Hey Clutchfans. I'm in that inevitable job hunt again and struggling to find major leads and am curious what you folks have found to be helpful. A little bit about my background and what I've done in the process so far. I graduated college from the University of Montana in 2011 and found my first job out of college in the Management Trainee program with Enterprise Rent-A-Car. I worked for that company from August of 2011 to March of 2013 before leaving voluntarily to pursue new career paths. When I didn't immediately find anything, I relocated to New Jersey where I managed a food shack on the beach. Beach being the key term here, because obviously beach season is coming to an end and I'm once again hunting for a job. I am now in the process of trying to move to Denver in search of work. I am primarily looking for something in restaurant management, but my restaurant management experience is a bit limited seeing as my first gig running a restaurant (and a small one at that) was this summer for about 4 or 5 months. My resume is posted on CareerBuilder and Monster (are these the best career searching websites?). Most of the companies that have reached out to me are looking for sales positions, as that's really what Enterprise trains you for. I'm not convinced that that is the best fit for me, but I may have to make that my top option if this job hunt continues to play out. So I ask you, Clutchfans. What have you found to be useful when aggressively searching for a job? Is it all about being at the right place at the right time? Is it all about who you know? Help a Rocket fan out and give me any pointers if there is something that I'm missing in this process.
Is there something in particular that's drawing you to Denver? It just seems to me (experts on the boards, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) that you could help yourself a lot by staying put for the moment, searching from where you are and being open to anything that comes your way. If you spend all the money and put all of the effort into moving to Denver and then a great opportunity pops up elsewhere, will you be able to move that easily again? If you are willing to move from Montana to New Jersey and then from Jersey to Denver, I'm assuming you are pretty open to moving in general, so why back yourself into a corner by moving to Denver and then looking? In any event, good luck!
You'll probably have to take what you can find. You're changing roles and you're changing cities. You've built no strong base in any one field or a strong base to network from. I don't see you just falling into a management role without having first worked in a restaurant to some extent or at least have management experience elsewhere.
I wouldn't say that I would only be willing to move to Denver, but there are three main reasons that make it my absolute top choice. 1. I want to live in a major metropolitan area. 2. I've lived in the Northwest most of my life and have grown very fond of it. 3. I have more immediate contacts and friends in Denver than any other city (aside from in Montana), making it an easy city to transition to and to feel comfortable in immediately. Overall it feels like the right fit, although the times I have been in Denver before have always been for personal vacations. The place I am in New Jersey right now is really limited to tourists, so this area probably won't be an option (Cape May, New Jersey). The tricky part with setting my options as anywhere is commuting to job interviews if it's not a company that will automatically fly you out for the interview. I agree and that definitely makes it a more difficult search. I don't know why I emphasized in the thread restaurant management, because I really am open to many different options for career paths, but food hospitality is a field that I certainly enjoy. hahaha. This is hilarious. I couldn't make it three posts without someone remembering my last thread in regards to finding my first job out of college and that was over two years ago! Good find, my friend. Tough to sneak anything by Clutchfans.
Find a restaurant lobbying origanization; check their member company databases and start contacting them. Or go to American Business Journals and find the "Book of Lists" for every city you want to work in, then contact the restaurants or catering entities. You could also look at the Residential Life and Housing page for each university in whatever city or state you want to work, then see if the meal plan or cafeteria pages mention what catering/food management company they use: like Aramark or Chartwell's. You could also go to Linkedin, but do a person search on the main page with your preferred job title, just to get a list of companies from every single one of the profiles. Keep in mind that Linkedin is starting to charge for the latter pages of a search result; the $30 a month might be worth it right now.
Want to add all the hospitals and all the local school districts to my third suggestion of tracking down dining service vendors.
Pertaining to government jobs: 1. Apply on Governmentjobs.com. It is way more legit than the other career websites out there, but it takes a while (as in several months) to get a response back. 2. Go to your city's personnel department in person and see if they have any bulletins for job openings. See if anyone there has any insider tips as well. 3. Consider a potential career change if that means you can get a job with the government, especially since there will be opportunities for you to transfer to different departments if you should so choose.
Since you're moving, I'd suggest starting with a sales job since that's the demonstrable strength on your resume. This is assuming you were half-decent and the job didn't make you suicidal. You can even hit up Enterprise and other car rental shops in the Denver area. That will get you an income to get you settled. Then, start looking for something else while you have your job. If restaurant management is where you want to go, you might start with the management training programs of the big franchise chains or hotels. That'll give you some more fodder on the resume and some more professional, practical training on how to run the storefront. You can take that to whatever sort of restaurant you prefer to work at and show you have some managerial experience. (Though, honestly, restaurant management isn't something I'd advise you do. The pay is crappy, the work is hard, and employment is never stable.) Otherwise, yes, knowing people helps when you have little experience. Talk to everyone you know and see if someone knows of openings you can handle (even people you don't know -- I met a kid at an alumni event who was looking, and I happened to remember my boss wishing she had a summer intern, and I made a connection even though I just met the kid). Some places have 1,000 applicants for every opening, but other places have openings and can't manage to find quality people to apply for them. The latter is usually filled via networking and are a lot easier to get when you can find them.
