twesterm said:
It doesn't take a college degree to realize that's a massive recipe for failure. Did you even ever attend any resume workshops or career fairs? For all those people that have degrees but can't find a job-- how hard did you try?
Trying to find a real job should feel like a full time job because it's a lot of work. You have to rework your resume and cover countless times, manage contacts, and constantly follow up with every person that interviewed you. When you're not researching a company or reworking your cover letter resume, you should be reading on how to make your cover letter and resume better. I know I'm putting a lot of emphasis on the cover letter and resume here and that's because those could not be more important. It's amazing how many bad resumes I see and I don't even see them that often. They're so often poorly organized, too wordy, too long (I've seen a seven page resume for an entry level position before!), people that don't even bother with cover letters, typos, and more. I'm sorry to rant, but if you're applying and your resume isn't absolutely perfect you shouldn't even bother applying. If you can't be bothered to spell check your resume and make sure it has consistent formatting, why should a potential employer be bothered to interview you (I know one guy the moment he sees a type or non-consistent formatting he simply throws the resume away)? There's no reasons what-so-ever for your resume to not be perfect. I would be willing to be that if most of the people complaining having a degree and no job spent a few weeks working on their resumes and cover letters while attending resume workshops they could find a job. |
A couple of thoughts on this ...
At my current job there are a couple of (secret) hall of shame resumes where the person who did the hiring blacked out the names and contact info with marker. My favourite of these resumes had a section on "videogames completed" and also listed that he was a level 56 shaman in World of Warcraft. While this kind of information might be acceptable inside a company on the wiki under your personal profile every employer who reads it is immediately going to discount you. On a (somewhat) related note, having information about your hobbies on a resume may not be that bad; but unless it is relevant to the position or makes you look good (“I’m a triathlete who runs to support blind aids orphans in Africa”) they should probably be left off the resume.
The second thing is that most people ignore the importance of networking. In most (reasonably) healthy markets, simply asking a dozen people you know if they had any job openings at their company increases your odds of getting a job dramatically; and even new grads who “know nobody” probably know more people through their friends and family that are in a relevant industry then they would ever suspect. Many people would be surprised how many managers were willing to hire a new grad with a less than impressive resume simply because he was "Joshua’s cousin’s friend from college"
