Question:
I've been searching for a job for the last couple of years, and by now
I'm about at my wit's end. I've tried employment agencies, I've tried
career fairs, I've tried MonsterBoard and other Internet job sites,
I've tried applying to jobs posted on the various *.jobs.* websites,
I've tried placement bulletins, and all it ever seems to get me are
"You have impressive qualifications, but we don't need you anyway"
letters. I _really_ need to get a job so I can move out of my
parents' house and we can stop driving each other buggy, and so I can
have money to start paying off my student loans and do the things I'd
like to do. But it doesn't look like that is going to happen any time
soon, and I'm getting more and more frustrated about it.
I can't help thinking that there must surely be some better way. I'm
not so naive as to think there's some sort of "magic bullet," but
surely there is something that would at least help the process along.
About the only thing I haven't tried are pay services, and on the face
of it common sense would seem to dictate that people who find other
people jobs for a living would be better at it than amateurs like me.
But if that truly is the case, which ones do I try? Looking through
all the services posted on the Internet, I see a morass of employment
agencies, resume distribution services, advertisement services,
pay-access jobsearch sites, and all sorts of other places. How am I
to tell which ones are worthwhile, or even if any of them are?
What I'd really like would be someplace where I can go and get advice
from people about this. Not some webpage with advice or inspirational
articles; I've seen dozens of those and they haven't helped. I'd like
some people I could talk with--by email, telephone, whatever--about
what I should be doing and how I should be doing it. Is there
anything like this out there? (Preferably for free...)
Answer:
-Hard to give advice without any details on your situation. If you're in
the US and are attending or have graduated from college, you can usually
use your school's placement office. They usually have a decent staff
with lots of info on job hunting and entry level positions.
-Since you mention student loans, I presume you have a college degree.
Have you been to your school's placement office? In my experience,
about the only ways an entry level can hope to get hired is to either
be singularly outstanding, have an inside connection, or to go thru the
college placement office.
Lacking that, you could try temp agencies to get a foothold on your
desired career path and try to make contacts that way.
You didn't specify your field of interest, but I can tell you that it
should be very easy for you to find a job if your background is in
engineering, particularly computer or electrical.
