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?
You just have to keep applying until you find something.
Also, have you applied for unemployment? If not, do so immediately.
~~I believe the state deadline to do that 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. ~~ Edit: The state’s phrasing confused me, ignore the strikethroughed text
I’ve been familiar with the Sisyphean routine of offering myself to other parties only to be met with sharp rejection each and every time since before I entered the job market.
What state do you live in? I used to take unemployment claims and there was no requirement to file the initial claim by a specific date (though I’m sure there would eventually be a cutoff). The hard deadlines were once the claim was filled because claimants have to go in weekly and certify that they’re still unemployed and actively looking for work. It’s possible you can still apply, and layoffs tend to be processed faster. I’d strongly recommend trying. The worst they can say is no.
Also, I realize your situation really sucks, and I don’t want to downplay that at all, but I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of your expectation that you’ll be rejected is coming through in interviews. Interviews are at least part about how good your acting skills are, which is ass, but also reality. I have often crippling depression and anxiety, but I’m great at faking positive and confident, and I’ve been offered most of the jobs I’ve interviewed for in my life. Not because I’m always the most educated or experienced candidate, but because I seem like I’ll be tolerable to work with.
Oh and lie if you’re overqualified - say you’re looking to take a step back because you want to go back to school or something. Stupid but people respond better to that than the idea that we want to pay our bills and a job is a job.
You guys say you hate corporate culture yet have no problem faking positive and confident to get a job. Curious! I am very intelligent.
Rules vary from state to state. I just double checked my state’s .gov site and it verified what I had said before. I can try to see if they’ll accept it late but the fine text doesn’t look like they would.
I wouldn’t be surprised if at least some of your expectation that you’ll be rejected is coming through in interviews.
The thing is that I have to get to the interview stage first; for 99% of this process, it’s just been typed words with no direct interaction with a human person. For the one in-person I’ve had, I probably did show some discomfort because I was caught by surprise having to wear earplugs for a facility tour and they’d be required for the job but I have a medical condition that makes earplugs difficult and painful for one ear. I don’t believe a lack of confidence was conveyed in the phone interviews (apart from one really weird and unexpected AI voice interview), and I believe I came across confident for the one video call interview which was for a job I had only heard of a half hour prior.
I believe the state deadline to do that 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.
you need to talk to someone about this because I really doubt whatever you perceived / were told is accurate. Also employers have a vested interest in you NOT applying for unemployment as many states require them to pay a portion of it when firing/laying off.
This is not legal advice.
Lie.
Unless you are apply for a government job, that could get you in legal trouble.
But non-government employers are all fair game, even if they catch your lie, they probably won’t fire you if you’ve been doing good.
Well, at this point you might as well:
Run for office.
Lie all the way.
Who knows, maybe you become the first Lemming to become elected to office. 😉
Or if your polling is low and the odds are not good, you can just illegally spend all your campaign funds for vacations.
YOLO
Bonus points if you have at least one felony or are a rapist or other kind of predator.
So many people don’t realize government positions have hard and soft requirements. Usually the hard requirement is the degree unless there’s profession specific stuff, (like Computer Security requiring the certification). Everything after that is generally how well you can convince them that you do actually have experience or how badly they need bodies. You might start at a lower pay level if it’s the latter but it’s a job and it promotes on time if you stay on top of it.
I prefer to say “stretch the truth”. This is more common than a lot of people realize.
There is always someone getting paid more who doesn’t exactly qualify - or worse, doesn’t even try anymore.
As many people have said in the thread, it’s all about who you know. “Networking” is more important than skills in many industries.
Its liegal advice
Lad liebertum.
Just make sure you have backup lies if anything gets scrutunized more
Lies must be collateraliezed
I’m not sure how to interpret “liegal”
Is that a typo of legal or illegal?
Don’t put anything on your resume that you’re not prepared to talk about
Don’t leave anything off your resume because you know something about it but aren’t an expert at it.
9 out of 10 times the person picking your resume out of a stack has less subject matter expertise than you do.
If you can fumble your way through it, it goes on the resume. You don’t have to put you’re a god but you also don’t have to put that you only have cursory knowledge.
Which city are you from ? How much money do you have to spare ? How risk taking capacity do you have ? How old are you ?
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 text
Lower 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.
I feel for you. I’m not in the same field as you, and I’m not the same person you replied to either. I’m just chiming in. I’ve been unemployed for over a year; your post makes me think you are starting to feel stressed and this is the first step towards depression. I went down that route and getting out of it was very tough; I’m still working on it.
In short, I want to say, try to get a plebe jobbe now instead of waiting to land something good. It’ll keep you going and you won’t care much about it if you lose it or need to quit.
I’m currently in retail, I actually have two part time jobs. It took me a while to get them, and I had to tailor my resume for it. I had to remove experience from it to finally get interviews in lower positions. Nobody at the shopping mall cared how long I worked in a studio elsewhere or what I did. And trust me, I have plenty of dim witted, ugly coworkers (as well as smart ones and good looking ones) so don’t think you have an unhireable aura. There’s plenty worse than you out there, I’m absolutely certain.
Good luck OP
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.
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.
What kind of engineering? Designing what? How’s your local market for those positions? Is it something that can be done remotely, and thus you could apply to positions nationwide?
The really short version is that if you aren’t finding positions, you’re in the wrong line of work or location. If you’re finding positions and applying, but not getting any responses, then your resume/etc is bad. If you are getting responses but no offers, then your interview technique is bad.
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.
This right here is why i am inherently incompatible with the modern job market.
My brain is wired to solve complex abstract problems not having to deal with subjective social intrigue in which i’ll always be perceived as some weird idiot because people don’t know what i am talking about half the time.
The only way someone can be convinced i am neither dumb or to disabled to work is because they objectively looked at my work ethic and results so the look on their face shifts from uncanny disturbed to uncanny impressed.
I did land a good job in a non profit sector where people around me do respect me. I am never changing. If i ever lose this job i am not sure i will ever find something else.
You would have references from your current job, even if you’re cartoonishly unlikeable. Keep light contact with people you get on with even (probably especially) after they part ways with the organization you work for. If/when you need a job, ask those people if they know any leads you might follow.
I agree that some people like you may not be fit for the current way of doing things in terms of job research. But you have to remember that being socially able is also a very important part of the job at most companies, because very rare are the cases where you don’t work as part of a team. I would even say communication is a bigger part of the job compared to the actual brute skill for most companies. You can always learn or perfect a new programming language or platform, it’s a matter of reading. Soft skills like social abilities cant really be learned, and so this is why a lot of companies actually choose people who they think will fit in a team rather that who will close the most issues
In many ways, I feel similarly. However, “this one weird trick” got me out of it. Think of networking as something you do to find like-minded complex-abstract-problem-solvers. You’re just finding friends. If one of those friends has a particularly tough problem and they’re willing to pay you, then, congrats! You now have a job offer!
The algorithm is simple: ask people what they do, why they do it, and, crucially, who they know. Then contact each of those people, name-drop their friend, mention interests you might have in common, and ask to meet you talk about fun stuff. Repeat. Follow up with people to let them know you appreciated meeting with them (or not…if you didn’t really appreciate meeting with them). If you get the sense that someone is looking for help and you’re interested in what they’re doing, offer your help. The worst thing that can happen is they say no.
There are happy hours / meet n greets, networking dinners, and more, that are specifically for branching out and developing professional connection without having to know anyone.
What if you don’t know anyone willing to help you get a job?
Ask them for who they know. Heck, even if they are willing to help you, still ask them for more contacts.
It legit took me over a decade of work experience to finally realize that “networking” was really just a simple graph-traversal algorithm for finding friends. If those friends need help with something that pays, then offer your help.
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.
