Tuesday, November 18, 2008

A job - you just never know?

Currently I work two part-time jobs from home. I have my elance job as a virtual assistant and I am a moderator for an online forum. In addition to these two steady monthly incomes I have sporadic income from things I do online (my blog through advertising or paid posts; surveys, ebay, Craigslist, etc)
Since we bought this house in September, I've been looking for a night-time job in my community. I don't like the idea of having a mortgage for the next 30 years so I wanted to find something at night that would bring in a decent 2nd income that could be used just to apply to our mortgage and truck payments. I've had a hard time finding anything. God is good though. All of our needs have been met, our bills have been paid each and every month and we are not going without. It's just the nagging thought of "debt for 30 years" that I don't like that's driving me to look for a job.
I recently shared with you about my friend who does Mystery Shopping. She sent me the information awhile back and I looked at it but really wasn't interested in doing that. I don't want a "job" where you have to put out your own money up front and get reimbursed.

Planting the Seed
However, I have been with my friend a couple of times when she has had boxes of stuff (products/displays) in her car and I asked her what that was for. She said she has picked up several Merchandising jobs from her Mystery Shopping website she uses. After talking to her more about it I thought it sounded interesting and like something I would enjoy doing. Now to figure out how to get my foot in the door...

The Perfect Job...or not?
When I was in Albany last week with Tina I checked the online job boards at one of our local hospitals in the town I live. I found an ER Registration position available for 3 nights a week 12 hour shifts. Oh wow! I was so excited! This is just what I was looking for - it would be perfect for me and the salary was a whole lot more than what I was anticipating. I applied online and I text messaged my good friend who is the head nurse over the whole hospital (the highest position you can have as a nurse) and told her I had applied and asked if she could do anything to help me out. She texted me back that she would see what she could do. I came on home early Monday...just in case she called to say they wanted to interview me. Was I being a little presumptious?? LOL Nah, I was just ready to get home!

Tuesday - knock, knock...opportunity here
So as I am sitting around Tuesday morning playing catch-up from being gone for a week, I receive an email from Shadow Shopper stating that "since I've signed up to receive their emails but I haven't yet taken advantage of their paid services, perhaps I would like to try them free for one week?" Hmmm, yep I sure would because I want to find out more about this merchandising! I signed up last Tuesday and instantly started receiving emails for jobs in my area ranging from Mystery Shopping, Product Demonstrations, Merchandising and various other jobs. By Tuesday afternoon I had read so much information on Merchandising I knew this was what I wanted to pursue.

Tuesday afternoon a job came into my email - I applied. Wednesday morning I got a call from the company...went through the interview process and got hired!! Today I got hired by another company to do merchandising at CVS stores!! I love this because it is independent work and I have a timeframe to have it done by. I drive to different stores, meet different people and it's steady regular income coming in.

Just to let you know...I went in today and cancelled my ShadowShopper account before I got charged (after my free week) because
  1. I think I'm going to have more work than I'll be able to handle for awhile
  2. I already have my name out there to companies now and have applied to several so I didn't figure it was worth it to have to pay for that information.
I know though that if I need to pick up work again and if I run into a dry spell I have that resource at my fingertips!

2 comments:

Claire said...

You are so dang industrious. Do you do most of your work when your hubby is home? I'm just thinkin' it's so hard to work when we have school to do, and field trips, etc. Actually, my hubby is the one working all day and into the evening, so I have no idea what I would do with my kids. I am trying to get on Pay Per Post, but their system doesn't seem to want to accept my application!

Unknown said...

Actually I get up between 5:30-6:00 am and I work until noon or 1:00. Dakota and I don't start school until noontime after lunch and we do school until 4:00. I then work for another hour before making dinner. Hubby gets home around 6:30-7:00 every night (he works 12 hour days) so I have long days to get stuff done.