What kind of a career did you originally intend to get that required a BA degree in English? Why dont you do that?
Frankly, it kinda sounds like you have no goals and no real job skills that an employer would need from an employee.
You might want to go back to school and learn a trade, learn some skills, that would give employers a reason to want to hire you - eg truck driving school, paralegal, beauty school, EMT, nurses aide, etc.
When I read this, my reaction was, “Hmm, maybe a job as a technical writer?”
But I have absolutely no idea what kind of technical writer jobs are out there, if any, or what they would entail.
My own track might work for you - every job I ever did (even waiting tables) I always ended up doing the On-the-job-training for new employees. I eventually fell into a big SAP implementation at a big company and doing step-by-step computer training (put this in the box, click Submit) has been my meal ticket ever since.
If you are proficient at the MS Suite and a patient person, see if you can do any training for a library program (teach people Office products for FREE). Create some materials, a powerpoint, exercises, handouts so you have some work to show a potential hiring manager. If you’re interested, you’ll probably want a screen grab program (I love Snag It). Take a screen shot of the screen you want, put a red box about the field the person should fill in, put an arrow by Submit (or enter or whatever). It’s detail oriented, but easy (this is how I got started, I’m doing some cooler online stuff now!
It is a pretty niche field, whenever we do hiring, there are very few people doing this (apparently).
I had planned on going to graduate school to become a professor. But life intervened, finances intervened… it didn’t happen. I can’t afford to go back to school right now.
Hopefully this temp job will pan out. I also found another job in advocacy that might work well for me.
Thank you everyone.
One good strategy is to think of all of your previous employers (temp and perm) and make a list of their customers, suppliers/vendors, competitors, and regulators. They will all value your knowledge of an industry and your previous employer.
It might also work well to tell temp agencies you are available 20-30 hours/ week, and do that while you keep applying for jobs. That way scheduling an interview during work hours doesn’t have to be disruptive, but you are still connecting to one or more new networks of people and maybe learning about a new industry or skill. Also, in my experience a lot more admins get hired temp-to-perm than fresh off the street.
Also, there are cases where you can temp for “Coke” through an agency and apply to “Pepsi” for permanent positions. The company gets the benefit of hiring from a competitor, someone who may be doing almost the exact same job they need in a similar company. Obviously this might not work if you have noncompete/ nondisclosure stuff like you would if you work in R&D or sales, but for a typical admin job it can work. I don’t necessarily mean bitter rivals like Coke and Pepsi. In real life this turns out to be more like two hospitals.
Good luck!
I have seen several ambulance companies that train brand new EMT employees for free, and even pay them something while in their own short comprehensive training, if they promise to work for that company for at least 1 year.
After you get the initial EMT job, there is plenty of opportunity and plenty of study time to advance, to learn to be a paramedic, or whatever, while mostly usually sitting in an ambulance in a parking lot doing nothing else for 12 hours a day.
When I was younger I looked for a night guard job at an office building so I could not only get money for my law school tuition but also give me plenty of paid time to study all night.
Seconded. As a person with a completely unmarketable degree (history), I was fawned over by the call center for
a) Not being a complete fuckup
b) Doing tasks without being micromanaged and with a minimum of drama
c) Greater than remedial English skills
d) Showing up to work regularly
e) Being flexible about schedule and overtime
It’s not easy work – it feels like a grind – but because it burns people out relatively quickly, you can move up fast. I lasted 4 years. Picked up a lot of good skills in management and technology, too, and helped a bunch of other people in the same position (out of college, needing actual job skills). I’m glad I did it.
Plus, call centers are always hiring. It’s like retail work, it’s stressful, but it’s more like an office environment so it’s a bit easier to get hired somewhere else.
Network. If you’ve ever worked anywhere, ever, in your life, you know that finding sane employees is a difficult task. Everybody, at some point in their lives, has been asked by their supervisor: “Do you know anybody? (who is not crazy that can take the position?)” Nowadays, with a bad economy, it’s impossible to take risks on bad workers. Employers want some guarantee that the employee won’t run screaming through the hallways at 3am while covered in mayonnaise before puking in their desk drawer. Get invited to social events. Tag along. Meet people. Pretend to be sane.