Jobhunting

[Shemeska]

Well, now that I've graduated from college, I have a much less pleasant task ahead of me: Finding a job. To me, it's really annoying because it seems like getting a job in the first place depends so much on sales skills, even if the job itself has nothing to do with sales tasks.

I've had a few interviews this year, but I wasn't quite what the companies involved were looking for. Unfortunately, it seems like nearly every job I see advertised has prior experience required. Given that I don't have any prior work experience for the types of jobs I'm seeking, that makes it difficult to get started.

I finished Grad School in December, and I just started my first 'real' job today actually. Took about two solid months of dedicated searching, most of the time being spent idle waiting to hear back from companies, scheduling interviews, etc.

I'm in biotech, not IT, but here's my advice: farm yourself out to temp agencies and get some contract work to get that 'prior experience' and get your foot in the door, then beef up your resume with it when you find something fulltime that looks attractive.

I'll second putting up a resume on Monster. I got several jobs potentially shoved at me through monster by various headhunters, so for me at least it did work very well. And ultimately the job I just got, it came to my attention via an offer by someone who saw my resume on monster and noticed I filled the position requirements. One four hour long interview later I was given an offer Monster.com is cool. As for any other advice monster.com offers, I suspect it's going to be hit or badly miss depending on what field you're going into.

 

[Shemeska]

No joke here - I had brunch this weekend with a friend who just got a new job (completely unrelated to rpgs in any way). In the interview, he was handed a D&D character sheet, and asked to assign himself stats and class and such, and explain why he made each choice...

Wow. That is the single coolest employer of all time.

 

[Umbran]

What the heck kind of job did he interview for???

Management. Of folks who handle something (PR?, investments?, lunch catering?, I dunno) for non-profit organizations.

 

[drothgery]

Does anyone have any ideas about how I could get my career started? I'm a recent Computer Science graduate living in St. Paul, MN. I'm bright, hardworking, passionate about technology, and easy to get along with. Unfortunately, being rather shy and meek makes it hard to get my foot in the door.

What I did in a very similar situation (very introverted guy with a newly minted CS degree in 1999, though I was in Buffalo, NY and trying to get a job in Boston, because I'd gone to college in Worcester, and my friends were mostly still in New England) -- and what I don't really recommend was to spend a lot of time on internet jobhunting services, go to job fairs, and all that... and end up accepting a really crappy job that I should have passed on, because I really didn't want to live with my parents much longer. Which went away eight months later. A few months later I started doing some contract work at much better pay, which lasted about another year.

And then after another four months of job hunting, still trying to move back by my college friends in New England, I took a flier on sending a resume to a biotech supply company in California. Who flew me out for an interview, and ended up hiring me, and I'm still with them five years later.

Basic thing to remember -- somebody does hire entry-level people. It may take a while to get the first job (especially if you haven't lined one up before graduation), or the second or thrid one (because there's a decent chance the first one or two won't work out), but if you work at it, and are good at what you do, eventually you'll convince someone else of it. Secondly, don't be afraid to turn down a bad offer, if you can possibly avoid it.