Years ago when I had to find a job in a recession of the early 80's, I treated it as a job in itself. I started at 8 am every day and worked for 8 hours sending resumes, making phone calls, searching ads etc. I applied for anything I was remotely qualified for in any area of the country. I would send in resumes every month to some of the same companies just to let them know I was really interested. I didn't hear anything for the first couple of months. Then all of a sudden the calls came in and so did the interviews. One interview was for a "Product Development Engineer". I didn't have an Engineering Degree and I hardly knew what a Product Development Engineer does. The interviewer pointed that out to me and showed me the door. As soon as I got home, I sent a note expressing my thanks for his time and my interest in any jobs that would suit my qualifications. I got a call shortly after and took a lower status job from them. I didn't stay but could have with night school worked into the Engineering job. You said you were sending out 5 resumes a day? I'd hardly call that a full day of job hunting especially these days when you can copy, paste and email 5 resumes in just a few minutes. Stop drifting and start paddling.
I recommended H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt. I would also recommend any and all BANKS, local branches. Take a teller job if you can get it. All banks employ economists so some branch teller job might open some doors for you with your economics degree. In this job environment take anything and do anything that helps you grow as a person. ....like th volunteer work I already suggested. Even a teller job or tax prep work is OK in this environment especially coupled with some volunteer work. All the while you keep looking and sending out resumes and when the economy turns around and co's start hiring you will get a better job. 2years from now.....As an employer I get your resume and I see you worked in a bank the last 2 years. I know the economy sucks and people were out of work. BUT you did a job AND volunteered your free time in the community. Shows character to me. I would hire you over some spoiled punk that went to Harvard and had a 4.0 GPA and didn't have much community involvement or self sacrificing volunteer work. I look at the ENTIRE person. School and GPA doesn't mean everything.
Mr. Mom0/pH0x, INeedAJob is asking why he can't get a job. Why are you so cranky? Perhaps you should ask why you can't get laid?
Why bother asking all the spoiled baby boomers around here that question? What do they care about how the job market is in another 5-10 years? Theyâll die just as soon as they bankrupt Social Security and Medicare and leave us kids with their 50 trillion dollar credit card bill.
Just a few thoughts Iâll chip in to what has already been said. 1)Of course the obvious one is the economy is in the crapper right now, so itâs understandable. Of course 90% of people are still employed (some of which are underemployed but whatever, they still have a job), so somebody is getting jobs. But donât let all these baby boomers around here rattle you too much. They talk about how hard they worked and you just donât want to put the work into it and think the world owes you a favor, but really the playing field was a lot easier 30 years ago. Originally I had always thought Iâd wind up in business or finance like you, but after the past year and realizing how much that industry has screwed this country, Iâm kinda glad itâs downsizing. Call it jealousy that I didnât make it if you want, but how much actual value do all these finance people actually add to our world? 2)Like its been mentioned, sending resumes is almost worthless. I have sent probably 100 resumes over the past year and got one phone call. Now granted my resume is nowhere near yours is, but I am also not demanding the jobs and salary that you are either. As mentioned before you could customize a cover letter to the specific job, but that hasnât done me any good. Like for instance, I applied for a lot of inventory/shipping/receiving etc jobs. I would put on their that I have sold over 2000 items on ebay and amazon with 100% positive feedback. I thought that was pretty relevant, but I never got one response. 3)I think I read that you are delivering refrigerators just for a job now and itâs not on your resume. I donât know if that has affected any interviews youâve gotten, but try to hide it as much as possible. Itâs gotten to the point where unemployment is kind of an honorable thing. You say you canât find a job and are unemployed and everybody else says thatâs too bad and they know the economy sucks and itâs not your fault. If you instead just take a crappy job doing anything just to have a job and make a little money in the meantime, employers will now think that there is something wrong with you because you are working a crappy job. Just my opinion though. But I think itâs sad that we live in a world where we look down at people who work at McDonaldâs but being unemployed is perfectly justifiable. I mean, at least they have a job, they are contributing to this world. Maybe Iâm not wording this right, but hopefully you get the point. 4)Iâve said it before and Iâll say it again. Luck has a lot to do with it. As mentioned before, I have been sending out resumes and calling for about a year now (not actively as you though) without much success. I managed to get a temp job in March. Knowing that the job would slow down and end in September/October and how tough the job market is, I called just 2 or 3 places in late July. Surprisingly one called back (I left a message, not a resume). Iâve done the same thing dozens of times before and never got called back. Why they called me back, I have no idea. I went for 2 interviews and got hired pretty easily. The whole time I was thinking that this is way too easy and thereâs got to be a catch. But I started a month ago and things are going ok. Itâs selling cars, so itâs sort of a make or break thing, but at least Iâve got the opportunity. Actually it worked out perfectly because their top salesman was out for 2 months with a knee replacement and he was coming back just as I started. So he was getting back into the swing of things and I was helping him with everything and learning from the best at the same time. It was just good timing, nothing else. But now I guess itâs up to me to take advantage of it.
I do want to once again thank everyone for their replies, about 126 posts and 8756 views as of this writing makes it one of the most successful threads I have seen on this site. Hopefully it is helping the tens of thousands of people out there who are in a similar position. Government jobs have been suggested allot. I have been very active on USAjobs, I apply to everything. As far as all the replies about my password quip, it was really just a way of sharing how many sites I am truly registered on. I can usually remember the passwords once I know what their particular construction rules are. For the grammatical errors, I am not the greatest speller. I never excelled in English class. I have the other kind of brain, the mathematical and technical kind. Spell check is my best friend, and for a forum post I just spell check and throw it up, no formal review. My resume has been looked over by many people and all grammatical changes were made very early in the process. H&R Block and local banks were suggested. I have applied to many, no replies, I will keep trying. I do agree that it seems to be more noble to be unemployed rather then working a physical labor job. I do not list my delivery job on my resume. I will continue to send out resumes, and a much greater percent will be outside of the NY area. I do have several cover letters already written up, for many different positions. I normally have one that will fit on an application with minimal tweaking since I have sent out so many resumes that required once attached in the past.
Haven't read all the replies so this may be a repeat but since you have no "experience" I would advise learning a specific skill and learn it well. Learn some front end or back end coding for trading systems. There are too many experienced workers out there for hiring managers to select from that will be productive "out of the box". Hiring college grads (good GPA or not) is a risk.
I do know a good amount of coding for trading systems, mostly back end, in C#. I have read is the language of choice for its speed and garbage collection handling.
You should realize who you are competing against. My brother just graduated with an econ degree (3.75gpa) and is looking at both the military and private sector. The difference between him and you, he worked for a large corporation while he went to college. He now has five years experience in supply chain management, inventory management, and logistics, as well as recommendations from CEOs and CFOs. I did the same thing. Was in college for 7 years due to deciding not to go to med school. During that time I worked for a well known corporation with the following chronology. Start- swing shift production line worker @ $7/hr 4 months- Day shift team lead (schooling now paid for) Year 2.5 - Production Supervisor Year 3.5 - R&D engineering tech (6sigma/Lean manufacturing certified) Year 6 - Salaried R&D engineer Year 7 - Graduated in Finance/Econ and bio-engineering minor. I was positioning myself to become a management consultant. I had to learn how to help companies be successful. I can assure you that no prospective employer has ever asked me what my GPA was. You should realize that your degree just got you to year 2-3 on the above timetable. National average there is about $35K annual. Also, I would suggest that you quit looking for work in places like NYC. Come to a place like Utah. If you like the big city then SLC has 5.8% unemployment rate. I like the smaller metro areas (100-200,00 people) and mine is at about 4% unemployment right now. Seriously, why would any recent grad want to find a job where the unemployment rate is 10% and most applicant are overqualified. You're young and mobile. Take advantage of that. With your schooling I can assure you that you will find a job easily making about $40K. I know that sounds like it sucks, but it is the equivalent of $95K in NYC. Cost of living is everything. $40K here gets you a new car and a 4 bedroom house with a 2-car garage on 1/2 acre lot.
get a sales job and work your way up...easiest thing...you dont even need a degree-especially if you have a 7