Dealing with Unemployment

[LetalisK]

Um...gotta be honest, I have no clue. Perhaps you're in an over-saturated market? All my unemployment has been self-inflicted and when I apply for jobs I generally find someone willing to interview and hire me. I treat finding a job like finding a date: play the numbers game and apply to as many places as you can. The downside is that you could get a ton of positive responses and then have to turn down a lot of people, which is never fun, but that's a much better problem then the alternative.

Edit: Erm...nm, good to hear you found a job.

 

[Strazdas]

I have been unemployed couple times though nowt of my own free will.
Most emplyers will ignore you, the rest will reject you, till you finally find somone who doesnt. a month is not a long time, i searched for work for 4.5 months till i found the one i am working for now, and i am happy in this position and in fact slowly moving forward within the organization, even though i would consider myself underperforming, they seem to think the opposite.
Begin honest is not the fastest way to get a job, but its a way to get one where you can remain honest while your at it.
You will ahve to apply to A LOT of job offers and you wont hear from most of them back, so dont get discouraged by it. Normally rate around here is 1 of 40 responds, and then out of those only a few asks for an interview.

Dependoing on your monetary sitaution, chose what you are willnig to do. if you are starwing, a minimum wage dishwasher replacement will help you survive, if you can float up for a couple months, rather spend more time trying to get a job you are going to like/qualified to. but dont shoot too high. Starting small in a company and movign forwards inside is easier than starting big instantly, unless you are a gaming CEO or a politician, which is a revolving door around there.

And dont go for the marketeers. those are 99.9% scams that wont pay you anything and take all your earnings away.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

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Problems like this are why I feel that apprenticeships are a better method of study in the current job market where every qualified job requires experience. A form of study that has you working for at least a year is a great way to get into the industry and learn everything you'll ever need to use first hand.

I just never understand why you only get apprenticeships in things like plumbing and IT as I can see plenty of careers that would suit apprenticeships fine and it's not like high level IT is easy. I recently just earned my MCSE in server infrastructure after a year and a half of study and work, I get to put that 18 months down as work experience and I have a job at the end.

I fully agree with you.

Honestly throughout all the work experience places I have been I am now convinced that it is basically a form of sneaky cheap labour for the public sector to keep their costs down (all my posts were in civil service positions, although private sector work experience actually can lead to employment quite easily, the public sector is a complete dead end) There are a whole raft of small companies that have sprung up with the sole purpose of getting unemployed graduates shuttled into these short term work experience placements, and there's probably about one office of these people per town in NI, staffed by 3-4 people working full time to punt graduates into placements for a few months.

Every work experience I started began with the words "We won't be able to give you a job at the end of this, but..." And every civil service division seems to have dedicated positions designed for a cycle of graduates coming in to work for a while and then getting discarded.
The place I'm currently at has 6 IT guys: 1 is permanent, 2 are temporary positions (although with a good chance of getting their contracts reinstated) and the other 3 are graduate workers. As well as them, there are at least 3 other guys in our workplace of about 40 people who are there under the same scheme as me, and I heard that a girl was there until the summer when her work experience ended.

The Government get at least 30 hours a week out of us, and pay us £15 extra a week for the pleasure. (plus travel allowance) They don't have to care about pension funds, holiday or sick pay, and are able to employ a fleet of paper pushers to organise the half dozen forms we have to fill in each week to prove our continued existence on planet earth.

Oh well. It's just the state of affairs we have to deal with today. I'll keep working for crap all, and eventually I'll get enough experience that I'll actually be qualified for all those jobs I'm applying for anyway, and once I do get onto the employment ladder everything should be a lot easier. It's just odd that the first rung is somehow the highest.

 

[Johnny Impact]

Get a job. No one is above working retail. Get your rent paid. Stand on your own two feet, even if you can't stand as tall as you'd like.

Beyond that, keep plugging away at the applications, and try to work on things that will increase your employability in the field you want.

 

[evilneko]

The San Francisco area's an expensive place to live. How long do you think you can make it while being unemployed? If the answer is less than a year you might want to seriously consider heading for home or some place with a lower cost of living. It's also the end of the year, fourth quarter for most companies. Many of them have already spent their budget for new hires, and won't be doing any more hiring for at least 2-3 months.

As others have mentioned, you're going to get a lot of rejections. And forget all that crap someone may have told you about tailoring a cover letter and resume for each individual submission. That takes time, and if it makes the difference between submitting 4-5 resumes a day versus a dozen, screw it, blast off a dozen. Remember that a resume does not get you a job, it gets you a phone call. A phone call gets you an interview, and an interview gets you...a second interview, and so on, until they decide to make you an offer. I had six interviews with the company I work for now before they made the offer.