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"  Dear E. Jean: I&amp;#039;m currently homeless and living in a Wal-Mart parking lot. I&amp;#039;m educated, I have never done drugs, and I am not mentally ill. I have a strong employment history and am a career executive assistant. The instability sucks, but I&amp;#039;m rocking it as best as I can. Recently I stumbled across a job notice (a reality show casting call for executive assistants) and was intrigued enough to apply. It was a shot in the dark, and I assumed I&amp;#039;d never hear back. Surprise! I was called in this week! And I promptly bombed it. When I found out who was involved in the show I got kind of starstruck and completely froze up. My usual personality did not radiate. My question: How does one get another shot when one screws up a job interview? \u2014Homeless, but Not Hopeless  Miss homeless, my dear:  You don&amp;#039;t &amp;quot;get&amp;quot; another shot. You take it. Wear the new suit you get from Dress for Success (the fantastic organization that provides interview suits and career development guidance to lowincome women, Dressforsuccess.org), find a company, a store, a business you admire, and show up ready to work. When you speak with the manager, don&amp;#039;t ask for a job. Simply introduce yourself, tell her why her company is brilliant, and give her three ways you can help her succeed. Follow up with a phone call, plus a visit the following week.  Of course, the cleverest way to land a good job (and get an apartment) is to already have a good job/internship/volunteer position. This strategy permits you to impress the interviewers with the superhuman passion you have for your current projects.  This is what you did with your letter: You knocked me out with your courage and spirit. I am therefore, Miss Not Hopeless, offering you a four-month internship. Of course it&amp;#039;s the most hideously humdrum internship in America. You&amp;#039;ll be stuck with the tedious job of organizing research for my book, transcribing interviews, and analyzing data from 1,800,000 pages (not a misprint) of a college sex survey I did on Facebook. I looked you up and discovered you&amp;#039;re on the West Coast and that you write a highly entertaining blog. You possess a brain and access to a computer. Excellent! If you accept this internship, you&amp;#039;ll telecommute to my East Coast mountain office one hour a day, six days a week. At the end of the four months, if you don&amp;#039;t have a job and an awesome place to live, I will become your intern. E-mail your questions to e.jean@askejean.com "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.elle.com/life-love/ask-e-jean/q-and-a/a10286/ask-e-jean-i-bombed-it-335610/>