To seek or not to seek...

Well, now that all the wedding and post-wedding excitement has died down, I now find myself with scads of free time on my hands.

The good news is that I am slowly getting back into the groove of being inspired, and am now slowly but surely redoing my portfolio as well as collecting pictures and things for my inspiration book.

Naturally, I would be ready to now look for my first entry-level assistant designer job.

The problem though, is that since the H and I are about to start the paperwork for our move to NYC, should I even bother looking?

The H and I had a big discussion about it last night - it will probably be a good 6 - 8 months before we have his visa ready, so maybe I should start looking for a job. I pointed out that ideally I could get a CDD for about 3 months, or maybe a 6-month CDD. However, the H said that most CDD's are given out to people that they plan to put eventually onto a CDI, so the hiring company would want me to available after the CDD runs out. He also logically pointed out that a hiring company would most likely NOT want to hire someone who plans to move out of the country in the next few months, anyway.

While the H's point of view makes sense, I happen to have a more pressing problem, and that is that I am steadfastly approaching a gap of about one year on my CV! As everyone has said to me, the hardest thing in France is to make the leap from a "stage" (internship) to an entry level job, especially at the kinds of places where I did my internships, because there are so few spots open. Even worse is that in France, an internship doesn't count as actual work experience, which is kind of weird considering that here, an internship is pretty much like a real job - you have to work 5 days a week, you pretty much have the same hours as everyone else, and they rarely accept an intern who does not have previous experience. (Ahem, which is why on my English CV I have listed my previous internships as "assistant designer").

Then the H suggested maybe doing temp work - which unfortunately does not really exist for my job function - although temp work is quite common if you are a seamstress, or patternmaker, or whatever in the technical part - I remember at the previous places I worked, they would hire a ton of temp workers before the fashion shows to stitch the clothes. I wouldn't mind so much doing that except anyone who has seen my sewing knows that I am not the best, and everyone who knows me knows that I am horrible at math, so any technical job like that is not ideal.

Anyway, a senior person I worked with at one of the previous companies gave me a lead to some headhunting agencies - though the H thought that was weird, since apparently in France, headhunters are for people in senior positions. But since this former co-worker of mine suggested I try anyway, the H and I figured it can't hurt - but then we get back to the whole short term contract problem.

Aaargh. If only there weren't these stupid labor laws, there would be a much bigger turnover for jobs and it probably wouldn't bother anyone if I left after say, 6-9 months.