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[MrRoboto75]

One thing you do control is the way you present yourself to people.

It may not be 100% but its growing far before its ever falling.

Employers literally do not even have to pretend I exist.  Resume falls fresh from the printer directly into the trash bin.

You can show up in person all you want they'll just tell you to go home and apply online so they can ignore you.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah that was an obstacle for me too, definitely. Online applications are "convenient" in that you can apply for them en-masse from home, but I think are a net loss for potential employees since employers can be extremely choosy when they have 120 applications to pick from.

I definitely ran into that, and when I was living at home way back when it was difficult to deal with my parents who I was renting from because they could not understand that it was no longer possible to literally walk through town looking for a job.

It does sound like you are looking for jobs that are basically handed out to teenagers and summer job type of folks, and those are geared towards not having to get to know employees because they usually last 6 months anyway. I still recommend call centers as an ideal entry-level job because they really DO want to keep their entry level folks. We legit need people who are willing to stay and master their area of responsibility. There's still stress, but IMO it's just better all around than a retail/sales/stockroom sort of thing.

[MrRoboto75]

The vast majority of office jobs work the same way.  You're throwing paper airplanes at a brick wall expecting it to fall over.

I end up at my jobs because I get literally nothing after months and months of applying to things I should qualify for.  I mean nothing, not even an interview.

[Kagus]

An easy 40-50% of resumés and applications get dumped in the bin before they're even looked at, regardless of content. Employers simply cannot dedicate the time and man-hours to going through every application, so they cull the herd without even looking at it.

It's a crying shame that this happens, but that's just how it goes, apparently. The trick is to try and make your stand out aesthetically as much as possible, and also just plain old saturation.

Ever seen Real Genius? Check basement boy... He didn't win because he had the qualitative "best" or "lucky" ticket, he won because he had more tickets. Spoilers, but that plot point isn't really why people watch the movie, generally speaking...


Presumably you've learned through the work experience you do have that even the dumbest shitheads are given gainful employment in some places. The reason for this isn't because they're actually savants or are otherwise a higher class of dumb shithead than what you feel you prescribe to, it's because they're too dumb to have learned from the adversity they faced that they should stop trying.

[Reelya]

An easy 40-50% of resumés and applications get dumped in the bin before they're even looked at, regardless of content. Employers simply cannot dedicate the time and man-hours to going through every application, so they cull the herd without even looking at it.

It's worse than that. If you get 500 applications and you need to get that down to 1, how many man-hours does it take? How much time will the company let you allocate to that alone?

Say you spent exactly 1 minute considering each candidate, that's  8 hours of solid resume reading right there, and that's still only a cursory glance. So you want to skim each resume as quickly as possible, and divide them into two piles. One short-list of at most 10 resumes, and 490 rejects. The goal of the first-pass is that each resume gets a few seconds in which they're looking for any reason to reject you.

So the main trick here is to make it through the initial skimming process. For that, you need to remember that they're looking for 490 reasons to put you in the reject pile vs 10 reasons to put you in the shortlist pile.

It's a crying shame that this happens, but that's just how it goes, apparently. The trick is to try and make your stand out aesthetically as much as possible, and also just plain old saturation.

Your cover letter has to be quick and pleasing to read, only contain 100% job-relevant information, short paragraphs. Same with resume. People with mere seconds to skim your submission don't want big chunks of text to read through.

However, it's also important to repeat the wording from the job advert. Many places use automated keyword-search, to decide which resumes a human should even look at. That's why so many places are adamant that resumes must be in Microsoft Word and not PDFs because their automated resume-reading software is geared to Word documents.

So step 1 is in fact just to pick out keywords from the advert, especially the requirements section then make sure those keywords also appear in your resume and cover-letter. That gets you through the computer-assisted initial scanning phase that they use to get rid of timewasters.

[MrRoboto75]

seems like the 1 in 6 chance of blowing my head off with a revolver would be a better bet than the 1 in 500+ chance of jerking off someone only for them to fire me a month later because they realize it was a horrible mistake to do so.

[Dunamisdeos]

I mean if you want, I'll even take a look at your resume and maybe give some pointers? It is actually unusual to not get a single call back after literal months. Maybe I can help make it a little eye-grabbing? Send me a PM if you want to, or don't, I won't mind.

Just a little friendly completely anonymous no-strings-help might help.

[Lord Shonus]

As evil as they are (because of the abuses they enable), temp services are pretty useful in these circumstances. Even if you don't get a temp-to-hire position, you'll have some cash coming in and build some work experience. This will help make your resume look more attractive.

[Rolan7]

Yeah, I'm looking at temp companies myself.  From what I hear, they're a good way to get an "in" at a company.

In the meantime I'm doing my best with some old contacts, doing this and that, but even with my cheap way of living (it's what I deserve, and probably better than half of humankind) I'm (very slowly) sinking.

But that's just finances.  I'm still retraining, and a certain new connection might pay off.
*I* want to live.  Sometimes.  Enough.

[Dunamisdeos]

We use temps during our holiday season and always keep 1-2 permanently. We would keep more, but we don't need more after the season ends.

[Cathar]

Today I learnt I was not suffering from depression, but from chronic stress maybe due to my time passed in the academia with a bit of genetic predisposition since it runs in my family.
Pretty much the same thing, except it doesn't affect my ability to focus on a task, so I stay productive despite my brain telling me otherwise.

The good new is now I know what it is and I can try to accomodate myself more appropriately, the bad new is there's no cure so I'll probably die with it.

So yeah. Made me mildly sad

[MrRoboto75]

As evil as they are (because of the abuses they enable), temp services are pretty useful in these circumstances. Even if you don't get a temp-to-hire position, you'll have some cash coming in and build some work experience. This will help make your resume look more attractive.

I tried like two or three a year ago.  They called me in for interviews, then logged me into their systems.  Later they realized they can't sell me, so they just quietly forget about me and basically never call.

The state job placement service was much the same way.  It was like seven months before I heard from them at all.

[martinuzz]

I tried like two or three a year ago.  They called me in for interviews, then logged me into their systems.  Later they realized they can't sell me, so they just quietly forget about me and basically never call.

The state job placement service was much the same way.  It was like seven months before I heard from them at all.

To get temp offices interested in you, it is not just required to come in for interviews and get logged into their systems. You have to call them every day, as soon as they open shop in the morning, for at least a week or two. That will upgrade you from 'just another one for the files' to 'hey maybe this guy is really interested in working' status.

[hector13]

This kinda sorta applies to other job applications too. Don’t just send your CV and application form and expect to hear back.

If they have a deadline for when they’re setting up interviews - and if they haven’t stated explicitly in the job advert not to contact them - call them or e-mail them after that date to follow-up on your application and tell ‘em why you’re the right person for the job. Otherwise, a week or so after you apply you can call and ask when they plan to interview, and remind them again why you’re the best person for them.

Employers like eagerness, man. I know there are some employers who don’t even afford people an interview if they don’t do this.

It’s important to be brief when you contact them and not to pester them. Probably don’t call them more than three times, and if they don’t get back to you by then you gotta move on.

[misko27]

So I went to the ER and they didn't know what to tell me. That's technically good, I suppose: all of my organs are in good shape. At least, that's what they said. But they don't really know what caused all that pain and vomiting. Their guess is an ulcer forming (I had literally never even heard of a duodenum until this last week, but apparently its a thing). They also found a small kidney stone! What fun. That'll be something to look forward to.

But I'm not posting in this thread for that, I'm posting here because I finally finished the rest of Spec Ops: The Line. I had not gotten very far in it, only four, maybe five chapters (I don't even remember why I stopped...), but I finished the rest of it in an evening because I am, apparently, a real glutton for punishment and this... duodenum? pain was not quite enough.

And hot damn, I thought I knew 95% of the plot beforehand, but the ending still hit me like a ton of bricks. I do not feel like a hero today.