If you like working with your hands, look into education for the trades. People that do trade jobs are only getting more and more rare these days so theres a good chance you can get a job that way and it pays waaay better than retail in a lot of cases.

Also like others said, knowing someone is also ideal.

Nepotism. Who’s your daddy and what does he do?

Get on as a construction helper. Zero experience required, just show up on time with some basic tools every day.

Emphasis added.

Try some sort of construction or electrical installations.

Then you learn useful skills, AND youll likely be one of the smarter people there (Lotta folks are the kind who drink a 30 pack of Busch and go to the strip club daily. Not exactly geniuses). so eventually you can get into designing drafting or management.

Or just look into drafting. Read up on how factories work. We need smart engineer type people.

Otherwise , movie theater or bowling alley? Arcade? Those jobs are hell of a lot better than Walmart. Pays shit tho.

Or, janitor. We always need people to clean. Hell, even with my full time job, I cleaned offices on weekends because it was so easy and gave me extra cash. In my case I did it alone which was great, headphones in and just clean.

Another thing to consider: learning a trade.

I don’t know what the trades are like in the USA but here in the UK, once you have a tradesperson you like and who does an above-average job, you go back to that same person until they retire.

It could be anything people need. Electrics or plumbing are high-skill trades and really well paid. Cleaning is a good low-skill trade, it’s hard work but it’s a job for life. Buy some tools, get good at it. Start with windows, they’re easy and basically everyone needs it, and all you need is a squeegee, a clean towel, and a bucket. Get a dedicated business phone number and email address. Print up some flyers with fixed prices (find out what other local businesses are charging and undercut them slightly until you get on your feet) and your business phone number on, and distribute them as far as your legs will carry you.

It’s been decades now, but when I was still in school I worked for a temporary employment agency for a couple summers. I had an interview with them so they could get a feel for my qualifications, then they would line me up with random office jobs that could last anywhere from one or two days to a month or more. For most of one summer I worked in the mailroom of a law office.

If you can find an employment agency like that near you it might be a good way to get your foot in the door. Keep your eyes open wherever they send you and see if there might be chances for longer term jobs. The experience of being a temp with a good work ethic can also look good on a resume.

Landscaper, tree worker, construction.

I see “hiring” signs for these jobs all over the place.

Go to EMT school. It’s a fairly short program. Shouldn’t be terribly expensive.

You could look into a government job. It’s kinda fraught with the current administration, but there are lots of entry level government jobs with regular schedules and decent benefits.

Another possibility is care work or whatever it’s called. I have a few friends who work in housing for the developmentally disabled and I’ve seen listings for jobs in psych wards/mental health type places that don’t have any degree requirements. There’s probably similar jobs in elder care too that don’t have any degree requirements.

Find what sector you want to work in and start educating yourself about it. Even online certificates help. Most jobs work on a consistent schedule.

If you are dead set on going at this with no education and nothing of value on your CV, look into factory and warehouse work. It’s boring and repetitive though. Another option is municipal work, they sometimes have good paying jobs with little experience needed.

The fundamentals are always going to be the same:

• Develop marketable skills
• Build out your professional network
• Develop ace communication skills, written and verbal; this pays dividends everywhere in life
• Strive to be either in the top ~15%* of what you do or bring a diverse set of skills to the table so that you can perform multiple roles; however, the latter tends to be an entirely different kind of job
• Be punctual
• Always continue with your professional development
• Be the kind of person with whom you would like to work

*This is not as hard as it sounds. Consider Sturgeon’s Law (“90% of everything is shit”) and how much people phone it in; it’s pretty easy to stand out in most fields.

More specifically, I suggest “durable” career fields such as the trades (plumber, electrician, lineperson, crane operator, cement truck operator, etc). I mentor and tutor some high school and college students. There’s a lot of career uncertainty for the the foreseeable future, and the trades are not going anywhere. I generally suggest “do what pays the most and chaps your ass the least;” this is just a guideline and the kind of thing you need to figure out what your inflection point is. Whatever the fuck you do, avoid debt like it’s the plague.

Unless you land a proper apprenticeship, expect some serious long days for a few years, e.g. working full time and schooling/studying full time. Maybe you’ll get away with a less arduous journey, but if you’re mentally prepared to go full-tilt then you’ll be pleasantly surprised if the journey is easier.

Empathy by way of anecdote: I was a DJ and nightclub manager. I was surprised when I hit 25 and was somehow still alive. I decided to take this life stuff seriously and saw that there was most likely no path towards serious financial security. I went back to college for audio engineering, working full time and going to school full time. I did audio engineering for about five years. While audio engineering was cool, I thought it would be even cooler to write the software tools for audio. So I poured myself into independent study, using my nights and weekends to learn programming. And once I was comfortable with programming, I went back to college again for software engineering, again full time school + work. The journey was hard, but I was a senior software engineer within 8 years, manager and principal roles another 4 years after that. However, I never got a job writing audio software; it’s been all medical and financial software. “How do you make the gods laugh? Make plans.” So have a vision, but be flexible and open to opportunities.

Honestly, if I could have another go at it, I would have chosen marine electrician. Travel, boats + ships, technical + creative field, and get to pick and choose jobs I want to do.

Woo warning ahead: there are qualitative aspects to the journey. Know what you want, rather than what you are avoiding. If you don’t know where you want to go, you are going to end up somewhere else. But something cool happens when you know what you want, know it in your bones, and commit to taking the steps. The universe delivers. Maybe not the exact thing you wanted, but some form of it.

What are your interests and skills? Like someone else said, who you know matters more than anything else, but depending on what your interests and skills are, you can go out of your way to connect with people in that space.

And get used to finding ways of talking about yourself as a good fit for that kind of job. Brag on yourself.

Also, volunteering is a great way to build up a resume of skills in areas where you have no prior experience. There are jobs at food banks, homeless shelters, etc., but there are also often places like art museums and zoos that need volunteers. Basically, any non-profit you can think of probably runs largely on volunteers. Sometimes it’s in a warehouse or doing trash cleanup, but often they’re in office tasks like filing, misc office work, answering customer service emails, etc., that would be a great stepping stone to getting paid to do those things somewhere.

Run for congress, be corrupt as hell, and seek a rich doner to support your compaign

/j

I can’t really speak for today, because I know things are way different than they were before when I got out of retail

But I can tell you what worked for me and maybe you can apply something from it to your own situation

Save up enough money and buy your own tools, for me that was a $200 in 2013 computer. Sounds cheap today but it was a very tough purchase to make at the time without help and with bills to pay. Learn something that can be applied elsewhere using ‘free’ resources (r/piracy, FMHY, and your local Library would be the equivalent today). For me that was learning to use Linux, CAD and other modeling software in ways traditionally educated people at the time did not leverage them, and that edge got my foot in the door

Oh, and before you get your hopes up on the regular sleep schedule bit, I spent the past +decade swapping between nights and days every single week after getting out of retail. Now there’s also a baby in the picture and we won’t afford child care so sleep is a pipe dream. Maybe 2-4 hours a day if I’m lucky. Been that way for over a year now

Retrospectively my schedule then of 4-10:30 on week days so I could go to school and 5am-2pm weekends to get enough hours to pay the bills was amazing. Pay sucked though. So did them playing with my hours to keep me part time without full time benefits.

Door to door construction sales. There are lots of companies that do thinks like install new windows or solar panels. They pay people to go around, knock on doors, and see if people are interested in their product. Technically the job title is “lead generator”. And these companies are always hiring for these positions, since, to be honest, it is pretty shit work. You walk around all day in the hot sun, knocking on peoples doors and having those doors slammed in your face. Base pay isn’t great, and you make your real money in comissions, which are rare, since you are cold calling.

But it is regular hours, exercise and sunshine, practice keeping a positive attitude and meeting people. And as soon as you get hired, you can start applying for other, better jobs in sales.

Well, you can either start a small business or find a small business that does something and is willing to train you. As degrees have become worthless in comparison to other people recommending you for the position.