Will Work For Food!

Firstly, congratulations to all of the graduates this 2012th year after Christ's birth!

Im sure its exciting to some graduates, but for some graduates it's terrifying.

Enter the Real World! 
Student Loans!

If your parents kick you out : a place to live!

Food!

Fuel!

Clothes to keep up with the Jones's! (whoever they are)

& Etc. Etc. Etc.

When I graduated college, I searched for a job for two weeks, and the next thing I knew, I was living in a hotel for 28 days a month in Womelsdorf, PA. I was just happy to have a job in the field I studied. Within those two weeks of my unemployment, I was on the road like I had two full time jobs. Below, I just want to give you a few tips if you're in the market for a job. It's a tough search now-a-days, so don't expect to find a job on the first day of your search. Let us begin!

1. Plan Plan Plan
My mistake in my job search was not planning before I graduated college. Some people are fortunate enough to have a job waiting on them before they even enter college. Its all about connections now-a-days. Its less about your GPA and your work experience and more about knowing someone who can get your foot in the door. If you don't have that connection, you can expect to grind a little bit harder to make your dream job a reality. Internships are also a great means of getting your foot in the door of a business. In most instances, you will work for free in your internship, but if you show your employer a great work ethic, you can expect a job waiting on you after you receive your diploma. If you've had your eye on a specific company, give their human resource department a call and inquire about paid or unpaid internships.

2. Internet and In-the-streets!
You have plenty of websites that employers post job openings on. You have your www.monster.com, you have your www.careerbuilder.com, you have your www.job.com! My favorite was www.indeed.com. Indeed.com takes almost every job search engine on the internet and combines it into one. Just type in your job description and location and your bombarded with results. If you limit yourself to just internet job searches, you can expect to wait even longer for a job. Sometimes a job position has already been filled by the time you find it on the internet. Your best bet is to call the employer directly to see if the job position is still open. If they say it is, I would take the opportunity to get dressed up and make an appearance to their office to drop off your resume personally. This may seem like a waste of gas when you can just email it, but an employer will take note of the effort you show. An employer usually receives thousands of emails and faxes everyday with resumes. To stand apart from the competition get off your butt and make yourself known. Also, visit the GA Dept of Labor (or whichever state you live in), and speak with people who can point you in the direction of some good opportunities. I've never been this desperate, but I've seen people who just open the phone book and visit every company that looked interesting in the white pages dropping off their resumes to their addresses. You never know what you may come up with. Last thing! Get off your butt early! Don't wake up at noon, play xbox until 3, watch Jerry Springer until 5 and then start job hunting. You need to be up at 7 a.m. at the latest with phone in hand catching a human resource department rep as soon as he or she sits down to start his or her day.

3. Merry-Go-Rounds
Its time to go to the fair and not the junky one in front of Food Depot in Conyers, but a job fair. This is the best opportunity to meet several employers and show your face.
One summer when I lived with my dad in Atlanta. I looked in the AJC (another good way to find a job), and I saw that there was a job fair with corporations like Racetrac, and Waffle House, and other big names. My hopes was to work for RaceTrac because there was one right up the street from my dad's apartment. I showed up to this big convention center in Atlanta in khakis and a collared shirt, and I saw a long line of businessmen and women in their finest business suits with briefcases and such, and I didn't even have a resume. What I thought was a job fair for summer jobs, was a job fair for corporate positions. I still made my way through the line, and spoke with the RaceTrac booth and explained to them my confusion, and they called that local branch and got me a job (even though I quit after a week or so, because my step-dad got me a job with his company). The moral of the story is do research about the job fair before you arrive, dress your sharpest, and have plenty of resumes readily available.

4. Don't Get Discouraged
When I first left college in Pensacola and arrived back home to GA, I felt like I was the only one looking for a job. I applied to jobs online and just stared at my yahoo account waiting on a reply from an employer. The replies never came. Its easy to hang your head and just apply to the McDonalds up the road. There is nothing wrong with McDonalds, but if God has called you to something greater, than you need to put forth effort in order for God to provide that blessing! I like to call it planting seeds. In those two weeks after college while I was looking for a job, I planted so many seeds that after I already started my job traveling to Pennsylvania, I was still receiving calls for a month or so after. Getting a job can be a long process, but you have to be patient and persistent! If you want a job really bad, you need to stay on that employer everyday until they get so tired of you that they have to give you the job. Maybe you're fresh out of college and the job you want requires so much experience. You have to learn to work what you learned in college to your advantage. Tell the interviewer that I don't have the experience in a workplace, but here are examples of me gaining that experience through a college project or internship. Maybe you've been laid off of a job, and when you go apply for a new job, you're told that you have too much experience or that you're over-qualified. In that case, just give your potential employer a sob story saying how you've reached the bottom and that you just want to work your way up the ladder again.

Just stay focused and dedicated and prayed up! Don't settle for spam when you have steak around the corner! Hit me up on twitter or facebook, if you need more tips!

Signing Out,

Fatdreek

Pam Giles-Jones

My mother, Pangerla (Pam) Giles gave birth to me on 7/27/1984.

She was 20 years old.

Sometimes I feel like I ruined my mom's plans:

College. Entrepreneurship. Leadership. World Domination.

Abortion or Adoption would've been the route for some, but not for Pam Giles.

She raised me on her own. My father dropped in here and there, but never enough, leaving a young female in her 20s to take on the roles of mother and father while working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

It was just my mom & I growing up. I remembered living in Towne Pointe Apartments near Olde Towne and then moving in with my grandmother on Rena Ct. in Conyers as a kid. I was a pretty good kid. Never talked back. Never sold drugs. Did what I was told. Grades were horrible, but good enough.

My mom is the epitome of hard work. I've never seen her receive a hand out. Not a food stamp. No child support. Just made it happen. No complaints. Excelled at every job she worked! I remember one Christmas, that I wanted to get my mom a Christmas gift really bad, but I had no money. My mom looked in the newspaper, and found us a weekend job delivering yellow pages in Downtown Atlanta to all of the businesses. This gave me Christmas money to buy her something (which I don't remember) and it instilled in me a work ethic that I just can't shake.

She married Reginald Jones in 93' and gave birth to my sister Raven. We moved to the other side of Conyers to Sugar Hill. It was during this time that me and mom grew apart. Conversations got shorter. Beatings got longer. I spent more time at Velo's and Jack's house than I did my own. I never questioned our relationship growing up. Sometimes I felt unwanted at home which really led to my heavy involvement with Belmont Baptist Church. As I got older, I realized that Mama was doing what she had to do to make me a man. It's a cold world that I was entering and being the lovey-dovey Brady Bunch mother would do me no good in the world.
We never used the "L" word growing up. I'm not sure why that is. I love her to death and she knows it. She loves me to death, and I know it. I guess when something is so evident, why verbalize it? I know it may seem weird to some, but it works for us!

The sacrifices that she made are ones that I could never repay (even though I will try). I never wanted for anything. I always had food on the table (obviously). She kept decent clothes on my back. I always got what I requested for Christmas. She got me braces when she could have purchased a new car. She helped pay my way through college when she could have been traveling the world. I screwed up plenty of times and she never spared the rod and for that I am thankful. I respect her more than anybody on this planet. I wouldn't trade my mother for the world!!

Love you Mama,

Andrickus Giles

Men are from Earth! Women are from Earth!

Sometimes I cruise down my facebook timeline and all I see are women (or should I say girls) posting how much they hate men and how there are no good men out here in the Earth and that all the good men are married or gay. In my eyes, women that make these statements all of the time have low self-esteem and need to do some soul searching.

I agree, there are some dead-beat men out here! They all can't be Dreeks, okay? The key word is "some". If you believe that all men are dead-beats, you might as well kick it with the Ellen crowd!

If your previous boyfriend was a deadbeat, then just say that! Don't categorize all men as deadbeats, because you picked a loser. A great guy could read your statuses and write you off as cuckoo, and your theme song will be "Single Ladies" by Beyonce for the rest of your life.

Stay positive!! God blesses positive thinking! You should get 2 weeks to get over your past boyfriend (If you were married, I'll give you 2 months)! After that, you gotta move on! There are plenty of fish in the sea, and I know that is just a saying, but think about it! There are PLENTY of fish in the sea! Some fish are lazy. Some fish are not trustworthy. Some fish likes to swim with other fish. But there are fish that are loyal, hard-working, handsome and whatever other attributes you look for in a fish. If you spend all of your energy focusing on the bad apple that you bit into, you will be exhausted when "the one" comes off the tree.

 & another thing! Don't be out here looking for Mr. Perfect! Unless you plan on wooing Jesus into marrying you, you're going to have a tough time finding the perfect guy. Some girls I grew up with would go on one date with a guy and say that they've found the perfect guy! This is where the error lies. You can't possibly get to know a person on one date or two dates or three dates. So you get serious with a dog (not knowing he's a dog) too quickly, and as time goes by the dog comes out and now all men are dogs to you? How about, getting to know a guy before getting too serious with him?? That will save you a lot of time and frustration.

Now let me touch on a particular person. I'm talking to the female AND MALES TOO who are the bitter single individual, who instead of working on bettering themselves they would rather approach their friends who are happy with their significant other and throw salt in the game. (To my white readers: throwing salt in the game means sabotaging. In this instance, the bitter person tries to bring down their friends to the same miserable valley that they are in, even if their friends are on mountain tops). Please cut it out! This will only leave you single and without friends. If the only thing you can think of is to start hating on your friends' significant others, then you should just go to the library and hang out by yourself for a while, until you get the hatred from your heart!

Men and women are from the same planet. Women dont need to think like a man. Men don't need to dress like women. Just be yourself, and I promise that if you trust God, that He will put the perfect person in your life. It maybe tomorrow. It maybe in 10 years, but stay patient and be thankful when that special guy comes along!

Signing out,

Fatdreek