4 weeks of unemployment. Resume submitted close to 100 times. No interviews. Depressed. Im just going to move to Acapulco and rent out a fishing boat....
I hear that. As a December EE grad I'm f*cked. Hope that a local PC company can come through for me. I've interviewed with Bechtel and Microsoft, expecting responses some time this month. I've submitted about 100 resumes as well. Hang in there man. You're not alone.
You are definitely not alone. The company I was working for shut down the Houston office 5 months ago. A good number of us (myself included) are still looking. I have sent out around 250 resumes. I do have an interview on Friday though.
try this on for size: 9 months since being laid off... only phone interviews! NOT ONE DAMN REAL LIFE INTERVIEW!!!!
The medical field can't get enough workers...maybe you should switch professions. Depending on your field...after 2 years of education you could make 40-80k a year easy. 4 years you could START at 112k. 40 hrs./week, no holidays or weekends, sick pay, vacation pay, yadda, yadda, yadda. Cmon, we need ya! Its only blood and guts(and a little feces)!
So what does the 2 year plan entail? I think I might be able to handle that. I do have a Bachelor's Degree. Please divulge, I am open to anything right now.
Drewdog, Hang in there man, you'll find something in good time. Like drapg, it took me 9.5 months to find a position, and believe me, over 900 applications. It sounds like a lot, but thats all I would do for months on end, from 10-5, resume after resume ... fax, email, phone calls, Monster, etc. I'm sure you've tried this site, but I found out about it a little later in the game: www.flipdog.com. It seems to be the best site in terms of the type of jobs they have. Monster is really sucky now. Another tip I can give is to fax your resume, and not to email. This one place I interviewed, the lady said that the only reason I got the interview was because they had a paper copy lying around, and that after the first 80-100 resumes thru email, all other entries are deleted. Best of luck to all who're looking, my sympathies are with you guys. It is a very frustrating, scary and depressing ... --rockit
9 1/2 months? Dude how did you live? Im collecting a little unemployment and selling a few things. Its been a month, but really has felt like 1 year. I think I will be ok money wise until the end of November. After that Im going to be bleeding pretty bad. Thanks for the advice though. flipdog.com is hella-better than any other job site I have seen. I will also try faxing the resume out as well. Marketing is not the easiest field to land a job with right now.
Yeah, as a new UT graduate with a Bachelor's in Computer Science, the job hunt was not easy at all for me. Fierce competition coupled with not a lot of job openings due to a saturated market made the job search difficult, and many companies were being increasingly picky about their hiring decisions. Fortunately, things did work out for me after about 3 months of searching....I'm a computer programmer for a direct mail company here in Austin...been working there for about two months.
I work in recruiting and I can vouch for the job markets sucking ass right now. At this moment I literally have no jobs to recruit for.
What industry are you in Drewdog? I have been called on 5-7 jobs in the last few weeks. Most want a good amount of experience and a degree with certs. I have interviewed for several and I got the idea that there were two billion other candidates. But still the market is somewhat active in Houston. Nothing like it was in 1999/2000 though. Good luck guys!
I think I graduated just in the nick of time in May 2001...many of the companies were already starting to make cuts, but the economy overall was still pretty good. I was able to choose between 3 different offers coming out of A&M with a bachelor's in Computer Science...two in Fort Worth, one in DC. I took advantage of the A&M's career center as much as I could. However, if I was coming out now I have a feeling I'd be in deep ****. The only thing I can suggest is continue to use your university's career center...usually they'll let you use it after you graduate for a certain period of time. That is by the far the best way to get access to entry-level positions, if that is the category you fit under. A lot of these "internet job search" websites are looking for experienced people...I rarely see entry level positions posted. But, I'm sure most of you have already tried that rout anyways, so I'm probably just wasting your time. Sorry. I wish you all luck.
I guess you wouldn't be interested in a government contractor job, huh? With a EE degree from UT, I wouldn't think you'd have any problem finding that type of job in the DFW area.
I realized the other day that I've never gotten a job where I didn't already know someone working at the company. In high school, I couldn't even get an interview at the McDonald's. I ended up going to work for my step-mother's father in his Fudrucker's-style restaurant. After high school, it was always somebody I knew from somewhere who essentially got me whatever job I got. I remember sending out tons of resumes over the years. I can't recall going on more than three interviews in all that time.... and that includes when the economy was chugging along well. Eventually I just realized that I'm apparently unhireable and started working for myself. But I still never understood why I had so much trouble getting my foot in the door (it's not as if I have a degree in Dance or something. I am a Business School grad).
I have not sent out resumes since I first graduated from Grad School (a Finance degree, 2 months after the Crash of '87 ). I didn't hear anything back for almost 6 weeks. Then I got 2 job offers in a week from both firms that I interviewed with, and started getting calls from others to interview. Patience Drewdog. I bet everyone's totally busy. It takes times to go through resumes. Keep working at it to make sure that you make contact with the Company that's looking for you. Keep your spirits up.
Which direct mail company? Austex, Texas Mailhouse, National Presort? I worked for SmartMail. Pretty small company.
That is some good advice. When I graduated in May of 1999 it was a cinch landing a job for Dell in Austin. Even in October of 2000 I got a sweet job offer from Compaq for marketing technology, but thankfully turned it down. The first people to get laid off in 2001 were marketing-related jobs. Marketing is tough as hell right now. The only thing I have going right now is a phone interview for another sh!tty SALES position: A career path that I do NOT want to pigeon hole my self into. I know I could kick some serious ass in Marketing as a career, I just need somebody, anybody to take a chance on me. I will work for freaking peanuts for the right opportunity. Are you listening God?
