I had a job. The company didn’t realize that they actually had to sell product to stay in business. Almost all of the workforce was let go or furloughed. I’ve been unemployed for over a month now.
I’ve filled out dozens upon dozens of job apps, starting even before I lost my job. I have my resume public on job listings sites for employers and hiring agencies to find, and I’ve sent my resume to employers and hiring agencies directly. I look through the listings on job boards for each day, mostly limiting my search to a wage that would allow me to make ends meet at home. I’ve solicited and implemented advice from resume design experts. I’ve had one in-person interview, a few preliminary phone interviews, and a couple of message conversations between recruiters and myself. The one in-person interview I had would not have paid enough for my monthly expenses and I was overqualified for the position; they decided against hiring me. I had another interview scheduled and confirmed via a hiring agency’s AI text bot and a human agent’s text; I drove to the scheduled interview place and time and they had no idea that I was supposed to be interviewed. All other communication has either been flat-out rejection or just left me hanging.
I have a Bachelor’s of Science degree from a top 25 ranked university in the US. I have no criminal record. I do have multiple disabilities but they are generally mitigable enough to not affect my work. I have references of my (now) former boss and a (now) former coworker who both praise my impact and aptitude in the factory and office workplace. I’m evidently overqualified for positions that don’t require higher experiences and I’m underqualified for nearly everything else; I can’t get experience in most niche or broad fields because nearly every position requires these experiences to have already been met. I try to follow all the invisible rules of applying and social etiquette. I am too physically ugly to sell my body. It feels like there’s always been a magical aura about me that makes people dislike me no matter how much I try to do the ethically or socially right thing. How am I supposed to get an income to survive?
It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Network
For every 200 applications you submit, you’re putting in as much energy as you could with one quality lead where you know someone. You gotta leverage connections, do informational interviews, etc. The reality is that a lot of job postings for skilled positions are put out there because the employer has to do it. They already know who they want.
There are usually many layers before your application actually gets to someone who understands the job and can actually evaluate how valuable you are to the role. There are an insane number of applications that are just gone before someone useful can actually read it.
I know personally I would never have gotten my last 3 jobs were it not for networking and knowing people.
Networking really is the way forward. I understand for some people that socialising is insanely difficult, but knowing the right people can get you jobs that you aren’t even qualified for.
And if you don’t know people then call them or show up if possible. Just get ahold of even the receptionist. Taking initiative is a skill and it NEVER looks bad. I hired a guy I wasn’t looking to hire because he walked in, said he needed a job, and why he wanted to work for us. He didn’t waste my time, was succinct and had a great personality and attitude. As a hiring manager of over a decade those are hard skills to find. I set an interview time for him to come back the next day and he showed up 15min early (good) and blew me away in the interview just being honest and having a good attitude.
There are 2 skills most people suck at:
- Reliability
- Good attitude
You hate being late and have reliable transportation (this matters in the US). You’re a life learner and want to grow and develop your skills.
These are dealbreakers for me: 3) Team Player. In many positions, if you like working mostly solo, no one wants to manage that. Being a team player that doesn’t mind helping others and/or asking others for help when needed is essential to a team’s success. 4) Take personal accountability for your actions. If you can’t do this you are poison to a team. I’ve let go technically great people because something that went wrong was always someone else’s fault. Once they’re gone the team thrives and outperforms the technical excellence of one.
Just calling up a company isn’t networking
Hence the “And” at the beginning of what I was saying.
Networking isn’t the only way to get a job. Helps, yes, but if you aren’t in a position to have that luxury there are other ways.
This
I know you’re looking for more immediate and stable income, but: Are you able to make anything? If you want to try your hand at a business, I’d be glad to help you with the tech stack side of things pro bono. I can get you set up with domain, email, website, and a marketing suite at least; I’ve also started four companies of my own so I can help you with the paperwork and structure stuff for that if you wanted.
I do this sort of thing entirely via email and video call for SMEs at my day job. It wouldn’t be steady at first and you might have to stop when you find a job… But in the meantime, while you’re looking, it’s work you can make for yourself. And who knows? Maybe it would become enough to sustain you on its own.
Just spitballing, anyway. Offer’s there 😊 Good luck!
IF OP doesn’t take you up on that, I will.
I love lemmy for people like you!! Feel like this type of generosity just doesn’t show up on other platforms. OP please see this^
Hi there! While my situation is not as dire as the OPs, I’m in a similar boat and am looking to set up an online presence for my services in the near-future. I don’t expect you to provide me with the same offer, or even a response, but I figured I’d ask. If there are any guides or resources you recommend, I’d appreciate anything. Thank you for your comment, it’s a good idea for people in similar situations and spurred me to more seriously consider such options
I’m an idiot, I’m blue collar, I’ve had about 20 jobs I’ve kept for at most, 3 years, and I could quit my job and have a new one tomorrow, for more money.
and that isn’t fair to you. People like you dedicate your life to knowing your topic. People like me live my life knowing how to do as many different possible things as I can, and a monetary balance needs to be in place here somewhere so academics with more rare skills are still upheld so their abilities are still useful when needed.
A safetynet, for smarties to be paid to be smart, to keep them around even if unnecessary right then.
Hey fellow laborer. Loved your comment but I just want to say there are many different kinds of intelligence. Don’t call yourself an idiot. Working with tools effectively is a kind of intelligence for sure. I’ve seen a person who seemed incapable of operating a screwdriver, but he was a network engineer. I wish I’d known I was good at it much earlier in life.
Something got up my spine when I was 18 to where, I didn’t just dislike depending on Best Buy to work on my PC, I loathed it, and at the time, it wasn’t even because I was into computers. I saw the bill, saw the work, put two and two together and couldn’t believe I paid two teenagers to play Legos with my tower for the cost of a… then, PS3.
this is the work, huh?
Then one day at an auto shop…
you’re gonna do it yourself? You’ll break it. You can’t do it.
You can’t do it
teeth add 5 years of wear
“I can’t… do it? Eh?”
Every day since, I’ve been… doin’ it, in spite.
Righteous.
It has taken me, on average, 6 months to find new work each time I do it and I send hundreds of resumes. So I think you are doing the right things. It just sucks. Sometimes you can get a lead from someone you know and that gets your foot in the door.
Remember, you are reviewing them as an employer too. If they have a shitty applicant experience, that should play into your decision process (easier said than done when you just want to make rent).
Feel free to message me if you would like resume or other search help.
I will say in advance that I’m sorry this won’t help you and it might make you feel worse, so don’t read on… when I was in high school back in the 90s, we had a regular substitute teacher. Dr. Bronk. Dr. Bronk had a PhD in some very obscure area of botany and couldn’t get a job in his field, so he was a substitute teacher. Even back then I felt bad for him.
It’s a really tough job market. Don’t be afraid to take something shorter term if it moves your income from zero to something. Even if that something is not enough for the long term, it will buy you time. And should this continue on and on, you can look at what options you have to lower your living costs. No one wants to make such sacrifices, but they too can buy you time.
Best of luck with the search.
What country are you in? What field of work are you in?
Are you able to get job seekers allowance (or equivalent)?
Job hunting is exactly this kind of grinding numbers game. It’s tough. Nobody enjoys it.
If your CV has been given the ok by design experts then you’ve got nothing different to do there.
So besides making “getting a job” your job and continuing to apply relentlessly and chase down opportunities your other task is to downsize your outgoings and expectations until they reflect your reality.
Apply for lower paying jobs. It’s a backstop that doesn’t meet your income goals but it’s better to be searching for a better job while earning 60% of your target than being unemployed and earning nothing.
Finally be prepared to put everything on the table. Are you resisting moving? How far away does your search span? What would it look like if you made your outgoings 80% of what they are now? 70%? 60%?
USA. End goal of work is engineering or design but I’ll settle for factory or shop floor work or something in between if it pays the bills for the time being.
The equivalent to Job Seekers Allowance for me is Unemployment Benefits, with rules varying from state to state.
Copied from another comment of mine: “[T]he state deadline to [apply] was by the Friday after losing the job, and buried in the fine text is a line mentioning that certain info has to be submitted at least a day prior to that Friday. I didn’t have required information for the bureaucracy at that time and I really didn’t expect the process to take so long or to be so absurd.” In other words, that ship has sailed.Edit: The state’s phrasing confused me, ignore the strikethroughed textLower paying jobs tend to think I’m overqualified so they expect to lose me to higher paying job and don’t want to waste training on me. This is something I also experienced before my previous job, which only hired me because they had plans for me to later advance in their company and utilize my qualifications but this never came to fruition.
I’m locked in a lease that is really cheap for the region and with lots of great amenities and is in the vicinity of multiple industrial centers. I could pay a chunk of change to break the lease but I have nobody whom I could ask to help me move. For my minimum pay ask, I don’t want the commute to be more than 30 minutes, especially with the winter weather coming; if the pay is substantially more than my minimum ask, then I’d accept a longer commute.
My constants for monthly expenses are rent and internet/cell plan, and electricity and natural gas are both roughly constant and are provided some leeway with the winter cold coming. Factoring these values in with how much of my wage would be deducted to taxes and benefits, this is how I arrived at what I would need in income monthly to pay for groceries, gasoline, and misc. essentials.
End goal of work is engineering or design but I’ll settle for factory or shop floor work or something
And there’s the problem. You are selling yourself for cheap. They recognize that, inevitably. That’s why you are getting such terrible, impossible offers.
Start to think reasonably about yourself, then present yourself reasonably.
But you need a friend or two to help with this. It’s not easy to do such a change on your own.
There is a dissonance between the echelons of positions. The employers for the lower jobs see your degree and wonder what’s wrong with you for you not to be in a higher position. The employers for the higher positions skim past the degree and don’t care about you unless you already have several years experience in the position.
I may sell myself short because I need income and none of the big fish show any sign of biting.
You don’t necessarily have to tell all prospective employers about all experience. If you think your resume is getting bounced from some kinds of openings because they think it is odd they you have this degree, don’t list the degree when you apply to those sorts of positions. Don’t talk about having the degree. If asked point blank if you have a degree, say something about your personal philosophy on why degrees aren’t important, or how your life’s goal would be to get a Ph.D. in art history or some other discrete and personable non-answer.
because
For what purpose are you writing this…
I do not need to know your reasons.
You do not owe me.
I’m assuming they’re more referring to something closer or related to a manufacturing engineering position as opposed to an assembly worker, both of which are normally stationed on the same floor.
Some positions do require industry (like semiconductor, medical, green, etc…) experience/knowledge, which isn’t uncommon for people just entering into to take a lesser role while getting acquainted, certified, or whatever.
That last bit about your unlikeable aura, you should get someone to give you honest feedback on what you’re doing wrong.
The thing is, once you’ve been stuck in it for so long everywhere, you don’t know how the few people whom you find judicious and honest and whose general input you respect and appreciate can also somehow be sane and in-touch if they are the anomalies who think the same of you. You question if praise and affirmation from them is just an overly polite way of hiding pity and disdain. Even if their analysis says all is good, does that really mean all is good? That’s why I described it as magical, because it’s internally contradictory and independent of social setting. Since I can’t even get to the interview stage, then the text of the resume as approved by others becomes a conduit for the aura to affect the potential employers simply because the resume is mine. That’s the conceit I mean when I say it’s like magic.
Not trying to be a dick. But if this is the way you write and communicate to recruiters this is the issue. I have to read your paragraphs multiple times to just figure out what the hell you are trying to convey.
It’s overly dense, you sound like you have your first thesaurus, and you write to much unnecessary filler. It’s incredibly hard to digest.
That comment was an explanation of layered figurative language. It was given artistic flourish to convey the emotion and situation in experienced subjective depth rather than the objective and literal point of view of an outsider. I am more succinct and linear in settings for which I have to communicate professionally.
I have to agree here.
You need a sense check on your comms.
Possible Autism or not. You alluded to it in another comment about you possibly being mistaken for AI in your letters.
Sadly, masking may need to be a strategy you play here, for a while.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8NJHMJy/
Respectfully, the above meme is how every single word you’ve typed in this thread sounds and I imagine your conversations go.
Again, not trying to shit in you. But if this is even remotely how you communicate everyone thinks your autistic. Not in a mean way but your intonation and detail scream autism.
And I’m not a doctor when any qualifications or trying to diagnose. But I can tell you right now you need to practice how to be less precise and err on the side of brevity.
This year in particular has just been a fucking awful job market. I lost my job in January and had severance last a couple months, but even after spending every day reading job boards and filing job applications until I was emotionally exhausted, I had zero callbacks for seven months. It was only a few months ago that I got two interviews, and I got offers from both. As soon as I accepted, I had some other companies suddenly crawling to me with offers. I’m still recovering from my debts accrued in that time, but I’m finally in a much better place now. Keep going at it, and I promise something will crack.
I mean, fundamentally you’re not supposed to obtain income. The system that distributes money is not actually designed to give people money to live, and nobody is really steering it to make it do that. It just happens to sometimes do that. I’m not sure anyone has actually “designed” it to do anything, but it seems at least much better at concentrating money and power than it is at creating plausible jobs or job-housing-food combinations for humans.
I hope you find some good advice as to how you can get income to survive. I don’t really have any, other than shake all your friends down for jobs (since hiring is usually done by knowing somebody rather than by weighing the merits of an unbiased stream of varyingly qualified applicants) and be prepared to search for employment for many months (a thing you might have had to have started doing before now for best results). But it’s not hard because you are somehow not doing it “right” or the way you are “supposed to”, it’s hard because the problem you are facing it isn’t actually constrained to be solvable. You can do it all right and still not succeed.
The situation where a candidate is rejected because they don’t have relevant experience is often decided by people who don’t have that experience either. The last thing I want is a job where I immediately know how to do it. That’s often the reason to leave - it’s boring and not a challenge any more.
The market is probably flat right now and that’s the reason there’s no jobs. You have to hang in there for a bit and wait for an upturn.
What is your degree in?
Apply to some staffing/temp agencies in your area.
I’ve watched a few youtube videos about “getting paid to be you” that boil down to doing hobby-type activities you are good at - like knitting or playing chess or whatever - on a youtube channel, with a paid membership level that gets people in on a monthly zoom call. Looks are not a factor and the goal isn’t to go viral or become a youtube celebrity. You just have to be able to explain and demonstrate beginner-level skills at something to people who are at an even lower level. This one says her members pay $30/mo and she gets 5 or 6 people at a time in zoom calls. I imagine you could do this for pretty much any craft skill you are halfway good at. It would take very little time per month, and the arithmetic works out very well - a very modest goal of 100 subscribers at $20/mo = $2k per month. Build that up to several channels and you would have a perfect stay-home job you could live very well on. “Why doesn’t everybody do this then?” Well, tons of people do. These little channels are all over youtube, and if you do the math it’s not surprising at all that they’re able to support themselves with it.
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You mean doing the math on how a market with limited demand but where almost every man and his dog can start supplying with no overhead is likely to be rapidly saturated?
That’s not math, that’s just meme-grade Econ 101 to add fake weight to your skepticism. Youtube has been around for almost 20 years and “the market” for skill hand-holding isn’t saturated at all. It’s not even a single market, it’s a broad spectrum of niche markets.
broad yet shallow and depending entirely on opaque algorithms beyond the user’s ability to ken much less control…
and they aren’t wrong about the market being instantly oversaturated, discovery is a real problem and it’s pretty fucking difficult.
Which city are you from ? How much money do you have to spare ? How risk taking capacity do you have ? How old are you ?
