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I am Part-time employed, do not give up hope, I too am looking for a good job, even if it is a suplimental job to supliment my income, Yes I have a College Degree in Marketing, Yes I have experience under my belt, however I am an Administrative Assistant working on less than $9.00 an hour before taxes are taken out and less than 30 hours a week, there are not a lot of decent jobs in Akron, OH or anywhere in the US for that matter, I am in my fortys and have never been on wealfare, until this year and unfortunately I had to,
but do not give up hope. I have sent out over 50 resumes last month alone, I have looked and applied daily in the online job boards such as Indeed, Snagajob, Monster, you name it, I have applied at the Temp agencies such as Manpower, Kelly, Superior, In 2006 I got Lucky and worked at Penske thru the temp agency, It lasted a year, (My Job as well as everyones was transfered to India, I trained my replacement.
I've been seeking a job for more than ten years. It's a strange problem to have. A person can explain away one year of unemployment: he can say he traveled for a year or perhaps tended to his sick mother, both honorable things to do, especially when you are in your early twenties.
After two years comes along three years, and at some point, I began making sarcastic snarks about never having a real job again, and at least in my early 20's, when I was standing next to the Mexicans on the street corner chasing cars down so I could lift a shovel for a day, that attitude, at least to those on the outside looking in, worked well. What people didn't know was that I was actually stomping the pavement whenever I had the chance.
At some point, I simply couldn't take waking up at 5am to go stand at the street corner with illegal immigrants, so I signed up with Labor Ready and worked there, but earning $35/day in Los Angeles is far from an optimal income. I started working as a background extra, but the pay for that kind of work isn't much better.
After reading the above, people may wonder why I let myself sink to such levels. I grew up well beneath the American poverty line, so I was raised with the attitude that you just do what you have to do to get ends to meet. Survival is paramount to all other considerations, and if you have any pride, you never ask for help, you don't complain, and you most certainly never go the welfare line. College was not an option for people like me. When I was 18, I came home and found my bags sitting on the street corner.
I am now 34 years old. I haven't had a “real” job since I was 22 years old when I was a bike messenger in Miami, Florida. This is not to say that I have not had any jobs at all. I had one job working in a restaurant, but I was fired because someone accused me of using and selling drugs. I'm not a teetotaller, but I do not approve of drug use; that accusation was made on purely false grounds.
The next job was working at a call center for FEMA in response to Hurricane Katrina. That is the year 2005. Eight years ago. I then volunteered at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
At some point, especially if you are not interested in working for yourself, and your entire focus in life is to pound the pavement 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, for years on end, you fall through the cracks. I spent two years of my life sleeping on the street. Somehow I managed to maintain some of my friendships and even make valuable connections that allowed me to attend school for a year and get off the street. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to go to even get an associates degree, so I attended a trade school and that ultimately got me nowhere except, despite finishing at the top of my class, pounding the pavement for nearly a year in a fruitless job search. My practicing license ran out and I was basically back to square one.
At some point, I found a girlfriend and we eventually moved in together. After a year together, we broke up. A month later, we talk and I visit her and her sister, and I get a job at her sister's company. This is great but not-so-great for me: I finally got a job but I was stuck living with someone I don't get along with anymore. It turned out the company was a total grind-house and I was quickly fired, but I had one expertise that they needed and they couldn't easily replace, so the company decided they needed a marketing department and I became the entire marketing department there. Despite my lack of work history, some things seemed wrong about this job, and I asked around and people let me know that the job I had was not only terrible, but my coworkers and management were clearly manipulative and abusive, that my best route of action is to try to find something better where I'll be happy and have better pay. After a year of working at this place, I could no longer take the job and I could no longer live in an abusive relationship, so I had to quit both of them.
The reason why her sister got me the job wasn't so much because she liked me or the fact that I was dating her sister, it was that she was mystified as everyone else that ever knew me: how could someone so damn intelligent not be able to find a job. I'm not a social moron either and I'm far from lazy, so what was the issue? She isn't the first person to be mystified by my inability to find a job. Pretty much everyone I know thinks I am highly intelligent, and everyone I've known assumed that I have 4 to 6 years of college despite the fact that my college experience is walking around a campus once or twice. I used to get enjoyment from watching people's reaction when after asking what college I attended I told them I had no clue what a college classroom looked like. What used to be amusement now just creates a sense of dread, especially at an interviewing table.
So, to people who think that all unemployed people are lazy, I hold myself up as an antithesis. Before getting the job mentioned above, I put out 100 resumes per day, every day for one whole month. That is 3000 rejections. I spent over a decade of my life looking for a viable job I could enjoy. I spend months on end walking around the city of Los Angeles dropping resumes and filling out applications. Since September, I have sent out at least 10 resumes a day. I've had 2 interviews during that time. It's sad to think that people I know were very happy to see I manged to be interviewed at all. So, I've had 2 interviews from about 2000 resumes, which is a large improvement over the 0 / 3000 resumes I experienced just a year ago.
Okay, so that is all hum-drum rejections. You may wonder what I have done to improve my own thinking and life. I am a hard-core autodidact. It wasn't by accident that I was made the marketer at my old job. They knew that I was self-trained in Statistics and Calculus. They knew that I was learning how to program. I have been spending the past year and a half working through the MIT OCW and Coursera, learning how to program, do math, and basically absorb as much information as I could. I built 4 website by hand (no frameworks for me). I haven't read a fiction book for years. If you saw my bookshelf, you'd see about 20 textbooks ranging in subjects from Economics to Biology to Psychology. I may not have went to college, but I surely made it my purpose to educate myself as much as possible.
So, what is a hard-working, able-bodied, and decently intelligent person to do when no one gives that person a chance over the span of ten years? I'm so sick and tired of hearing people say to me: “You can do better than this. You're way to smart.” Well, if I COULD do better than this, then I would, right? Apparently I cannot do better than I do in life because if even ONE interviewer in the past ten years examined my resume, met me face-to-face, and decided I could do better, then it would be done.
This is an issue that breaks my spirit more than anything: I am placing my entire self-worth on the opinions of people who don't even know me. I have faced down malicious and rude interviewers, pushed hard to learn and work, and all of this hard work resulted in nothing at all. What happened to the ideal that if we work hard, we can accomplish at least some of our goals in life? All I wanted for ten years was a stupid little job doled out by someone, anyone, anywhere, doing literally anything at all, yet here I have nothing. Am I truly unemployable? And if I am, what am I supposed to do? I DON'T want to work for myself. I've done enough of that in my life, and I would rather just relax in a job until the day I die. Being a reluctant entrepreneur isn't a viable life strategy, trust me. Working for yourself is seriously hard work, and if you aren't married to the idea of self-employment 100%, then you are 100% guaranteed to fail. I don't want to work for myself and I never wanted to. I only did it out of no other options, but can it be true that I am truly 100% unemployable?
I feel like your opening sentence is telling about your outlook on your chances (justified or not) when it comes to finding a job. You said you hadn't worked for ten years, but that is far from the truth. They might have been "awful" jobs by your standards, but you worked. Additionally, you were working at a company for a year. That's more than no job in ten years. So it's better than you're saying is my point!
I am not sure how the standard HR person would like at someone resume if they only had one job listed, or had various long gaps in work history. I'd imagine it wouldn't be favorable, but some industry probably would not care.
In any case, I can't really lend any support. Effort very often does not get rewarded, but to stop trying gurantees only one outcome. Actually, te only thing I will say is it's best not to be too mindful of the critic of others if you yourself are happy with your station in life. If you're not happy, well, you'll have to figure out the thing you Need and the things you want. They aren't mutually exclusive.
If you can find any job and save u some money, the recommendation I'll toss in is trying ESL (English as a second language) teaching in another country. If you get the CERT (which is very short to get and not very expensive), most of asia is usually somewhat open. You won't make a killing, but it will provide stable room, board, income, and experience. Once you get about 2 years in ESL you can get a lot of offers.
I've been seeking a job for more than ten years. It's a strange problem to have. A person can explain away one year of unemployment: he can say he traveled for a year or perhaps tended to his sick mother, both honorable things to do, especially when you are in your early twenties.
After two years comes along three years, and at some point, I began making sarcastic snarks about never having a real job again, and at least in my early 20's, when I was standing next to the Mexicans on the street corner chasing cars down so I could lift a shovel for a day, that attitude, at least to those on the outside looking in, worked well. What people didn't know was that I was actually stomping the pavement whenever I had the chance.
At some point, I simply couldn't take waking up at 5am to go stand at the street corner with illegal immigrants, so I signed up with Labor Ready and worked there, but earning $35/day in Los Angeles is far from an optimal income. I started working as a background extra, but the pay for that kind of work isn't much better.
After reading the above, people may wonder why I let myself sink to such levels. I grew up well beneath the American poverty line, so I was raised with the attitude that you just do what you have to do to get ends to meet. Survival is paramount to all other considerations, and if you have any pride, you never ask for help, you don't complain, and you most certainly never go the welfare line. College was not an option for people like me. When I was 18, I came home and found my bags sitting on the street corner.
I am now 34 years old. I haven't had a “real†job since I was 22 years old when I was a bike messenger in Miami, Florida. This is not to say that I have not had any jobs at all. I had one job working in a restaurant, but I was fired because someone accused me of using and selling drugs. I'm not a teetotaller, but I do not approve of drug use; that accusation was made on purely false grounds.
The next job was working at a call center for FEMA in response to Hurricane Katrina. That is the year 2005. Eight years ago. I then volunteered at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
At some point, especially if you are not interested in working for yourself, and your entire focus in life is to pound the pavement 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, for years on end, you fall through the cracks. I spent two years of my life sleeping on the street. Somehow I managed to maintain some of my friendships and even make valuable connections that allowed me to attend school for a year and get off the street. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to go to even get an associates degree, so I attended a trade school and that ultimately got me nowhere except, despite finishing at the top of my class, pounding the pavement for nearly a year in a fruitless job search. My practicing license ran out and I was basically back to square one.
At some point, I found a girlfriend and we eventually moved in together. After a year together, we broke up. A month later, we talk and I visit her and her sister, and I get a job at her sister's company. This is great but not-so-great for me: I finally got a job but I was stuck living with someone I don't get along with anymore. It turned out the company was a total grind-house and I was quickly fired, but I had one expertise that they needed and they couldn't easily replace, so the company decided they needed a marketing department and I became the entire marketing department there. Despite my lack of work history, some things seemed wrong about this job, and I asked around and people let me know that the job I had was not only terrible, but my coworkers and management were clearly manipulative and abusive, that my best route of action is to try to find something better where I'll be happy and have better pay. After a year of working at this place, I could no longer take the job and I could no longer live in an abusive relationship, so I had to quit both of them.
The reason why her sister got me the job wasn't so much because she liked me or the fact that I was dating her sister, it was that she was mystified as everyone else that ever knew me: how could someone so damn intelligent not be able to find a job. I'm not a social moron either and I'm far from lazy, so what was the issue? She isn't the first person to be mystified by my inability to find a job. Pretty much everyone I know thinks I am highly intelligent, and everyone I've known assumed that I have 4 to 6 years of college despite the fact that my college experience is walking around a campus once or twice. I used to get enjoyment from watching people's reaction when after asking what college I attended I told them I had no clue what a college classroom looked like. What used to be amusement now just creates a sense of dread, especially at an interviewing table.
So, to people who think that all unemployed people are lazy, I hold myself up as an antithesis. Before getting the job mentioned above, I put out 100 resumes per day, every day for one whole month. That is 3000 rejections. I spent over a decade of my life looking for a viable job I could enjoy. I spend months on end walking around the city of Los Angeles dropping resumes and filling out applications. Since September, I have sent out at least 10 resumes a day. I've had 2 interviews during that time. It's sad to think that people I know were very happy to see I manged to be interviewed at all. So, I've had 2 interviews from about 2000 resumes, which is a large improvement over the 0 / 3000 resumes I experienced just a year ago.
Okay, so that is all hum-drum rejections. You may wonder what I have done to improve my own thinking and life. I am a hard-core autodidact. It wasn't by accident that I was made the marketer at my old job. They knew that I was self-trained in Statistics and Calculus. They knew that I was learning how to program. I have been spending the past year and a half working through the MIT OCW and Coursera, learning how to program, do math, and basically absorb as much information as I could. I built 4 website by hand (no frameworks for me). I haven't read a fiction book for years. If you saw my bookshelf, you'd see about 20 textbooks ranging in subjects from Economics to Biology to Psychology. I may not have went to college, but I surely made it my purpose to educate myself as much as possible.
So, what is a hard-working, able-bodied, and decently intelligent person to do when no one gives that person a chance over the span of ten years? I'm so sick and tired of hearing people say to me: “You can do better than this. You're way to smart.†Well, if I COULD do better than this, then I would, right? Apparently I cannot do better than I do in life because if even ONE interviewer in the past ten years examined my resume, met me face-to-face, and decided I could do better, then it would be done.
This is an issue that breaks my spirit more than anything: I am placing my entire self-worth on the opinions of people who don't even know me. I have faced down malicious and rude interviewers, pushed hard to learn and work, and all of this hard work resulted in nothing at all. What happened to the ideal that if we work hard, we can accomplish at least some of our goals in life? All I wanted for ten years was a stupid little job doled out by someone, anyone, anywhere, doing literally anything at all, yet here I have nothing. Am I truly unemployable? And if I am, what am I supposed to do? I DON'T want to work for myself. I've done enough of that in my life, and I would rather just relax in a job until the day I die. Being a reluctant entrepreneur isn't a viable life strategy, trust me. Working for yourself is seriously hard work, and if you aren't married to the idea of self-employment 100%, then you are 100% guaranteed to fail. I don't want to work for myself and I never wanted to. I only did it out of no other options, but can it be true that I am truly 100% unemployable?
Have you though about seeking mental health counseling, to try and get some help working trough you problems?
Have you though about seeking mental health counseling, to try and get some help working trough you problems?
Yes, and the counselors were absolutely mystified at why I couldn't find a job at all. No one is going to claim that I am the world's most stable person, but no one is going to claim that I am unable to work, and no one can deny that after over 10,000 resumes and applications, there is something truly screwed up. The issue that I can't get past is that I blame myself for other people's opinions of me and that really shouldn't be the case, should it? At what point does one start to blame society without being a totally screwed up person? I still don't blame society for my failure to find a job, but at some point, the cracks start to show.
Look, I've pretty much given up on the idea of doing anything for lots of $$$. I was sort of there at one time in my life (working for myself and earning over 40k/year), but I really don't want it. I'd be incredibly happy just serving tables, washing dishes, or working in a warehouse. These jobs should be easy to get, but they are surprisingly difficult to get. I honestly aim super low and I can't even get that. I only went off and did my own work because there was money in that area at one time and I had zero choice. I didn't love what I was doing and I burned out. Even despite working 50 - 70 hours a week, I was still on the constant prowl for a job. I don't know why, really. Call me lazy or call me uninspired, but working for myself totally sucked and I will only do it again if I really have to. Unfortunately, it appears I'll have to again, but the money I'll earn will be slightly above minimum wage at this point.
I'm looking for the same jobs you are and I am also having a difficult time. I am 23. I have a clean record and I just got my drivers license 3 months ago. All I have to my name is a G.E.D. and some seasonal work experience because that's the only work I could ever find. I also have a mild case of aspergers that doesn't really affect me much as it once did. I still have problems socializing, but as far as working goes, I can get used to things once I get myself established. I also don't think I'm perfect or better then anyone else. I have been looking for jobs ever since I became the legal working age of 18. I grew up in a poor family but I never really tried to let negativity get to me until I turned 17 and 18 when my parents put my on SSI. The money has been helping me to pay bills, but I really want to start working and supporting myself. I don't plan to live the rest of my life on disability. As far as finding jobs goes, I'm really upset about the whole ordeal but I don't know what else to do that I haven't done. I chalk it up to competition, and the rigorous hiring process most of these places have. You can't just walk in places and fill out an application and get the job anymore. It's just a totally different ball game now. It's hard trying to explain your situation to people, because alot of times when you tell them how you can't find a job they just tell you to blame yourself and they don't offer any good advice then what you don't already know. I used to hate myself for how things were but now I am just trying to get a JOB and finally put it to rest. But it's not happening.
I do blame society for alot of things and anybody could if they stopped for a minute, looked around them and put 2 and 2 together. But I would say no, you shouldn't hate or blame yourself. That will not help you at all.
What I have done is realized what the problems are. Now I am just trying to get around them. You have to find some way to get around dog eating dog.
1. Have 24/7 all-week availability.
2. Be willing to work in any department or shift
3. Answer personality tests with strongly agree/strongly disagree and do not answer the questions in a way that make you seem crazy, shy, or depressed.
4. If you find any paper applications, staple a resume to it. That way when the manager puts it in the pile, yours will stand out when they need to pull up an application.
Yes, and the counselors were absolutely mystified at why I couldn't find a job at all. No one is going to claim that I am the world's most stable person, but no one is going to claim that I am unable to work, and no one can deny that after over 10,000 resumes and applications, there is something truly screwed up.
I only suggested that, because there is probably some reason for the problem you are having. A mental heath counselor should be able to figure out what your problem is. I'm sorry to hear that you got such bad help. It sounds like the counselor was an idiot. You might want to give it another shot though.
I only suggested that, because there is probably some reason for the problem you are having. A mental heath counselor should be able to figure out what your problem is. I'm sorry to hear that you got such bad help. It sounds like the counselor was an idiot. You might want to give it another shot though.
It's presumptuous of you to automatically assume that I have such serious mental-health issues that it'd be obvious to anyone who is looking. You don't know me and you never met me. You are also unaware of how many people I have asked for help from in this matter. If any one of them felt I had an issue so fundamentally wrong with me, I am sure one of them would have told me so. The simple fact is that *all* of them are purely mystified on why I was not able to find employment with the obvious exception of my useless resume. I went to *three* different people to touch up and redo the resume, all to no avail.
I'm deeply offended by your assumption that I am mentally ill, when there is no evidence to suggest that this is so. I look perfectly normal, I walk tall at all times, and I am perfectly capable of holding a conversation. It is also offensive that you believe everyone I have interacted with are so incredibly stupid that they wouldn't be able to see the obvious.
It doesn't matter how many resumes you send out. If you have a crappy attitude you aren't going to get a job, or IN YOUR CASE, KEEP A JOB.
Quit.Blaming. Everybody. Else.
20yrsinBranson
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