Best Methods For Fixing Unemployment

Those are the ones I'm seeing. Monster is weird.

Well, where are you seeking? I guess I'll grant that I'm seeking Finance/Administration crap, because a BA in Economics ain't worth shit.

BS in engineering remember. Getting a lot of "entry level position" with "extensive familiarity with [some specific] standards" or "extensive familiarity with [some program]".

I'd just apply anyway. The job I had with the engineering firm was supposed to require a Bachelors degree. They interviewed me anyway and I just talked the talk really well.

Yeah, but you have military experience and other outstanding unique qualifications. I've basically done nothing but go to school and argue on the internet for the past ten years QQ

Just gotta talk the talk man. The other big things are who you know. If you kept in touch with any of the people you went to college with, or have any friends working for companies, you need to start networking and calling people to see if they can provide a reference.

I think the most telling part about things is that I can look at the "careers" thing on game devs, and almost all of the job openings are either marked "senior" or "lead".

edited 18th May '12 7:25:12 PM by Pykrete

I know no one. ESPECIALLY in the area.

Tomu, how do you live somewhere where you have no friends or acquaintances?

I had to move to move in with my parents because I had no money?

I have no license or transportation? Or, for that matter, money to spend on going places and doing things to meet people.

edited 18th May '12 7:31:52 PM by TheyCallMeTomu

Hm. Seems you could pursue a career in politics.

I'd love to, actually. In particular, I'd like to be involved in banking regulation.

I can see Congress passing the Tomu-Fighteer Credit Extensions Act.

But seriously man, you must find a way to get involved with people. Scrape the change, beg, borrow, steal if you have to. One of the worst things that happens to the unemployed is that they start falling out of wider society, but as Barkey states, this in turn sends them down a spiral of also dropping out of touch of a network that can help them on the road to recovery.

Barkey's National Guard stints provide that. I don't recommend signing up with the military (sorry Bark) but maybe...Peace Corps?

Meh.

Even in the Guard, we have finance troops. People who do nothing but manage the fiscal issues of a base, from a soldiers pay all the way up to securing funding for construction projects and new equipment on base.

Guard also has deals that pay off huge chunks of your tuition and defer payments. Especially if you can get in as an officer.

edited 18th May '12 8:50:44 PM by Barkey

I'm not really suited to pass the physical.

That "it's not what you know, it's who you know" is a thing that probably contributes quite a lot to unemployment. And it's lame.

When the USMC recruiter came to my house, he told me a lot about how they always give their recruits preliminary training to make sure they didn't fail out the physical horribly. I don't know if they do that near where you are?

Or to getting a better job — and don't I know it...

I don't know that it can contribute to unemployment. Remember-the things that stop an individual from getting employed are not the things that make less jobs in total necessarily. Now, it is possible that employers focus too much on reducing asymmetric information, so they're unwilling to take hiring risks, which adds friction to the system, but that sounds a whole lot like structural unemployment-in ways we're just not seeing.

What I will say is that it almost certainly contributes to long term unemployment.

Well I think that the talk about prior experience requirement sounds more like a structural issue than it does a normal one. It's a usual symptom of too many workers and too few jobs. Anyway, you should still apply for jobs that state requirements far beyond your skill set because employers do that all the time. Like they might say "senior position" but hire a a guy with only junior/intermediate experience.

In any case, I would attempt internships/co-op programs if there are no "real" full-time jobs available. If those don't exist, that'd be really strange because those normally get a company tax credits and labour equivalent to junior experience except cheaper.

It doesn't help that I have fairly severely limited mobility...

I was actually warned away from doing this as modern companies will supposedly keep records of who they've turned down before and check that list before calling.

Apparently, those are full around here too. And they don't want grads either.

They keep records if you're going for high-end jobs, if you're looking for medium/low-end work, it'd probably cost them more money to keep a computer record of past recruitment attempts. ATS are usually meant for managers/engineers/high-end workers, and even then, at a place like Google, for instance, they only keep a record for up to a year (or even just 6 months) before dumping it because it becomes stale and useless. Considering that Google pays around 100-110k minimum for new grads, I doubt jobs that pay much less than that would dump that much money in tracking people.

Then again, I could be wrong and those companies have their heads stuck up deep in some hole of stupidity.

Well, most of them are run by business majors sooooooooooo~

/pointless sniping

I've never really understood why HR departments have faith in their metrics as much as they do. It's like those companies that require you to have at least two different jobs before coming to them, wouldn't having to do two jobs be a sign that they had trouble keeping the first one?