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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2549 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Flac is terrified about employment: a choose your own adventure story

I gotcher perspective right here, homie.

1) You are working easy-to-get jobs because they are also easy-to-lose jobs. This sounds like pure hell to me. I can't imagine it's particularly rewarding, nor can it feel secure. You are being mistreated for money and that's demoralizing in the extreme. You feel like shit because you've been treated like shit and that'll take a little bit to shake off.

2) You are qualified for better jobs but you have no avenues for better jobs. Fundamentally, you moved to a new city where you have no network (or, importantly, no network of friends and family that can shake the tree for you) and that means that you are competing with the desperate and disenfranchised who also have no connections because the good jobs? They tend to go to the people who don't read the want ads.

So. Stop beating yourself up, and recognize that you've got a formidable barrier to your happiness. Not insurmountable, but not something you're going to casually breach, either.

It's clearly important that you continue to pull your weight. I commend you for that. A strong work ethic is one of the most valuable things you can carry around with you. Your desires are not unreasonable - "stability without manual labor" is a modest goal indeed. But you have no direct pathway between where you are and where you want to be, which will require some lateral moves.

First things first, recognize that you're going to have to do bullshit foodservice jobs for a while because they pay the bills (barely) and they buy you time. THAT'S IT. They aren't pointing you where you want to go and they aren't what you want to do. But in the meantime, you're going to keep applying for better stuff, and you're going to keep rattling the tree.

Next up, you said you did warehouse work. Have you tried Costco? Again, I'm not suggesting this as a permanent vocation but the people I know who work at Costco love it. They've worked there for years. I've go a friend who has been warehouse for pushing 25 years now and another friend who has been Costco corporate for... shit. 20 years. If nothing else, you will be less beat up while you look for better stuff.

Finally, recognize that "getting that awesome job I want" is not going to be accomplished by answering want ads.

LIST MAKING TIME

Make yourself a list of things that it would be fun to do. Don't be specific to careers, be specific to actions.

Now make another list - write those "things that it would be fun to do" across the top and go through and see if you know of any outfits that do those things. LinkedIn is a great place to poke around, and you can also search for similar buzzwords to find companies similar to the ones you're looking at. Congratulations. You are now doing corporate intel.

You've got a bit of a matrix now. Really, you've got a scatterplot of potential employers. This gives you something to work from. Now you're going to get stalky in earnest - you're going to learn about those companies, you're going to learn who works there, you're going to learn what they've accomplished, you're going to learn what they have in store. And you're going to determine who, were you to work there, you'd be reporting to. This is going to take some time - a month or two at a minimum. That's okay. Because now you've switched from "I'm terrified" and "I'm unqualified for any job that isn't warehouse or foodservice." Now you're virtually interviewing firms you'd consider working for. That alone is going to be a major boost to your self-esteem because you know what? If you can visualize yourself working there, they can too.

While you're working on that list?

Well, welcome to the Hubski Resume Club. PM me.





madmatt112  ·  2549 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Big ups for this, it's helpful to me as I strike out on my own career.

flac  ·  2548 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not much to say but that this is just what I needed. Thank you, will send a PM at some point.