Recent graduate, job-hunting. This is how it's going.

slashVictorWard · 1 day

The entire employment process has changed so you have to be willing to try anything. I have a PhD and had to work as an unpaid intern for a few months to get the experience for the awesome job I have now.

Also bleach in urethra? Really?

clemjazz · 1 day

volunteer

Youngmanandthelake · 1 day

Ignore pride. Get a job in anything. Every employer, in today's day and age, understands how hard it is to get a job. Find literally anything, and do a good job at it, and doors may open. Just being able to say 'I am currently employed, and my employers would recommend me' is sooooo much better than you think. It also gets rid of the 'I'm so bored I'm so bored' thing where you get down on yourself for not having a job. Hope this helps :/

A_Small_Town_Boy · 1 day

Should have gotten an internship while in school. A lot of people make the mistake of not getting a job/internship while in school, and they pay the price after graduation.

reginaldaugustus · 1 day

PS: Guys, 99% of unpaid internships are actually illegal.

Oh, and the amount of privilege in this thread is sicking. Hur hur go get unpaid internships! Hey, some people need money in order to eat.

Tiyugro · 1 day

Step 1: Acknowledge that College counts as 4 years of work experience and should be billed as such.
Step 2: Acknowledge that you should still apply to any job requiring 2-10 years experience.
Step 3: Follow up like a bastard, 1 week after application and again 2 weeks after application.
Step 4: Carpet bomb your application process, expect to apply to 50 or more jobs
Step 5: Custom Cover Letters...for EVERY job.
Step 6: Apply outside your field.
Step 7: Learn ritual magic.
Step 8: Sell your soul.
Step 9: Profit.

PatrickPlan8 · 1 day

INTERNSHIPS GLORIOUS UNPAID INTERNSHIPS!!!! BE A SLAVE FOR NO PAY!!!!

AllDizzle · 1 day

A lot of job postings ask for more than they need/is required for the job.

This weeds out a lot of trash, and they might get lucky and actually get somebody who's way better than that position.

Triple A. Always Apply Anyways.

If you managed to graduate with out SHIT from school you can put on your resume then you fucked up. Should have focused more on your future. Also getting a job after college isn't like signing up for the next term...don't expect to be hired asap.

lightyourfire · 1 day

You only changed one thing in the title, reposters are getting lazy recently

http://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/zifhr/recent_graduate_jobhunting_this_is_how_its_going/

iamsuchanoob · 1 day

I work, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke, so I can work more, so I can earn more, so I can do more coke...

SkarlathAmon · 1 day

Infinite loop detected. Thread aborted.

Simssega · 1 day

Entry Level... 2 to 4 years experience. The FUCK?

Hiker_Trash · 1 day

Hang in there buddy, it'll work out in the end. I was unemployed for a year after a career change. What ultimately got me my current job in software engineering was taking matters into my own hands and finding ways to get experience. In my case that meant setting actionable goals and finishing projects through to completion that I could wave in front of prospective employers. Employers nowadays especially like to see initiative, because it means you're willing to take your training into your owns hands.

I'm sure similar options exist for the direction you want to go! If you don't know where you want to go, it's time to map out your passions and learn what's available to meet them. It's rough going, but you'll get there!

[edit]

Ignore the self righteous people here who harp on what you "should" have done in college or before. This is completely unproductive and will lead to self-wallowing and cynicism, which I guarantee you will not get you closer to employment; certainly not satisfying employment. Focus only on what you CAN do and let yourself evaluate honestly the good things you took away from college. Life is a Benjamin Button story -- it's not too late to start doing anything, if you want.

FistofanAngryGoddess · 1 day

I'm going through the same thing, OP (though luckily I'm able to make some money babysitting).

guywhoishere · 1 day

How long have you been looking? Don't be discouraged, my first job, in engineering, took like 8 months to find. In the mean time, get experience on your own, spend your free time doing something that related to your job. If you are a journalist, write a blog. If you are a comp sci guy, write some software, doesn't matter what. It'll show what you are capable of and that you are willing to work.

There are of course plenty of jobs where this is hard to do, so it might not apply to you.

na4ion1 · 1 day

That sums up my life too. I graduated in May 2011, and still can't land a job. Figured a Network Administration degree was sure to pay off instantly. Good luck to you and me.

WorldBFree · 1 day

The biggest thing that helped me was reposting this on reddit once a week for 15 months.

TheForceiswithus · 1 day

Join the military. You get a job, valuable on-site experience, a nice set of benefits once you leave, and get to meet all sort of interesting people...and kill them.

Epyon_ · 1 day

When did slave labor become acceptable advice for finding a job?

TyrannosaurusRev · 1 day

There's always treasure hunting. That's lucrative I hear, and you don't need experience, just a boat... and an old witty sidekick.

BananaTailor · 1 day

Welcome to the next five years of your life.

Eventually you take a shitty $9/hour temp job because you have bills to pay. You spend a little over a year there getting hired in along the way, and now you're making $11/hour with benefits. This job, however, doesn't have anything to do with your STEM degree, and you again start to look for more serious work. At least now you have over a year of solid employment history! Hah, nope! Now you get to the interview (if you're lucky) and they ask why you're looking to leave your current position. You say 'I want to make more money and not work with high school dropouts anymore' in a very PC way, and you go back to your search, growing more and more jaded every time.

Also, people talking working through their college years are full of shit. I had years of lab experience from my college job and am still going through the same thing.

TheRightKost · 1 day

Ya I don't get it. Places advertise "entry level" positions... then say 2-3 years work experience required. I get that employers don't want to deal with "breaking in" new college grads, but where does everyone expect people to get some experience if no one will hire someone without any? SCUMBAG EMPLOYER

the8bitlife · 1 day

After awhile you can add in the phrase "Because I've been unemployed for too long"

NewtoNerdy · 1 day

Whoever said "If you're good at something never do it for free" was most likely a garbage man, It certainly blows but doing an unpaid internship is certainly worth it. I want to do auto body and eventually own a shop and after a year of working for free or minimum wage and being berated by multiple managers, I concentrated and built a portfolio and got a better job where they pay me very well and appreciate me.

One of my internship horror stories was when I was being yelled at by my manager for being slow and about ten minutes later he came back and asked me to go and help him move his couch to his dads house an hour away, and then he needed me to go pick up his friend from a carwash another hour away. He told me to use the manual shop truck, needless to say I may have accidentally forgotten how to use a clutch properly on the way there.

Aydrisel · 1 day

V O L U N T E E R > G E T E X P E R I E N C E > G E T J O B .

TheLoCoRaven · 1 day

You get what you vote for . . .

I had to work weekends overnight at a call center to go from just a helpdesk to a networking position. I did 40 hours from Friday at 7pm - Monday at 8am.

No one cared about my CCNA without experience besides that job. Now I got a Cisco CCNP and Checkpoint CCSA and a really good job.

So I did a lot of self development. Even took a Cisco Route class at a local community college before taking that exam for the CCNP.

churchillin · 1 day

Volunteer someplace.

Cinnamonboots · 1 day

I was an engineer without experience and a solid 2.68 gpa /sarcasm. Upon graduation I got one interview with a company after 6 months of hunting, they denied me. Linkedin the VP's of the company.

Worked at Sear's for 1.5 years (Very Humbling). I gathered "experience" with job specific things during my time at sears. For example I studied hard to get my engineering certification and took AutoCAD course at a local community college.

After 1.5 years and out of the blue, I messaged that same VP and offered myself as an unpaid intern. He accepted and hired me full time after two months.

Moral of the story, it pays to be aggressive. Don't rely solely on the traditional online tools, make connections EMAIL PEOPLE TODAY. Continue to better yourself or your resume WILL get stale.

pres82 · 1 day

Just as a heads up... it's not gonna get any better for a long, long time.

well_deserved_karma · 1 day

http://i.imgur.com/w8fIA.gif

emperorOfTheUniverse · 1 day

Degree doesn't entitle you to a good job. I graduated Magna cum laude with a degree in information systems. Spent a year as a bank teller after that, and then another year as a paper pusher before finally landing in IT support before eventually getting a job developing web apps.

Just do the best you can. That degree can open doors but it in no way entitles you to anything.

jwg529 · 1 day

Same boat brother. The world is not being kind to us right now :(

Wardenclyffe7 · 1 day

The biggest thing that helped me, and I mean the single most beneficial thing was changing my resume from details focused to accomplishment focused. I received not so much as a phone screen with the former. I switched it up, accepted a job with ridiculous compensation, and still have other companies bugging me about coming in for interviews. The only difference was a few days in time and a complete resume overhaul. No career counselor ever told me about writing a resume which focuses on accomplishments, yet it feels like an intuitive idea. For clarification: I mean thinking through your projects and jobs you've had. Write your resume in such a way that you list a major accomplishment from your job or project. To the best of your ability, make the examples concrete for the reader. My experience with career counselors would leave me with drivel such as "Wrote programs that increased efficiency". This reads like a job description, is boring, and only gives the recruiter the impression that you came into work and did what you needed to. Give a specific example of a program you wrote, as well as some tangible (and quantifiable) benefit you or someone else got from you writing it. You can also save valuable space by mentioning a language here too. For example: "Developed a link-aggregating Python project which saved 10 hours per week of administrative time". What does this say about you? You can develop, you're smart enough to figure out a link aggregating project, you know Python, you saved someone 10 hours per week of admin work. There is so much more valuable information there than the other example. I've read lots and lots of resumes. None of them were that specific. And I think that is the problem with resumes and job hunters today in general. I was guilty of it myself, trying to generalize a resume so much that I believed would fit any role. In the age of specialization, most companies don't want a jack of all trades, master of none. In fact, they probably have a very specific role for their soon to be hire. Generalities aren't good. Specificity is. You may not be a fit everywhere, i.e. you only know Java, they need a Ruby expert right away, but you can fit somewhere, I promise. I suppose I will give away another tip I've learned. Paste the job posting into a word-cloud generator. Replace the words on your resume with synonyms you get out of the word-cloud. For example: your resume says "self-motivated" in it, but the the job posting uses "self-starter". Replace it! HR people are not the brightest crayons in the tool shed. They also want nothing more than to throw away your resume. The may not be able to or simply don't care to play word association games with your resume. They know whats in the job posting. If the same words they used to write it keep showing up in your resume, guess what, the better the chances of them following up. If you choose to apply through the company website (not Monster, CB, etc because they are all garbage), this will also help get your resume through keyword filters or assist you in HR applicant queries! One caveat: these are not tips to be used in lieu of networking, bettering yourself, polishing those interview skills, or improving technical aptitude. They are just for the resume to get your foot in the door. My goal was 30 resumes tailored specifically to job postings. By tailored I don't mean change a few words. I mean choose projects or experiences that will show I match the desired qualifications and, redo the whole resume while doing what I mentioned above. I got to 8 before I couldn't keep up with the skills tests, interviews, phone screens, and travel. Make it your goal to hit 30. Do 30 this way and you WILL find a job. Keep your head up, stay positive, and get to rewriting that resume!

Repost_Checker_ · 1 day

Anyone seeking more info might also check here:

title	comnts	points	age	/r/
Recent graduate, job-hunting. This is how it's going. Inspired by fellow redditor NegaByte	1876^coms	1807^pts	4^mos	funny

source: karmadecay

catiebug · 1 day

Don't know OP's perspective, but this advice is applicable to a lot of folks - in a creative industry, this "no job, no experience" sentiment is a bunch of fucking horseshit.

There is nothing you can't do on your own as an amateur that can't eventually be considered experience. Want to be a software engineer? Start programming in your spare time. After class, before your parttime job, on the weekends, when your buddies are out drinking, etc. Same for a graphic designer, a commercial artist, a producer, or anything else where you are expected to create something. Don't wait for permission to become whatever you want to be. Eventually your amateur stuff gets noticed and lands you a fulltime job. And if you don't want to give up your spare time to 1) get better at what you do, and 2) better your chances of breaking into that career? Well, then, us recruiters can only assume that you just don't want it that fucking badly. And we're going to give the job to someone else who clearly does.

Source: I am a recruiter for an entertainment software developer.

edit: I accidentally a word

Sigseg · 1 day

Once upon a time you were able to list fake jobs on your resume and give friends as contacts. Before the dark times. Before background checks.

Do I think that's unethical? Sure, but it helped me get my first real 9 - 5 salaried position in the early 90s. I stayed with that company for 5 years, had glowing employee reviews and was pretty much considered the rockstar of their IT dept.

dalittle · 1 day

Networking is the best way to get a job. Talk to who ever you know in your field and directly ask if they are looking for someone. Get active in your fields community that you want to work in. Even Linked In works or any meetups in person you can find.

HR departments are a black hole for resumes. You want to try and get your resume to the person who would be your boss. Even cold calling sometimes works.

newbizguy · 1 day

There's this new thing called 'lying' that seems to have some pretty great results....SHHH DON'T TELL ANYBODY!

eqdw · 1 day

If you're in anything remotely tech in nature (programmer, IT, web, graphic design, etc) you can get experience without having to have a job! The barrier to entry for open source is 0!

eec003 · 1 day

same here.

bronakk · 1 day

Amen to this. I'm on the same boat as you.

ShitStroll · 1 day

Get ready for this to happen once you try to make the leap to management. You won't get hired because you don't have managerial experience but no one will hire you to manage anyone because of lack of said experience. Best you can do is attend training seminars and hope you land a job that will give you a chance after a couple years.

PokemasterTT · 1 day

Do you have a Master's degree?

Youngmanandthelake · 1 day

Lay it all out on the table, and be annoying to people who control the job you want. Call them once a week until you hear no, and every time you get a voicemail, finish it off with 'And you cannot imagine how badly I want to work with 'your company'. You are competing against everybody else out there, so why not find a way to put a bug in their ear. The job I have right now came to me after I cold-called my company, told then I wanted this job terribly badly (a position wasn't available yet), and I asked them what the exact steps I needed to take were to be considered for this position. Wouldn't you know it if I wasn't informed the moment my current job came up.

jeni1122 · 1 day

You might have to take a job that is completely out of your skill set or something you might not necessarily want to do for a while just to prove you are willing to work.

The biggest issue I have had hiring assistants right out of school was their unwillingness to actually work.

I would rather hire someone that does not have the experience I need them to have but they have proven experience as a hard worker and a quick learner than someone that is qualified and lazy.

jumpijehosaphat · 1 day

To the OP.... Hang in there. Keep fighting for what you want, and eventually you will get it. Follow what everyone says here, and just take anything that's out there that helps you progress.

I've been there and done that like many others here. Unfortunately, I lived in an area where software engineering was not in high demand during the first bubble in the early 2000s, and it bursted when I graduated. I was digging around looking for something, even seeking advice from headhunters (IMO not the best idea). I had a gig cleaning hard drives and stacking computers on palettes for 6 months in a cold warehouse. I am in a pretty happy state right now doing software development. My advice is to keep on working on what you're doing, and eventually you'll get there.

Doomsdayclock148 · 1 day

This is why I'm currently trying to get a co-op or internship position. Most companies don't require that you have experience and the co-op/internship term counts as actual work experience. (And if you're in engineering it counts towards your PEng - at least where I live.)

dingo8yourbaby · 1 day

Due to my major (exercise physiology aka pre-physical therapy) and location of my university my internship opportunities were very limited. I moved back home after graduating, tried to get some volunteer work in my field and apparently no one has room for me even just to observe. I was able to land 3 job interviews as a physical therapy aide but due to my lack of experience I wasn't hired. I just want to get 500 hours for grad school :(

redblack52 · 1 day

Temp.

jabracoroni · 1 day

Graduated with engineering ten years ago, I'm still in this loop.

Youngmanandthelake · 1 day

Find the job you want, in the company you want, and find someone with that job. Call them up or email them. Tell them about yourself, and ask them to tell you exactly what you need to do to be working with them within the year. They'll either give you real, helpful advice, and possibly be a way for your application to stand out in the crowd (or grab the ear of the HR person, something even more important), and get you on the right track. The experience thing, for most entry level positions, is kind of bullshit IMO. They know who they're trying to hire, they're just hoping someone WITH that experience comes along and suddenly considers a job they are relatively over-qualified for.

Seriously, find a real, live person, and talk to them in the company you want. This has been the way I've found jobs the last 2 times I got them.

MuchJokes · 1 day

Our school had a 1-year internship where we paid like $1000 (but we didn't have to pay until after we got our first paycheck, which more than covered that) and were pretty much guaranteed a job within our field of study.

Now I'm graduating with a delicious amount of useful experience and enough in my savings account to get half-way through another degree (Canada, I know your US school prices are insane).

yubnubb · 1 day

Get a regular job at regular pay at a regular company retail/industrial company. Work your way up. (It still takes years). Just because you have a college degree doesn't mean you know shit about having a career, you have to establish a good working report with people anywhere who will grant you said experience and recommendations. I didn't graduate college, I spent the better part of my early 20s in and out of jail and moving in and of my grandmother's house. I'll be 29 soon with out ever setting foot in a college or any kind of educational institution and now work as field specialist. Pay is great, I thought I was going to be a greenhorn forever, but it took me longer without a degree. Be assertive stick with a shitty company. Make lasting impressions. And move up the same way everyone else in the country has since the inception of big corporations. We all know the only way to circumvent this is to be a washed up professional athlete or someone wealthy's son or daughter or niece or nephew. I make a very comfortable living now, with a semi-laid back job. I got all the "shit" everyone wants when they're successful. House, car/truck, fiancee, cat, and dog. I know college is a lot of work. My little brother dropped out as a senior, on the grounds of it seeming a bit extensive. He's now a senior sales representative at a major oil and gas company. And he didn't start out that way. He had to go from the bottom to where he is now, and he's really glad he did. Your ethics might get in the way of accepting a career path. That's one thing. I don't approve of what I do. But no body can say there aren't jobs out there, and no one can say there isn't a need for what we do. It will be around for a lot longer than any of us thought, and the oil/gas states are recruiting people with degrees in droves.

Slyfox00 · 1 day

Stand Alone Complex

havek23 · 1 day

Yeah, experience > schooling in most cases nowadays. You just gotta know someone to vouch for you and get your foot in the door and after you've been there a couple years, THEN see if the company will pay for your schooling. Takes a lot longer, but it's so much nicer to work full time, go to a couple night classes at a nearby university, then drive back in your BMW to the house you own and no student loans!

visavismeyou · 1 day

Perhaps they do a search for your name and come back with the username, "BLEACH_IN_MY_URETHRA" and decide against having that in their office.

Just a possibility.

rjm101 · 1 day

Normally getting two internships will sort out the experiance problem but yes it does suck being paid next to nothing. Also internships do normally lead to a permanent role.

After my placement my employer offered me a permanent providing that I DO NOT return back to university. He didnt want me to go back to university and come back on a permanent role which I thought was harsh.

4knives · 1 day

My experience for the past three months... NONONONONONONONONONONONONONO and NO.

dorisfrench · 1 day

Even if you have to volunteer, that's one way to get your foot in the door. Or apply for a lesser position at a company you are interested in. Work hard, be on time, etc.

Darth_Felix · 1 day

Should have done internships!

BrushGod · 1 day

Volunteer = Experience -> Job Opportunity

Carson_Perry · 1 day

Phil? You posted this on facebook yesterday

Juicify · 1 day

If we all wait long enough no one will have experience so we can all get jobs.

MissMegz · 1 day

I recall those days ALLLLLL too well. Best of luck, pal!

muttle · 1 day

As a current college student, I obviously haven't had this problem yet but I've come up with only one solution.

Internships.

You have you're entire academic career while you're not working to try to obtain some internships. While some positions are very competitive, if you look hard enough - it really isn't that tough. Put simply, companies want free labor.

zconnelly13 · 1 day

This advice is a little late for you perhaps, but GET INTERNSHIPS. I started out with an unpaid internship at 15, and that got me a paid internship before I left highschool, which landed me a paid internship at an amazing company in college, which is the place I now work. TL;DR; - get experience while in school

WrestlesAtWork · 1 day

By 'experience', a lot of jobs mean just something that can remotely have something to do with your degree or what you want to do, but it can still be just about anything so long as it's not food service or a continuation of the job you had in college. People spend a lot of time searching for the perfect start to a perfect career when it just comes down to having to do your time in the office setting before you can go for the better jobs. Don't be all picky worrying about where a job will take you. Even if after a year or 2, the job ends up not being what you want, it's still experience.

JaeGeeTee · 1 day

Make your own job.

lokingfinesince89 · 1 day

i feel your pain

PrivateTsosTofu · 1 day

Excuses ITT

Forever_Hollowed · 1 day

repost.

Patrico-8 · 1 day

Apply for an internship. You might have to accept the fact that you won't get paid as much at first.

monkeyjoe35 · 1 day

Hey guys I'm a corporate recruiter for a paid summer internship

If you are located anywhere in the world and willing to travel for 3 months send me a message

pippofin · 1 day

The reason I tell college students do summer internships! Its extremely important.

f3rm10n · 1 day

Don't give up the money will come.

Opandemonium · 1 day

I was in the same boat in my 20s. I started my own "consulting firm", worked for pennies and letters of recommendation. Created an awesome portfolio. Got the job.

fanboyhunter · 1 day

Like many others have said, get an internship. It's the only way to gain experience without having much prior. TBH you should have started in college but it's too late now I suppose. I had a paid internship last summer, they're out there but they are more competitive.

If you work hard, it should only take about 3 or 4 months to get a job. Work part time/weekends to pay the bills.

Plazm · 1 day

I've got my fingers crossed that I land a third interview for a job at an amazing company I'd love to work for. It was my first time getting an interview, nowhere else has even replied to my applications.

seimungbing · 1 day

if you think you are overqualified to work a certain job, just think there are even more qualified people applying to what you are applying

Mrlord99 · 1 day

Yep, that's how it is. Even worse when you're IN college still so all you have is a few community service events and a High School diploma. You're automatically the bottom of the bottom (><)

Spddracer · 1 day

I have worked in restaurants for over 12 years. Yet I cannot move into management because I dont have the experience. However I train MIT's day in and day out. It is absolutely maddening.

Madlydecent · 1 day

I start volunteering today!

Youngmanandthelake · 1 day

Remember that you aren't locked into any career after graduating. Don't be afraid to be that guy with an art degree who got a job as an HR rep. Take opportunities wherever they come from, and don't pretend you wouldn't ever be happy in a different field than what you trained for. A degree is a degree, and that is often all that people are looking for in fields that don't require a ton of specialization, just the right person.

L320Y · 1 day

I wrote an entire essay on this topic, and it turns out this guy is a karma troll account. One post, this image, a repost. Fuck.

tehlon · 1 day

This will be buried, but if anyone in their senior year reading this - cut your hours back and take a wait staff job. Worked for me. shrug seems to me people care about actual "doing work" than your so called "education". worst case scenario - you have a job anyway and can keep looking during the day while you work at night.

KringleFantastico · 1 day

It's like this everywhere now. Those of us getting PhDs get to fight and scratch for post docs now, too.

daleacus · 1 day

it is hard, but keep trying. someone gave me a break eventually. be willing to try areas you might not think are appropriate - a lot of employers just want a degree, or a semi-relevant degree, nothing specific

petraman · 1 day

I had absolutely no experience in the field that I wanted to go into (including an internship... yeah that was a bad move) yet I still got a very good job about 4 months after I graduated, which may seem like a while but compared to others that I know in similar situations... It's not too terrible.

Anyways, here are some tips for you:

Go for the smaller companies. They're usually more accepting of people with special circumstances and won't filter you out because of a red flag on your resume.
Build confidence... It's key. It shows in interviews and it leaves a bad taste in the interviewer's mouth.
I know this is probably one you've heard quite a bit, but... Network. Even if you just met them briefly at a party or something, you can still manage to sway someone to put in a recommendation for you easier than swaying a HR rep.
Don't be afraid to get a part-time job... The company won't care what it is that you're doing, just that you're doing something with your life that isn't just idling about.

Good luck!

Dastrados · 1 day

Volunteer.

1leggeddog · 1 day

Also don't forget:

Entry level position

"How much experience do you have?"

ಠ_ಠ

inquisitiveintern · 1 day

I got a taste of this crap early on in high school. Oh you want to be a busboy at a local restaurant? Nope. You need 2-3 years "fine dining" experience. Wtf? Who is going to train as a busboy for that long?

Griffidoodle · 1 day

The field I am studying to work in requires a degree to get jobs related to what I want to do. I've found that the key is to volunteer with the right organizations. This will give you skills and experience in what you want to do without needing to take a full-time professional position somewhere (which is likely easier said than done).

A_Small_Town_Boy · 1 day

Use a temp agency. Tell them what your goals are and be realistic. They'll get you a temp to hire position. I found a job this way 2 months out of college. Now working full time with full benefits in my field. Currently planing my next move in 1 year with some experience under my belt.

Wraith8888 · 1 day

Just wait until you have too much experience. There is no winning.

Lough5280 · 1 day

One of the best benefits of being broke and working my way through college

few_were_injured · 1 day

I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, but have you considered working for Americorps? They have positions in a huge variety of fields, and the positions last from a couple months to a year. Of course, it doesn't pay well, but almost all of them offer a small stipend to cover living expenses and an educational award on completion that you can put toward student debt or additional schooling.

I worked for Americorps several years ago. I taught environmental education in Zion National Park. They reimbursed me for my travel to and from Utah, paid me $70 a week, and I got $1200 educational award at the end of it that I'll probably use toward (like ten minutes of) graduate school. I've never been paid less for a job, but I've never enjoyed a job more. When it was over, I went back to waiting tables, but the following year I was able to use that experience to get another job, this one in a seasonal gig in conservation. I followed this pattern for a couple years until I found some like-minded people who were starting a business in my field, and used my scraped-together savings to buy in.

The career I have now is completely unrelated to my education, and it's not something I ever imagined myself doing. But it's meaningful to me, and I'm happy in it. I was poor for a lot of the time, and I served a lot of plates of spaghetti and made a lot of lattes to get myself by. There used to be an assumption that you went to college, got a degree, applied for a job in your field, and got it. It's not that way anymore - there's the insane Catch-22 depicted in your post, there's the bullshit run-around of employers asking for three years of experience for an entry-level position. It's not at all fair, but it's the way it is, and the people who will thrive in the job market are survivalists - those willing to slog through the bullshit, work their asses off, often for less than they're worth, take entrepreneurial risks, sacrifice for and invest in their own training. And persist.

When I had just started in my field (conservation), I was working alongside this veteran with forty years of experience and a great job in the Park Service. I asked him what he had done to get his job, and he told me, "Anything." He explained that he did anything he could do, no matter how menial or loosely related, that he could use to leverage for the job he wanted. Then he told me something simple that I've never forgotten, and that has become kind of a motto for me: "Life rewards the persistent." You can do it, dude.

aherr01 · 1 day

This is why I'm getting as much experience as I can in my undergraduate career. I've recently been elected to serve on the board of directors for a non-profit student organization, and that's going to look amazing on my resume.

Darktidemage · 1 day

You can easily get a job without experience.

It's called networking.

In the interview the PERSON YOU KNOW who works there recommends you and says how fucking awesome you are.

Meatslinger · 1 day

"To be considered for this job you must be 10 years proficient in HTML 5, and have been using Windows 7 for at least five in a previous job."

Duelstrike · 1 day

And this kiddies, is why you look for internships while in college (or summer jobs. If unable to find one that is related to your major, you take anything. And then you use fancy words to make it sound better on your resume.)

freddyfreak1999 · 1 day

So true

luurrvezemusack · 1 day

For every summer you're in college, you should have an internship/part time job/something that applies to the job you want once you graduate. Even with three summer internships, that equals about 1 year of "job related experience", at which you could possibly get an entry level job. However, if you don't do anything to help your professional life in college, then good luck.

mesacool · 1 day

you forgot to add 1 month later going in a circle

badondesaurus · 1 day

My girlfriend is dealing with this shite at the moment. Don't know about anywhere else, but UK companies like to dish out thier own application form, and want that filled in rather than CVs or as an addition to CVs. The annoying thing is the format! Sometimes its a word doc (who likes Word..) and sometimes PDF. You have to deal with text boxes that are not large enough.

I help her by using a pdf editor sometimes, but it takes such a time to paste in all the usual data and info and fix it up to be neat. Any tips about dealing with application forms?

thelbane · 1 day

I think we all feel the same, and we all really know what the problem is: There's just too much of a gap between your experience and the demands of the job. Some jobs require formal education or training prior to landing an entry level position while others may be fine with (or even encourage) self-taught skills.

I taught myself how to program in BASIC and Pascal as a kid and wanted to be a programmer when I grew up. Didn't go to school and ended up working with computers in the military, but not paid to program them. Still, I loved programming and learned VBScript and wrote a few utilities in Excel and Access to help on the job. This was stuff I could add to my résumé in spite of it not being in my job description. Ending job title after 4 years: Communications-Computer Systems Operator

After I left the service, I had an interview for a web developer position at an insurance company. This one was more about timing. The web was still quite new and there were very few web developers in the wild, so I picked up a book a few days before and built a silly personal homepage. I didn't have web hosting, so I brought the page in on a disk... and got a job working on a corporate intranet (eventually transitioning to CRM portal and customer-facing site). Which led to me learning: VB, Javascript, XML, HTML, CSS, and Actionscript. Ending job title after 9 years: Technical UI Architect

I was ready to move into something more fun than the insurance and financial services industry had to offer, so I interviewed for a senior dev position at a design consulting firm. I felt like just another "web guy" and these people did lots of desktop and mobile design, prototyping, and implementation, so it was pretty intimidating at first, but over the next 5 years I focused heavily on the Microsoft stack and learned C# and XAML. Ending job title after 5 years: Principal Technologist

After that, I went to work with friends doing consulting work on iOS (Objective C) and have since co-founded a company at which we all have quite immodest titles... just because we can. :)

tl;dr Don't get too discouraged about not having the experience to get a particular job. Baby steps.

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