this isnt going to be very well written or coherent but:
look, I'm not trying to be the classic reactionary STEM grad who feels entitled to a high-paid tech position because I stumbled through three years of lectures. I'm not that. I've done a couple of years since graduating in hospitality work and that was generally horrible/couldn't get enough hours to pay rent/got misgendered whenever my bosses were having a bad day. Now that sector is in big trouble too so there aren't any jobs going, even if i could stomach going back into it. And apparently chef's work is a black mark on your CV and a lot of employers will write you off based on that anyway?
people say "networking is more important than qualifications". Well, that's great, but as someone who comes from a working class family, I have no idea how to do that, and never knew it was necessary until after the period I was apparently given the greatest opportunity to do it (university). and now it's like, what, am I just supposed to message people on LinkedIn out of the blue begging for work? with no experience? Where do I even begin with that?
I would love to work on the railways or in local government or something but I don't hear anything back from those roles. My best asset is that I spent 2 years setting up a tenant union in a major city, but apparently that's not good enough to even get an interview for support worker role at a charity that literally supports tenants and homeless people. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Every time I get close to a job, it always ends the same way - interview, feel like I did well, get a call back a couple of days later saying "thanks but somebody else had more experience". My experience was literally on my CV, if it wasn't enough then don't waste my time calling me in to interview!
thanks for reading
Yeah it’s brutal out there. I graduated about a decade ago, degree adjacent to a bachelors in a speciality related to civil engineering, and relocated post graduation. Since I had no network at all in the new location, I was at Best Buy (us tech store) for as long as I needed to find work in my field (~6 mo). Ugh I hate retail- even in college I worked for labs I found interesting. Then I ran a small city department for a year, then relocated again, then went unemployed for about 8 months.
Like you said, it’s so hard to find stuff without a network. I literally “boomered” it up and cold called engineers, connected on linkedin 🤮, etc. and managed to meet lots of people but no one besides HR has the ability to hire people. They wouldn’t hire me at a local bakery since they “didn’t expect I’d stay on“. I did eventually volunteer with big brothers big sisters to help fill time, and found that to be great - my “little bro” is almost an engineer grad himself now.
And I bring that all up because even if/when I leave my job, it will likely be brutal regardless. After doing so much “personal business development” I’ve got cordial relations with most engineers in my region and field, but technical people aren’t the ones who hire. So maybe I should’ve been learning how to befriend chatbots this whole time… guess years texting ChaCha is gonna pay off😩