Job Applications: The Drinking Game

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Job hunting is a necessary evil. The monotony and tediousness of the process can break a job seeker down, until they’re on the brink of insanity. So, how do you spice up something that often drives you to want put your face through a wall? Make it a social drinking game, of course. It’s like taking one of the best plays from the old college playbook and making it new again.

The Rules

Begin on your average job search website with your job search terms entered. Simple enough. Get some other friends who are job hunting, for one reason or another, together. With some creativity, you can turn something soul-suckingly boring into something actually enjoyable. Except for your liver. Your liver will be pissed this didn’t end in college, but you never listen to your liver.

After the search, follow the normal application process and repeat as necessary until sufficiently hammered and ready for a night out with friends or until you are employed full-time and satisfied with your job. Whichever floats your boat, or whichever comes first.

The Search

– Every time you have to change the search terms because they pull up jobs you wouldn’t be interested in without the help of psychedelic drugs or lots of alcohol, take 1 drink.
– Every job posting you decide to apply to, take 1 drink.
– Every time the job search site or email suggests a job with a position title that doesn’t tell you anything about the job, drink your entire drink.
– Every time you find a position that sounds great, but just turns out to be a pure commission sales job, take 2 drinks and consider applying to it anyway.
– Whenever the position is looking for “highly motivated” or “self-starting individuals,” take some initiative and take a shot. You miss 100% of them that you don’t take, after all.
– Detail oriented? Name all the jobs you’ve applied to so far or take a shot.
– If it has an alphabet soup of acronyms you’ve never seen, take 2 drinks and apply anyway. You can bullshit your way through explaining them if you get the interview.

The Application

– If you find you should be answering yes to the “Have you done drugs?” questions on the application, take two penalty shots.
– If you answer yes to the Veteran status questions, take 1 drink and recite your respective branch’s creed.
– Take 1 drink for every job listed on your resume or in your work experience section.
– Take 2 drinks for every one of your degrees. Up that by 1 for a Masters and by 2 for an MD, PhD or JD.
– If the job requires a cover letter, get nice and loose to write it by finishing your drink. Just hope it doesn’t go viral on Wall St.
– If it requires a transcript, break out your old grades for the application and shotgun a Natty, for the sake of nostalgia.
– Finish your drink when you hit the submit button.

The Results

– If you get a same day interview offer, take a shot .
– If you get a call in the same hour about a job you just put in for, take a shot.
– Job offer? Break out the champagne. You’ve made it. Finish the bottle.
– Job offer in sales or something else commission only? Break out a bottle of Jager and the Red Bull. Best to practice for the long nights now.
– Friend in the group still job hunting by week’s end? Play this drinking game again until everyone is happily employed.

I don’t know if this is the most efficient way to find a job, but Ernest Hemingway once suggested that the secret to writing something good was to write drunk and edit sober, so the same has to be true with applying to jobs: apply drunk, interview sober. Right? I’m really feeling like this is some flawless logic here. At the very least, this would make for a fun night in when you’re trying to get away from a boring 9-5. Maybe you’ll even put in for that creative job you always wanted with a little liquid confidence in you.

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Jack Quesinberry

Recent graduate from the University of Maryland working in the biotech industry. I like to spend my weekends in DC ensuring my future political career will be one filled with a number of great scandals and equally great Sunday brunches. My alter ego is Whiskey Ginger.

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