How on Earth do You Find an Entry-Level Job in the Springs? (Colorado Springs: job market, school districts)

[leavingIL]

My girlfriend and I moved here a year and a half ago to get away from Chicago and all the b/s that comes with it. Since then, I found a GREAT job working in a warehouse. My boss is awesome, the pay is good, the hours are great and I have absolutely no complaints. My girlfriend, on the other hand, can find nothing. She has some experience in an administrative capacity in an office, plus all kinds of customer service and waitressing. She even has a B.A. in Psychology, which she plans to use to return to grad school in a few years. However, for the time being, she wants to get her hands on an entry-level position, either in customer service or administration or some similar field. The problem is, she's literally spent a year and a half applying for jobs, and the only thing she's found has been a single waitressing gig where she doesn't make any money. She rarely even gets calls back, and I bet she's applied for, without exaggerating, over 200 jobs. What the hell could she do differently? We have tweaked her resume to read better and highlight more applicable skills more times than I can count, we have talked to job recruiters and temp agencies to get their feedback, we've gone to job fairs, we've literally done everything I can think of. What have some of you done to find entry-level jobs? Almost everyone demands experience, but how is she supposed to get experience if she can't get anyone to employ her to gain it in the first place? Literally A-N-Y advice would be helpful at this point. The search is getting desperate.

Also, for the record, don't respond with fatalist posts like "oh, she's screwed" or "the job market in the Springs is terrible, good luck" or any of that stuff. Constructive responses only please, even if your advice is off the wall. We'll take anything at this point. Target wage she wants 40 hours a week and $11-$12 per hour.

[reed303]

If looking for $12/hour jobs, don't mention the BA. Too many employers will dismiss her immediately as "overqualified" and/or "will quit when a Psych position" opens up.

[lalahartma]

Try the medical and retail canna-businesses.

[otowi]

School district 11 and probably most of the other school districts have numerous entry-level openings - check into it if interested.

[beezle1]

Call centers seem to be hiring quite often. (Progressive, USAA, Current, Xerox, etc). I think some of them are better than others to work for. Retail stores are a possibility too, and especially now as the holidays are coming up, they will start staffing up.

Check job listings on Indeed, ConnectingColorado, etc on a daily basis and apply as soon as you seen an opening. There are plenty of companies that post only on their websites too. She may need to tailor the resume and certainly the cover letter for each position she applies to.

I hope she finds something. I think it just takes a while sometimes.

[Dagumol]

Originally Posted by reed303

If looking for $12/hour jobs, don't mention the BA. Too many employers will dismiss her immediately as "overqualified" and/or "will quit when a Psych position" opens up.

This was going to be my exact advise. Employers are hesitant to invest in am employee who has no intention of keeping the job. Drop the BA from her resume.

[Littlekw]

Call centers are a good option. They hire a lot because it's not the best job in the world but I have a couple of friends that worked their way up in them and do pretty well. One started as a caller and is now a manager. Went from $10 an hour to $15 an hour in less than a year.

[Rangerdude_Charlie]

How about a job as a civilian employee on one of the military bases in Colorado Springs.

[returninghometoco]

You can look at non appropriated funds for the us air force just search us air force naf jobs. They're usually entry level

[lurtsman]

Originally Posted by leavingIL

Constructive responses only please, even if your advice is off the wall. We'll take anything at this point. Target wage she wants 40 hours a week and $11-$12 per hour.

This is one of the most logical and intelligent things posted on CD in quite some time.

I'll try to help.

The problem is her resume. I don't have to see anything else to know that. Only the resume could stop 200 applications without very few call backs.

Many people think they have fixed their resume, but at least 99% of younger resumes are significantly below optimal. What I tell you is going to be the truth, but it may shake your feelings about how the world works. I spent several years underemployed while learning this. The last interview I went to, the interviewer explained, "Your resume was by far the best I have seen". I wasn't hired because they decided I was an ***hole, but they loved the resume. No problem, the faults they found with me were legitimate, so I don't begrudge their choice for a moment.

You may despise several things I say here, but at the end of the day, I'm right. (Now you can tell why they thought I was an ***)

Here are the real big issues that I correct when I'm redoing a resume. As a side note, I work in finance, but I have an undergrad in human resources.

1. What name is on the resume? Does it sound white? If it does not sound white, change it. During the hiring process she can list her real name and ask that they refer to her that way. The difference between Josè and Joe is dramatic when it comes to getting responses. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.

2. Is her work experience in relevant chronological order? I had someone sending out 30+ applications per week and no one called him back. I redid his resume, he applied to 60 places, and the following week he turned his phone off because he was getting a new call for an interview every few hours. One of the biggest flaws was that his work history was not in chronological order. Employers want to establish a timeline. If she had overlapping jobs, I would record them based on the end date. The most recent end dates come at the top."Present" is an acceptable end date for a job she is still working at, and it is acceptable to leave out the employer name for the current position.

3. Work periods don't match up. If she has a hole in her work history, that will be counted against her. A period of 1 -2 months off is okay, but anything longer than that should be covered up. How do you cover it up? L I E. That acronym stands for "Lie". There is no acronym. You just change the end dates / start dates of past positions. She's applying for jobs that pay 11 to 12 dollars an hour. They ARE NOT going to call places she last worked at 4 years ago to try to verify her dates of employment. In the VERY RARE circumstance where I'm wrong about this, they were so anal that she wouldn't have gotten the initial interview with the holes in her resume. They might lie and say she would, but it would be a lie. There are no employers for a position in the 11 to 12 range that will ignore holes in history and also perform checks on dates of employment for OLD positions. Don't BS the dates on her last position, preferably the last 2, as those are the two where the chance of getting caught is moderately realistic (say 10 to 20%).

4. Discussion positions in professional terms. I had a friend that needed help. Their resume referred to planning parties. If she did so much as serve on a committee that helped with school dances, if she even stacked chairs for it, she was an event planner for the school district. You can deal with it being a volunteer position later. If it's obvious that she was young, she can be a junior event planner, an event planner assistant, or a volunteer event planner.
Problem solved.

5. Get rid of useless old positions. My resume doesn't list the time I spent doing jobs that were literally a nightmare. I had some jobs that were so bad the homeless guys that offer to get punched for money seemed to have a better career plan. Don't list that crap. If she hated doing something, get it off the freaking resume. You need about 3 years of history. Did she work for her mom when she was in high school? If you need more crap to put on your resume, you can assign another name to her mom's business and create a position title. Leave no link between the names. If she did any volunteer positions that you want to link, play them up on the social involvement and engagement side, not the work experience side. Almost no one working in HR is going to believe she learned any useful talents as a volunteer, so they will throw away any argument made on those grounds. They will believe that volunteering is a sign of a good person, so that angle can be used.

6. Remember, the resume is just a tool to get an interview. If you view it as anything else, you're building the wrong tool.

7. Over 50% of resumes contain lies. Most hiring managers are too stupid to notice them. If they say they are not, they are lying. If they were that capable, they wouldn't still be a hiring manager. They only spot the really obvious lies, and sometimes they are wrong about which ones are lies. I've played "two truths and a lie" with the hiring teams before. I can assure you, they were fooled about half the time. The people she is competing with are lying on their resume. The manager is not noticing. They are picking someone to hire out a pool that contains the best resumes, which is to say that most hiring decisions come down to only comparing between candidates that lied on their resume. There is no universal network for searching and blackballing people. The worst possible consequence of lying on the resume is losing a job that likely would not have been acquired without lying. After having had the position, the next application has a legitimate position to reference. The previous employers can be asked if she "is eligible for re-hire", but some employers won't even do that. I know, I've made those calls to dig around for information. There are a few smart owners that will call a previous position several times to talk to co-workers and try to get the gossip, but larger businesses that don't have the owner as a hiring manager won't do that level of due diligence. The interviews are going almost exclusively to the liars. You can reject this as long as you want, but the cost will be working in a job she doesn't want.

There you go, the sad truth about the hiring game. The morons that write "10 things to do on your resume" and crap like that are generally useless. They have no experience working from the ONLY position that is relevant: The person that remakes resumes so they actually work. Even former hiring managers don't know how many fake resumes they accepted. As a note in that regard, I've redone some resumes and stretched the truth (lied about dates of employment to remove red flags). The people are still employed with the jobs I found for them.