they had penciled me in for an interview that very week. I got a hostile e-mail from my former temporary employers, asking me not to blog about their clients, telling me that having a blog was a bad career move, that the Congresswoman had found my passing reference of her "unflattering" and that I had probably screwed up my chances at a job in this town. I got the interview anyway, but they clearly had no intention of hiring me in the first place at that point -- they just interviewed me as a courtesy to their consultants.

#Epic. #Fail. #Three.

The Moral

The things I've learned from this year-long hellish job search that I've mostly given up on at this point are that the rules on Internet etiquette are still being written. The Internet is a great place to network and brand yourself, but it's also an easy place to royally screw up. Further, your mistakes are harder to hide from Google's tentacles and your image or brand is somewhat at the mercy of what other people write and publish about you.