I would come into the shop an hour before my start time to vacuum, clean up, etc. every day at my old job and the one time I asked to leave 30 minutes early to pick up my kid I was asked if I was going to come all the way back to lock up afterwards. I suddenly realized no matter how much extra you do it’s never appreciated.

The next day I came in at my official start time and left at my official quitting time and it stayed that way until I quit a month later.

Don’t let them take advantage of you.

Listen to me

Listen very closely

The above is exactly why half of my friends come to me, and cry they're suffering, and I get to bestow my job hunting knowledge on them. I love this shit, it's a game.

For credentials my fastest job hunting time has been 1 week. I searched for 1 week, got an interview, and was hired within a week. My slowest was 1 month, while out of work, while telling ALL my interviewers that I quit my work without notice (I was testing my interviewers to see how shocked they'd get when I'd tell them why, anyone who wasn't shocked I would tell them at the end that I will keep them in mind (not)). My entire average is 2-3 weeks.

Firstly, what you're gunna do is pick a job sector. You're gunna pick a few of these by the end, but for now pick one. Maybe you wanna do bookkeeping, maybe you wanna do something in doggy daycare. Maybe you're a sous chef. Idk! Figure out what abouts you want first. Do not apply to anything yet. You're gunna look at the job description, I've picked out a few for bookkeepers below.

Now what you're gunna do is you're gunna look for "buzz words", or rather words that are gunna appear commonly and indicate the tone for that job. I've highlighted some, but not all in my examples below

Just look at that snout at how similar those descriptions are!

Now that you've got your buzzwords, you're gunna slap those babies into your resume! You see, since your resume is usually read by a computer first, you're gunna trick the computer into giving it to a person. Really what the computer is scanning for is how similar your resume is to the job description. Remember your bullet points, and to keep it short, try to only have 3 to 5 bullet points per job:

- Processed over 500 invoices a day in an efficient and accurate manner

- Curated reports for management review by utilizing available data

- Monitored and recorded over 100 submissions each day increasing accuracy by 50%

These are some great, made up examples I pulled from those buzz words. You might notice I added some numbers into there. That's something you'll wanna try and note for yourself, how much of something you can do, how accurate, how much efficiency you increased, these look GREAT when your resume gets past the computer and is moved in front of a real person.

Now you have your sector-based resume with lots of buzzwords. This is great! Now for the easy part. You're gunna channel your inner "IDGAF" And you're gunna send that to every listing you like on indeed. Filter for "Apply on Indeed" and spam that shit. Sometimes you gotta answer a few extra questions, but if they give me more than 5 quick questions I trash the submission and move on.

Don't waste your time jumping through hoops, streamline it for yourself and use the same methods companies are using. Push MASSIVE amounts of average quality resumes out. The more opportunities taken = the greater the chance of success. For every opportunity taken you've now pitched a chance of success, for every resume you cannot submit because you're piddling around on their stupid website or answering 50 interview questions online, you send out a 0% chance of success.

So go, try this, and see how it works for you.

Some additional things to consider:

- Add random shit in your resume, I added my "Board Game Club" (BDSM group) into my resume for hobbies and discussed how I got my start using sparklines there

- Never underestimate the flair of a little Clipart fleur-de-lis or something on your resume. Never put colored Clipart, but a little floral or swirl design located somewhere nice makes it stand out

- if you don't have a degree that doesn't mean they won't pick you, twice now I've come to a job without a bachelors and being honest that I was only getting an associates before I think of my next steps

- Embellish, do not lie. Jargoning your job description to make it sound cool and professional is GREAT. Do not give me a resume saying you can use CNC machinery when you've only used a 3D printer. Just tell me you know how to program and manage a 3d printer and want to learn CNC machinery.

- Keep. Your. Resume. To. Two. Or. Less. Pages. You don't need EVERY job, only the relevant ones, if your interviewer asks about the gap, tell them what job you had during that time (or if you wanna lie say you were taking college courses and were on a break, you dont need a degree to say you took courses) and that you only wanted to showcase the most relevant ones

- I'm serious on that last one I'll eat your fucking resume

i apply for a job. i never hear back.

i search for "entry level jobs". i am shown listings for things like "military intelligence officer", "senior veterinary surgeon", and "forklift engineer".

i search for "jobs in bookselling". i am told that there are 9 bookselling jobs in my area. when i read the listings, 8 of these 9 jobs are care assistant roles and the 9th is a pyramid scheme.

i search for "jobs within 5 miles of my location". i am shown jobs that are on the other side of the country.

i type in "proofreading". i am shown listings for "ai training".

i search "creative industry jobs". half the listings are for finance companies and the other half require a degree in data science.

i receive an email. "based on your profile, indeed thought you would be a great match for this opportunity!" the linked job requires a degree that i do not have and 5 years of experience in a field that i know nothing about. the email does not explain why this opportunity would be "a great match".

i receive an email. "based on your profile, indeed thought you would be a great match for this opportunity!" in the body of the email, it warns me that i will not be able to apply for the job it has sent me because i do not meet the criteria.

i apply for a job with a temp agency. i never hear back. 2 weeks later the agency website goes down and never comes back up again.

i apply for a job. 6 months later i get a stock email telling me my application has been unsuccessful.

i apply for a job. i never hear back.

The value of indeed.com is not in searching for jobs.

It's in employers searching for you.

Look at the job listings you like. Rewrite your resume to look good for the people who wrote those job listings. (Don't lie, but check their phrasing, check their skills requirements, highlight the features they're looking for, and so on.)

I don't think I've ever gotten a job by applying at Indeed. I've gotten several from having my resume there when someone was looking.'

Update your resume every two weeks. Even if you're just changing a comma or adding and removing a space at the end of a paragraph. Employers can see when the resume was updated, and they tend to assume anything that's been there longer than a month is probably not relevant anymore - you already have a job.

(You will get a regular trickle of "job offers" from real estate sales companies. Ignore these. I tended to reply with "I have no interest or skills in sale, but I'm good with document management. Do you have any jobs that focus on that and don't involve customer outreach?" I never heard back from them, which was the desired result.)

When you get contacted about a job: Ignore everything about experience & education required. Look at what the job actually does, and figure out if you think you can do that. If so, tell them you have the skills to do the job.

The skills/education requirements are set by idiots who look at "who did this job most recently, and what were their skills?" So that's "what we expect from someone who's done this job for 3+ years."

the email does not explain why this opportunity would be "a great match".

You matched a couple of keywords they're looking for. The algorithm that does these suggestions does not notice things like "I lack several things this job requires"; it just checks "ooh you have 5 words that this job wants!"

If you're consistently getting bad matches for a particular kind of job, review your resume and see if you can figure out which words are getting hit for those, and if you can reasonably remove them. (Sometimes you can't. I do document processing, which sounds close to "data processing," so... I get offers for database coding, which I can't do. I ignore them.)

Your goal for your resume is not to get you a job. It's to get you an interview. Your goal with the interview is to get you a job. Your resume is only incidentally relevant at that point. The purpose of the resume is to convince someone, "I want to talk to this person about this kind of job." That's all. The details should all be focused around "If I were hiring someone for my dream job, this is the list of details I would be looking for."

The most value you're likely to get from the job listings is "these are the currently trendy phrases."

Also: You're not misunderstanding anything; the job market & job search system is whack. Is seriously broken. There is so much wrong with it. AI is not making it better. I'm sorry. It sucks.

i keep thinking of my sister's 2 degrees who are collecting dust because no one's hiring

i keep thinking of my classmate in highschool who said their father accidentally became a graphic designer without any real experience about 20 odd years prior

i keep thinking of me passing those extensive english exams for a fucking call service job and not showing up to the final online interview because of technical issues,I asked them to reschedule they just ghosted me instead

i keep thinking of that nepo kid in my college and his secure future

i keep thinking of my miscellaneous art skills and how none of them are worth anything without a degree,a connection,internet clout,or without a job willing to train me more except the entry level position is dead right?

i keep thinking of everyone everywhere who is dying or going to die in the streets despite all the money and shelter available in the world

last november i stopped working at an office job that was so deeply Corporate™️ it seemed like the setup to a bit. like, every joke you’ve ever heard about a miserable, soul-sucking, completely pointless pencil-pushing job was modeled after this place. management was so afraid of people having personalities that male employees were not allowed to have pierced ears per company policy.

as is somehow Mandatory for jobs like these, anyone in a position of power made it their job to make everyone else’s lives as miserable as possible with constant micromanaging. like, i got told in a strongly worded email to reorder the $2 plastic shelves in my cubicle that i used to store spare paper. it was fucking dire.

but anyways. the reason i quit has to do with what im talking about in the original post. despite the fact that i was consistently at the top of our department leaderboards (yes, we had those, they were emailed out daily) my manager decided that because i couldn’t stay late one day because of a doctors appointment, i needed a Talking To.

he spent an entire day hounding me about this single event, saying that it was a “growing pattern of careless behavior” and that i “forced [my coworkers] to stay until 6 pm”

obviously i felt awful. i was friends with everybody on my team! i didnt want to inconvenience them!! even thought i knew that he was being too harsh, the guilt trip still got to me. but every time i tried to defend myself and explain what was actually going on, he would double down and make it an even bigger issue. this kept going and going until the situation got spun into me being a terrible employee who needed an Action Plan, and i was Ruining The Department, and Everyone Was Going To Stay Overtime Because Of Me.

while i was dealing with this instead of, yknow, actually doing the work that is apparently so dire, i realized… it wasn’t that serious. like, not even fuckin close. the things my coworkers had to do overtime to complete? folding papers. and while yes, it was shitty that they had to stay so late to finish up, i wasn’t the one who made them do it. my manager did! and there were literally dozens of other options to pick from instead, including just leaving the work for me to do the next day! the work we did was nowhere near time sensitive, and certainly not worth the overtime the company paid.

but because i wouldn’t just roll over and accept a chewing out that i didn’t deserve, my manager decided to keep laying on the pressure until i caved. man was assigning legitimately apocalyptic levels of intensity over folding papers. i went from being an asset to the team to getting yelled at by both him and his manager for my “poor performance.”

so i quit. because it’s not that serious.

this whole shitshow is a standard tactic that employers use to trick you into signing away more of your life to the job. make you feel stupid, make you feel like the menial tasks you perform have these dire consequences that simply do not exist. ramp up your anxiety over nothing. they will punish other people because you aren’t slaving away hard enough, and then say that it’s your fault in the first place. you’re not being a team player! you’re not pulling your weight! don’t you see that everyone else is doing their part? don’t you understand what will happen if you don’t contribute?

it is absolutely fucking vital that you don’t listen to any of it. it is even more so that you don’t fall for it when they try to pull this tactic to get you to turn against someone else. the most effective tactic to get someone to fall in line in a workplace is social ostracization. don’t be a tool for your boss to use to manipulate someone else.

it is never that serious.

I used to work in an environment like that.
I left, and the entire team fell apart.

Now? I work someplace where everyone will give you shit if we see evidence of you doing unpaid work outside of business hours.

"Tha fuck were you doing answering emails on a saturday? and what's with this 11pm ticket note?" we're micromanaging each other to keep everyone's boundaries clear. it's great. "hey, get the fuck out of here and go enjoy the long weekend" or "go kick ass getting your oil changed" or whatever.

My supervisor got a text from upper management on a day he'd taken off to call into a meeting that hadn't existed when he went OOO, and my entire team, including his boss, came hollering. Not at him, but at the bigwig. (The meeting was rescheduled.)

Supportive workplaces exist. Someimes you're the one who helps people see that work/life balance is a solid wall, not a permeable membrane.

It can feel scary and stressful at first! but all you need to do is stand up for your coworkers when they have outside obligations, you don't even need to advocate for yourself, because folks will remember and grant the same support to you. And then it becomes an expected part of the office culture that when you're off, you're off.

c...can we maybe get some of those ideas in full? Pls?

Two other people asked as well so okay! Though this post will be rather long.

Freelance Jobs You Do From Home That Look Cool On A Future Resume

Please research any company before sign up with then. So many companies are scams and pay you way less than you deserve for your work. Go to r/freelancers and search to make sure nobody has had some horrid experiences. There's also usually reviews of a company on YouTube as well.

• Transcribing - adding subtitles to videos for deaf and other hard of hearing people. You usually read a big instruction manual, do two or three tests to see how well you can follow the instruction manual, and then get an e-mail if you can work with them or not. Depending on where you sign up, you can also fill out which topics you're knowledable on and less likely to make mistakes on when transcribing.
• Translating - same as transcribing, but now you're translating one language into another. I have not done this before, so I'd suggest talking to people who have.
• Article Writing - there are different websites you can sign up to work for where someone sends in a request for an article about a certain topic, you can write that article, and if they like it they can purchase it from you. Some websites have a ranking system where the more good reviews your article gets, the more money you'll get paid.
• Article Editing - you can also get payed to fix typos and reorganize an article (or list) if writing isn't your thing.
• Top 10 Lists - There are different sites that will pay you to write 10 ten lists. They usually require a specific amount of words and have an author's guide on their site.
• Graphic Designer - if you go to different generic freelance websites, you can often find people who are searching for someone to design logos for their company or banners for their websites. It helps if you have a portfolio as well.
• Virtual Assistent - scheduling appointments, answering calls, and managing email accounts from your own home. I haven't done this one so again, do more research.

Small Amounts Of Money

• Qmee - I've been using this app for awhile called qmee where you do surveys for money. Surveys usually pay anywhere in between 30 cents and 2 dollars, and they have a feature where if the survey asks you anything sketchy then you can report them. You can also cash out whenever, like you don't have to build up a certain amount. (If you aren't American, you may only get a couple surveys per day.) An extra 20 dollars a month isn't much but it's nice.
• Fiverr - A website where you state your talents and you can take on other people's smaller projects for small amounts of money. A funny example is this YouTube skit where someone paid some people on fiverr to come up with a break-up letter. I believe you can also keep a portfolio for any projects you make during your freelance jobs on fiverr too.
• Redbubble - this is where you can put different designs onto different types of clothing, notebooks, mugs, hats, etc. It helps if you have a design that's from a fandom, references a meme, or fufills a niche. You can also go to TeeSpring if you want to put multiple designs on one item, but you'd have to promote your items yourself as TeeSpring has this issue where you can't search for new stores who aren't already popular.
• Test Products - once again, please research any company you're going to do this for. There are companies that will send you products for a week or two and ask for a report on how well it works, what you like/dislike, etc.

If You Don't Have Anyone To Put On Your Resume As References

• Volunteer Somewhere - animal shelters, tutoring, soup kitchens, summer programs, public libraries, etc. If you're able to volunteer somewhere, you can ask the people there if you can use them as a reference.
• Volunteer Online - you can also do online volunteer work if you're unable to do physical volunteer work. Here's a list of examples of online volunteer work which includes things like creating a large amount of thank-you cards, transcribing books into digital form, or answer texts or calls on a crisis line. This may be a better option due to covid.
• Add Personal References - friends and family members do work (just don't list them as professional references). It's especially helpful if you've done a project for/with them as well.
• Or don't add references at all - references look good on a resume, but unless you're writing a federal resume you kind of don't need them? If someone is interested in hiring you, they may ask if you have any references. You can just say "no, this is my first job" (if it is). They might ask why you haven't worked before, but you can just say that it's personal or private information. Or you can give a vague answer like dealing with family matters.

Once you have some, this is how you would format your references.

None of these are long term solutions and not everything will work out for everybody. These are just helpful suggestions I've received over the years!

May I add Zooniverse for participating in citizen science projects? It gives you a Research Background, plus you can talk about admin/data entry etc

There's also a whole bunch of YouTube tutorials for learning Excel. And, if you've a mind to learn it, there's a mapping software called QGIS that's free to download, and the internet is full of tutorials. If you can learn it, it is an EXTREMELY sought-after skill in a lot of fields.

OMG I know somebody who needs to see a list of How To Money While Body Is Nope.

spiritual successor to this

cry about you fucking Corpo glutton. Maybe don't use dumb machines to do your work.

This cyberpunk future is so lame