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A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

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Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#31

Post by jwoah12 »

I was hesitant to criticize this person because I know how shitty the job search can be for recent grads (or anyone for that matter), but a few things bug me about the letter.

- It is written with a tone that lacks accountability and instead seeks to blame the situation on outside factors. To a certain degree this is true, but the bit about nepotism bothered me. There are plenty of people who are able to get jobs without being related to the CEO.

- Does it mention what industry or city/region the author is looking in (I admit I skimmed some of the article because it's really long and was making me depressed)? I know I'm somewhat insulated because I live in New York and I'm a developer, but I am trying to be unbiased. I went to a good (not top 10) state school, had a really bad GPA, and graduated right in the heart of the recession. I still had many good opportunities and a job within 3 months. The same goes for almost all of my friends, many of whom are not engineers or programmers. Maybe the author should consider looking in a different geographic region.

- The part about probably never being able to get married and have kids because of money seemed a bit melodramatic to me. People who aren't rich have been getting married and having kids for thousands of years.

- Is moving in with his parents an option while he looks for a suitable job? I got the impression that he has parents with at least some means because of the bit about sending him cash if they felt bad. This would seem like a good idea rather than spending everything you make on rent.

The moral of the story is that I understand the job market sucks, but if he is really as qualified and hard-working as he claims, it shouldn't be that hard to find something.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#32

Post by jonknee »

> Am I bitter about all of this? Not entirely, because it all just sort of works itself out. If I can't get married (dating is tough when you're broke) and have kids, I don't need a home bigger than 500 square feet, nor is more study to obtain employment that I'm not only happier with and better at than what I already do but also more lucrative really necessary, since I'll only be supporting myself. As for the issues revolving around savings, investments, and retirement, you may be surprised to find out how much happier one can be if you simply accept that you'll be working until very close to your death

He has a hard time applying for jobs which he may or may not be qualified for and he's resigned himself to living alone in a 500 square foot apartment until he dies... Yikes. With an attitude like that I'm sure he interviews really well.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#33

Post by scott_w »

> these places assume I'll leave as soon as something "corporate" pops up.

This sentence struck me as a little odd. Is the USA at a point where McDonald's expect a burger flipper to commit to a career with them?

Maybe I'm biased because all the non-skilled jobs I worked were before/during university, but I never got the feeling that anyone believed I'd retire from there.

Yes, we had the whole rigmarole at the interview "I want to work here because you do great customer service blah blah", but I was never asked about spending my entire career there.

I even know a guy who was begged by the McDonald's staff to work weekends there (after he left for a corporate job), because he was better than all the other staff.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#34

Post by spacemanaki »

danking00 wrote: post #29
goodside wrote: post #16

While we're providing isolated, non-representative examples: I graduated in 2009 from a crappy Podunk school whose average SAT was 980 (on the old 1600 scale). It only costs about two grand a semester. I majored in CS. I had an internship at a credit union, then a job in insurance lined up before graduating, and then two years later I was hired by OkCupid. I have sent out exactly three resumes in my life, and never b…

I really wish someone could explain this to me. My local observations are the same as parent. I have no unemployed, graduated friends, in fact, I have still-in-school but employed friends. They're all making great salaries and living in fun cities like San Fran, New York, and Boston. I practically have a job offer at a firm in New Tork and I'm a year from graduating and I've a decent shot at graduate programs too. I…

> I really wish someone could explain this to me.

I'll try, although I don't have any special insights, I don't think it's mysterious. From goodside's comment: "I majored in CS." From yours: "CS and physics maajor". I probably don't have to tell you that there's tremendous demand for so-called STEM majors. I don't know about your friends' majors, but these are really both "isolated, non-representative examples".

I think there are plenty of people going through what this 29-yo is going through, and part of that might be because they have degrees in things like English, Art history, Philosophy, etc, and have little or no concrete idea of how to apply this degree in the real world. Part of it is also because there is little support for developing skills outside your narrow major in many colleges and universities, and there's this drift between what many students expect from school (prepare to get a job) and what the schools deliver, which is more abstract. Plus many new grads don't know much more about how to go about finding a job than just pumping out resumes, because that's what they're told to do by (some) "career centers" and counselors on campus.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#35

Post by JonnieCache »

danking00 wrote: post #29
goodside wrote: post #16

While we're providing isolated, non-representative examples: I graduated in 2009 from a crappy Podunk school whose average SAT was 980 (on the old 1600 scale). It only costs about two grand a semester. I majored in CS. I had an internship at a credit union, then a job in insurance lined up before graduating, and then two years later I was hired by OkCupid. I have sent out exactly three resumes in my life, and never b…

I really wish someone could explain this to me. My local observations are the same as parent. I have no unemployed, graduated friends, in fact, I have still-in-school but employed friends. They're all making great salaries and living in fun cities like San Fran, New York, and Boston. I practically have a job offer at a firm in New Tork and I'm a year from graduating and I've a decent shot at graduate programs too. I…

>not particularly socially apt

I'd put money on your being a lot more socially apt (in the areas important for this stuff) than you think you are, as compared to the rest of the population.

"socially apt" is just another word for "common sense" or "not being a self-hindering idiot" in a lot of circumstances. It doesn't have to mean being a slick sunglasses-at-night bastard.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#36

Post by galfarragem »

patio11 wrote: post #4

If you were my little brother, and you told me that you had applied to 100 jobs you were strongly qualified for and got zero offers, I would put on my big brother pants and make some fairly pointed observations about your skills, beginning with lead qualification. I would then advise working on skills like lead qualification over sending out 100 more resumes into a process which, as your big brother who loves you has…

I feel exactly as the author. In my country (Portugal) never was such an educated generation and never was such a problematic generation. There is more than 40% of young unemployment. Does that mean that 40% of young people don't worth a dime or are making it wrong?

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#37

Post by DanI-S »

There are a shocking number of people here with no outward empathy, understanding nor willingness to see outside of their own limited experience.

The world is not the tech industry. Not everybody has the same perspective as you. In fact, more people find themselves in this chap's shoes than in yours.

You're likely posting on here because you're under some illusion that you're an entrepreneur. How can you build a successful product if you can't put yourself in another's position?

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#38

Post by Wilya »

danking00 wrote: post #29
goodside wrote: post #16

While we're providing isolated, non-representative examples: I graduated in 2009 from a crappy Podunk school whose average SAT was 980 (on the old 1600 scale). It only costs about two grand a semester. I majored in CS. I had an internship at a credit union, then a job in insurance lined up before graduating, and then two years later I was hired by OkCupid. I have sent out exactly three resumes in my life, and never b…

I really wish someone could explain this to me. My local observations are the same as parent. I have no unemployed, graduated friends, in fact, I have still-in-school but employed friends. They're all making great salaries and living in fun cities like San Fran, New York, and Boston. I practically have a job offer at a firm in New Tork and I'm a year from graduating and I've a decent shot at graduate programs too. I…

CS field in America is about as easy as it gets, in terms of finding a job. Demand is absurdly high. That's not the case for every field. That's not even true for CS, as soon as you get out of the country.

The column is about someone in (apparently) Canada, who doesn't seem like he's in tech.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#39

Post by aestetix »

My best advice to anyone in this situation: time management, and cool projects.

Bottom line is, if you're spending 100% of your time trying to find a new job, then your time is not well managed. Set aside some of that time to contribute something positive to the world.

A few suggestions:

Volunteer at a local nonprofit. They are constantly overwhelmed with work, and will love the help, even if it's only 20% of your time. It will be great for networking, and you'll have a good feeling about it, not to mention something to pad the resume with. Also, you'd be surprised how many places you think are official are nonprofits who could use the free help.

Go to meetup groups. Spending money on a conference for networking is not useful when you can get the same thing for free. If you're technical, there are LUGs, programming language groups, database stuff, etc. Consider book clubs of people with similar interests.

Start a blog and actively maintain it. Rather than brooding on why the system is keeping you down, study up on things and write articles to teach others. Once you get a flow going, people will start linking to your articles and you'll have some recognition.

Just a few starting points. You can easily spend 1 day a week (20% of your time) working on a cool project like that, and still have plenty of time to search for work. And the next interview you get, you'll be a lot more confident.

Re: A 29-year-old on the difficulties of landing a first job

#40

Post by HolyHaddock »

DanBC wrote: post #17
patio11 wrote: post #4

If you were my little brother, and you told me that you had applied to 100 jobs you were strongly qualified for and got zero offers, I would put on my big brother pants and make some fairly pointed observations about your skills, beginning with lead qualification. I would then advise working on skills like lead qualification over sending out 100 more resumes into a process which, as your big brother who loves you has…

"networking" is important. I'd have thought that "paying money to get into an event in order to network" was a sub-optimal version of networking. I agree that zero responses to 100 letters and resumés mean that something is wrong with the letters or resumés. But the author claims to be researching and tailoring, so I'm not sure what's going wrong there. Certainly that amount of research and work could be spent on bui…

> Well, you really need to tailor your application to be suitable for the jobs.

Be clear: You mean "you need to lie". When applying to a coffee shop, for example:

The person with a 4 year degree will not get the job. They will leave as soon as something better comes up.

The person with a 4 year gap on their CV will also not be getting the job, as it will be assumed that they're hiding something.

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