I think I've just been sold into slavery.

[Xanthious]

Really, and how do you figure on that? See I've done the shitty jobs that lead nowhere but even more shitty jobs. As Bertylicious said all this does is set up a red flag to employers that I'm not worth investing in because I'm only suitible for those temp, dead end jobs. I'm trying to break that cycle and allow myself a better quality of life. In your original post you give an example of how you swallowed you pride and lowered your standards from Nursing to Admin while you found something better. Well what if instead they had lowered those standards further and now you weren't going to be a nurse but the guy who cleans the dog shit out of the local kennels. I think you'd be a bit pissed off and expect more than that after the hard work you put in, yes? I mean who would hire you as a nurse after that? Well that's the situation I'm been forced into and I don't think I need to "grow up" or that I'm being a "drama queen" by being unhappy with it.

Fella, I have a masters degree in my field of study. I was lucky enough to find a job in my chosen field right out of school largely due to my internship. That job lasted all of two years before the business went under and I was left unemployed with a mountain of student loans, a car payment, and various other bills looking down the barrel at me. I'm now 34 and those were the only two years I've ever worked in my field of study.

That being said, after I lost my job I delivered pizza full time six days a week for three years just to make enough to get by and not fall back on my family for help. The time I didn't spend delivering pizza during those three years I spent looking for a job in my field of study with absolutely zero results. It wasn't until I met some friends of a friend at a party did I find out about my current job for a company that sells and services gaming equipment for on and off track horse racing establishments.

I submitted my resume and was lucky enough to get called in for an interview. Naturally the subject of my masters degree and pizza delivery job came up. I explained my situation and was lucky enough to get an office position that paid less than I was making delivering pizza.

After accepting that job I worked seven days a week between the two jobs for about a year until I got my first significant raise and was able to quit delivering pizza. Eventually, after studying the equipment on my own time, I got promoted to work in the field and started making a nice living for myself.

Today I still work for the same company and now I split my time between working from home, the office, and working in the field when I get a wild hair up my arse and make a very comfortable living by doing so.

I don't know what it's like in England but here where I'm at you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone that has a degree in IT in some way shape or form. A ways back people saw it as this massive booming field and everyone and their retarded cousin went out and got their IT degrees. Today it's a really crowded field where there are a lot of people competing for a limited number of positions.

Beyond that though most employers aren't blind to the fact that it's a tough economy and large numbers of people are finding work where ever they can get it as the high paying jobs are harder to come by than they used to be. As someone who is responsible for hiring people from time to time I know I place a far higher stigma on gaps of employment over people who are working but maybe working in unskilled fields. I won't knock a person for taking work where they can find it.

There's no shame in being a janitor or general laborer or a kennel cleaner. I respect someone that will plug away at those jobs even though they may be grossly over qualified a lot more than I do someone who sticks their nose up because they think that by going to school and getting a degree they are suddenly too good for such menial labor. If I ask someone about an employment gap and the response I get is "The only places hiring were factories and fast food" then the interview is ending shortly afterwords because I have zero interest in hiring someone that thinks they are too good to work in a certain field.

 

[Shivarage]

The only thing a rich person wants is to stay rich, that's what they are trained to do and that's what they live for.

Man the sheer blind hate and ignorance in that sentence tells me all I need to know. You are obviously more interested in pointing fingers rather than looking for a solution. Keep on hating those evil rich people though fella it'll get you far in life . . . .

People like you, I assume?

and what I said wasn't a feeling or opinion, it is pure fact - I know, I have a high grade in business studies

 

[Shivarage]

The only real explainer is the institutionalised discrimination against young people and the unrealistic demands for work experience for many ads that really make no sense. Outside of those factors there's a job out there for everyone.

We don't live outside these factors though, do we? and what causes these factors? certainly not something outside the control of the people we refer to as "the markets"

Is like saying "you can easily score a goal if the wall of goalkeepers weren't in the way but you can easily score if you kick *kicks* ... you are just a lazy, selfish, entitled douche scrounging off my tax money"

technically, if you gave the guy your job then he wouldn't be unemployed anymore.

 

[CAPTCHA]

Spoiler

Really, and how do you figure on that? See I've done the shitty jobs that lead nowhere but even more shitty jobs. As Bertylicious said all this does is set up a red flag to employers that I'm not worth investing in because I'm only suitible for those temp, dead end jobs. I'm trying to break that cycle and allow myself a better quality of life. In your original post you give an example of how you swallowed you pride and lowered your standards from Nursing to Admin while you found something better. Well what if instead they had lowered those standards further and now you weren't going to be a nurse but the guy who cleans the dog shit out of the local kennels. I think you'd be a bit pissed off and expect more than that after the hard work you put in, yes? I mean who would hire you as a nurse after that? Well that's the situation I'm been forced into and I don't think I need to "grow up" or that I'm being a "drama queen" by being unhappy with it.

Fella, I have a masters degree in my field of study. I was lucky enough to find a job in my chosen field right out of school largely due to my internship. That job lasted all of two years before the business went under and I was left unemployed with a mountain of student loans, a car payment, and various other bills looking down the barrel at me. I'm now 34 and those were the only two years I've ever worked in my field of study.

That being said, after I lost my job I delivered pizza full time six days a week for three years just to make enough to get by and not fall back on my family for help. The time I didn't spend delivering pizza during those three years I spent looking for a job in my field of study with absolutely zero results. It wasn't until I met some friends of a friend at a party did I find out about my current job for a company that sells and services gaming equipment for on and off track horse racing establishments.

I submitted my resume and was lucky enough to get called in for an interview. Naturally the subject of my masters degree and pizza delivery job came up. I explained my situation and was lucky enough to get an office position that paid less than I was making delivering pizza.

After accepting that job I worked seven days a week between the two jobs for about a year until I got my first significant raise and was able to quit delivering pizza. Eventually, after studying the equipment on my own time, I got promoted to work in the field and started making a nice living for myself.

Today I still work for the same company and now I split my time between working from home, the office, and working in the field when I get a wild hair up my arse and make a very comfortable living by doing so.

I don't know what it's like in England but here where I'm at you can't swing a dead cat without hitting someone that has a degree in IT in some way shape or form. A ways back people saw it as this massive booming field and everyone and their retarded cousin went out and got their IT degrees. Today it's a really crowded field where there are a lot of people competing for a limited number of positions.

Beyond that though most employers aren't blind to the fact that it's a tough economy and large numbers of people are finding work where ever they can get it as the high paying jobs are harder to come by than they used to be. As someone who is responsible for hiring people from time to time I know I place a far higher stigma on gaps of employment over people who are working but maybe working in unskilled fields. I won't knock a person for taking work where they can find it.

There's no shame in being a janitor or general laborer or a kennel cleaner. I respect someone that will plug away at those jobs even though they may be grossly over qualified a lot more than I do someone who sticks their nose up because they think that by going to school and getting a degree they are suddenly too good for such menial labor. If I ask someone about an employment gap and the response I get is "The only places hiring were factories and fast food" then the interview is ending shortly afterwords because I have zero interest in hiring someone that thinks they are too good to work in a certain field.

Well you can't swing a cat for hitting someone with a degree full stop. But gaining recognisable skills is the only way you can improve your lot in life. When the work you are able permitted to do doesn't allow that, you've only got one choice: go to school. When that's no longer enough what else is there? Luck? Faith?

 

[Shivarage]

Well you can't swing a cat for hitting someone with a degree full stop. But gaining recognisable skills is the only way you can improve your lot in life. When the work you are able permitted to do doesn't allow that, you've only got one choice: go to school. When that's no longer enough what else is there? Luck? Faith?

Connections mate, you can't swing a cat in a workplace for hitting a friend of a friend of the boss or nephew/neice/whatever relation who couldn't be there otherwise

This is the problem with an ever evolving population... people are so smart that everything is being done brilliantly by everyone so the only thing left to differentiate job applicants is personal recommendation

 

[Hero in a half shell]

There's another worker sat by the board, who ask us what type of work we're looking for. I tell him I'm at universtity studying IT so I'm looking for something in that area, to which the guy practicly spits out his sandwich and scoffs, "you haven't found anything in the last year, what makes you think you're going to find anything now?". I said that that I hoped that coming to this place could help with that and he just snorted and turned to the next guy.

Heh, When I went to the job advice centre the woman asked me what job I was looking for. I told her my degree and said anything to do with the planning industry, and she laughed out loud and said I'd no hope, although she wasn't laughing at me, just the idea of anyone finding a job in the planning industry right now, so I feel your pain.

It doesn't help that every job no matter how remedial requires 3 years experience in the relevant field. I don't have any $%#&*@~ experience. What am I supposed to do?

Oh let's just face it, there's no point holding out for an opening, we're all going to end up in call centres, aren't we? It'll be 9 hour a day shifts on minimum wage for the next 5 years of our precious lives.

I amy be alittle drunk.

That's the most brilliant sentence I've ever seen written.

 

[Xanthious]

Well you can't swing a cat for hitting someone with a degree full stop. But gaining recognisable skills is the only way you can improve your lot in life. When the work you are able permitted to do doesn't allow that, you've only got one choice: go to school. When that's no longer enough what else is there? Luck? Faith?

Perseverance, connections, and a little luck is about all you have in this economy. The idea is to give yourself as many options as possible. If you are flexible about relocating that will set you apart from a portion of the group. If you know people that work in your chosen field make sure you keep in contact with them as person to person networking is a pretty common way of hearing about jobs before they put out an ad. All you can do is keep sending out resumes and hoping for the best.

About a year ago we needed to bring in a new network admin. Our home office is in a small northern Indiana town. Only putting ads in the local newspaper and the two surrounding cities' newspapers we still got over 400 resumes in about a week's time. We had people driving in from other states to simply be interviewed. It's a crazy job market out there.

The best advice I can give is take whatever work you have to in order to get by for the short term. At the same time though keep plugging away looking for a job you will be happy with in the long term.

 

[Maclennan]

I tell him I'm at universtity studying IT

Wait you were in university and were receiving benefits, or graduated and started receiving benefits!
I have to be out of school and working continuously for a year before I would even qualify to receive benefits

I had to move across the country for an internship in my field of study, to put that in perspective it was roughly the same distance as traveling to Paris from home and the Atlantic ocean isn't exactly a river

Yeah I thought that was strange too, must either have graduated or be a part time student as you can't claim JSA if you're a full time student, that would be stupid. The bit that has been left of is you have the first 13 weeks of your benefits to limit what job areas you'll search and apply for, after that you have to go with anything and they only involve these scemes after a year of claming.

That's not to mention the rise in JSA that's just happened, I don't see my salary rising by anywhere near that percentage and I have to work for that!

I know; The amount I pay into EI weekly, our JSA equilivant, would pay for roughly one layed off grocery store worker's benifits. It probably is and I will never get what I have already paid into the system already back over my entire life time.

 

[xDarc]

There's no shame in being a janitor or general laborer or a kennel cleaner. I respect someone that will plug away at those jobs even though they may be grossly over qualified a lot more than I do someone who sticks their nose up because they think that by going to school and getting a degree they are suddenly too good for such menial labor. If I ask someone about an employment gap and the response I get is "The only places hiring were factories and fast food" then the interview is ending shortly afterwords because I have zero interest in hiring someone that thinks they are too good to work in a certain field.

I'm in the US too. I never really wanted to go to college because it always seemed kind of ridiculous to me say this is what I want to do X years from now. I worked in grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, always trading up for something that paid a little, but always working since I was old enough, I started bagging groceries at 14. Coming up on 30 a month from now.

After 9/11 it was easy to get into private security. But I eventually topped out for unarmed guards around 13 dollars an hour. During those years I attended a little college and finished an associates in general studies at a local community college. At 26, I still did not want to commit to a 4 year degree. I decided to shift gears and took a job with best buys geek squad for a dollar an hour less. That only lasted about 6 months, but after that I was able to get a job with a small security company that was doing web based remote monitoring and there were lots of technical skills involved.

After about a year of that, I managed to get a bank to scoop me up to be their CSR/Tech guy for their online banking department. One of two. The other guy was a masters degree and he's lazy as sin. We track our requests/tickets and I am doing twice as many a month as he is. He's intelligent, but does not understand hardware at all and just doesn't always have that systems based logic when it comes to problem solving. He recently asked me what .NET was because he was applying for a job that wanted demonstrated knowledge of it. He had to find one of his assignments from college as an example of his work. He didn't even remember what it was.

Anyway, long story short they pay me almost 18 bucks an hour. I'm buying a house this year. The guy I replaced was in on my interview and I asked him why I was picked, he said everyone else had horrible people skills and poor or little actual work experience/consistency. It's been a year and they are quite happy with me. From here things are only looking up, but you bet your ass if I lost this job I'd go right back to one of those security jobs or a low paying repair guy's position, just to keep that mortgage payment coming.

I guess my point is, working is better than not working. Many places want you to have a job to get a job. Just try to keep moving up to better paying jobs.

 

[Leadfinger]

Ouch, 'scro. They have you by the short and curlies.
captcha-knock back

 

[Shivarage]

I guess my point is, working is better than not working. Many places want you to have a job to get a job. Just try to keep moving up to better paying jobs.

I know I've posted too much on this thread but you're very lucky, with an attitude like that today you wouldn't even get started because knowing you were looking a better job would prevent you getting the first. (who would hire someone who would jump ship at the first opportunity of something better?)

 

[Lonan]

Do you think you're above the work you might be given? Many people seem to have such an employment superiority complex.

"Our parents told us as kids 'study hard and go to college, you don't want to work at McDonalds'. So we did. Now, with the economy as it is, we can't find the positions we studied for. So they call us entitled when we don't want to work at McDonalds."

If it's anything like the job centre I had to go to they'll never contact you again. I went through the same crap and told them I was interested in retail. They told me they knew of several jobs available and they'd call me in a week to give me a list of them. Didn't happen. Best thing you can do is get a job before they eventually do drag you back in their to do a crappy job.

Do you think you're above the work you might be given? Many people seem to have such an employment superiority complex.

Trust me, if it's anything like my job centre it's not jobs like Maccas, it's jobs like chicken gutting and stamping lables on cans. Work that's above everybody basically.

My friend is working with the Youth Employment Centre to find a job, and a convenience store or liquor store a few hundred metres from his house phoned him back and gave him an offer. The YEC told my friend liquor stores/convenience stores are not safe and he could do better.

First of all, when the nuclear apocalypse hits, my friend's neighbourhood will still be incredibly green, and with the sound of birds singing and the pleasant rhythm of the wind blowing through the trees. Second of all, what in the hell is a government funded employment agency doing telling an unemployed person he can "do better" than to get a job? It's absolutely ridiculous.

I advised my friend to accept, and he agreed with me on all points made here.