Dunno if this violates rule 3 but here I go: I am a 21 year old male currently living with a family member, I only have a DL and a High School Diploma and nothing else. I’m in the deep south so trade unions are hard to get into. I have a disqualifying condition so I can’t join the military. Getting a job is difficult because they never respond. Question in title.
You’re 21, and I didn’t realize this until I was like 32, but you don’t need a career yet. You need a job. The career will come from… Doing the jobs you want to do instead of your actual jobs.
when I worked at a liquor store like a decade ago, I stayed away from the registers unless it was necessary and no other work had to be done. I organized the entire overstock room and opened up another 300 sqft of storage in the process. I commented on processes that seemed inefficient and suggested improvements.
When I worked in breweries, I stayed out of the front of house. I started scrubbing tanks and finished an operations manager.
When I worked in IT support, I pointed out insecure practices and suggested secure practices. I’m now in cybersecurity.
I didn’t wanna work in a liquor store. I didn’t wanna scrub tanks. I didn’t wanna answer phones. So I… Didn’t. Unless I had to.
Just go get a job and find something there no one is doing that has value. Then lie on your resume by changing your title to match your duties.
This works if you have decent employers that let you do these things. I’ve literally been told “stop thinking so much” at a menial job where there could’ve been a lot of improvements made. Because there were people who had really high salaries that were supposed to think of these improvements. Not us cockroaches.
But honestly the best thing these jobs can give you, besides experience of course, is connections to people who may later work in better places.
If it’s menial job, it ain’t paying enough to tell you what to do if the shit you need to do is getting done.
Get the shit done. Don’t ignore your duties. And from there, literally ignore them. Let them fire you for improving the place. Be a great story to politely explain in a future interview at a menial job. Jobs that menial aren’t in short supply. They just blow and the pay sucks. So, don’t let it have any power over you beyond those facts.
If it’s menial job, it ain’t paying enough to tell you what to do if the shit you need to do is getting done
Ah that’s the thing. I’m incapable of doing the same exact shit for 8 hours a day for prolonged periods of time. The mind immediately wanders to “what could I do better”.
With that mentality, they sealed the deal and I left instead of trying to get into a better job at the same company (it was the kind of company where there are actually good jobs too, but fairly separated from the menial ones)
What sorts of jobs are you considering?
You could get a CDL from a local community college in about 6 weeks. There are some trucking companies that will train you themselves to get your CDL. They may not be the best in terms of knowledge and skills acquired, but they would be free vs you having to pay up front at a community college.
You could do sales calling from home. If you’re not a talker, this will be draining to do. If you are a natural talker, this could be your pathway to comfortable pay. Some arrangements are commission only, so there is stress there, but at the junior/entry level, there will usually be some kind of base salary + commission arrangement.
Someone mentioned looking into a CNA certificate. You’re young so your body might handle that kind of work ok. It can be demanding and it also can be rewarding. Plus, home health agencies in your area are probably desperate for CNAs. The area of the Appalachias where I’m from, CNA is a very common path for young people to take to reliable employment.
Do you have a mower and a truck? Start cutting lawns for people. Leave a flyer or a business card around the gas stations, grocery stores, and Dollar Generals in your area. It’s getting cooler now, so those types of businesses switch to hanging holiday lights for folks who can’t or don’t want to do it themselves. Or cutting/ delivering firewood. Or someone mentioned construction (which is what the chartered fishing crews do here in the winter).
Are you more digitally inclined? Get on Fiver and UpWork and look for something that you can & want to do, then build out your profile to match that. Photography, digital art, personal assistant, writing, there are many many options here.
Here’s another… want to leave the country altogether? Look into getting your TEFL. Companies will pay to move you overseas and teach English, and most of the time, you don’t even need to speak the language of that country to start. This may not be a long term career, but it’s something to get you out and gaining life experience until you do figure out what you want to be doing with yourself.
Do what generation after generation of people have done: move to find opportunity. There are plenty of places where the economy is active enough that you aren’t caught between union gatekeepers and starvation.
Not sure if it’s helpful, but pivotal steps in my career path involved unintentional networking.
Started working at a call center reading scripts and calling it “tech support” from that job I made friends with a coworker with a similar interest in computers. A few years later he was working in-house IT for a major company and referred me.
A few years in that field and I made friends with another coworker who got me interested in scripting / coding. A few years later after meeting that friend, he was working as a software developer and referred me to my first coding job.
Once my foot was in the door I would learn and grow in each position until I felt like I stopped growing my skillset and I would find a new job where I could build new skills.
It helps that I have a genuine interest and enjoyment in learning and improving my skills. Computers and technology just happened to be the skillet that people started to pay me for. I could have just as easily ended up a machinist, contractor, chef or any other profession sparked by a personal interest of mine.
This. It doesn’t matter how competent you are. It’s all about connections.
I mean , a minimum competence is the bar. I’m not recommending someone who is going to make me look bad if they get hired. But if you’re ok and my friend, I’ll recommend you and it’s more likely you’ll be hired over someone really good, but who doesn’t know anyone.
Oh for sure.
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Could I start making connections here?
Making connections is everywhere, here as well as at a grocery store ( for example), because you start talking to someone and you never knows what will happen. Do what you like to do or react to any post or irl talks. You will may be not get work, but making you known works in the long run. Especially if you do good job, people remembers you.
Technically yes, but the community on Lemmy is very small and pretty widely globally distributed, which are suboptimal characteristics when you’re presumably not going to have an easy time just dropping everything and moving to somewhere random in the world at a moment’s notice because you met a person there and they think they might have something for you, even if that’s something you might like to do it doesn’t mean it’s practical. That said, it is possible, but you’re going to have to put in a lot more effort that way.
You’ll have a lot better luck (and honestly, it IS about luck, so repeating the same patterns over and over again until you get a different result IS a viable strategy) finding some local connections within your community. Sure, virtual/remote work is a thing in some fields, but even for that there are still obstacles based on national borders and languages that are going to further limit your choices even beyond the very significant limitation of only being able to apply for virtual/remote positions in those specific fields that are suited to it.
The biggest thing you can do though is to have or start to learn some kind of skill or competence at something, and be able to demonstrate that in front of others. If you have nothing else to work on, develop those social skills; those will get you further than any piece of paper will without them. If family and friends aren’t helping, find communities or organizations or even neighbors that need something, anything, and offer to help, volunteer. Never pass up an opportunity to work with someone if you can find it, the things you’ll learn from them while doing that work are more valuable than any paycheck if it’s something new to you. And once you’ve at least made some progress in either learning or demonstrating some level of skill or competence, start dropping the hint and mention that you’re looking for a job. May go nowhere, may not get any reaction at all, but every time you get any reaction, that’s a potential door opening. You likely will not get an immediate job on the spot, it may be that you’re just planting seeds that need some time to grow, but just keep on planting until something happens. Do everything you can think of to be memorable, connectable, approachable and accessible, try to make sure people remember you or at least your skill when they come across a role that needs filling, and make sure they will know how to get in touch with you if they do.
As with any kind of success, it’s 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, you just gotta pound pavement, force yourself to get out there even when you feel like you’re failing, talk to people, learn everything you can, seize opportunities to learn or do any kind of work you think you can. And the more you show you’re willing to work, people will find things for you to do, skills for you to learn, and ultimately places for you to work and the money will start flowing. Just start doing work, and chat to people either during the work, or about the work, or something. You can’t escape the social aspect, even if you’re an introvert or a wallflower, that’s how we make connections and the connections are part of it. The details, the skills, the specifics all don’t matter as much as you think, and the rest will figure itself out naturally as long as you keep showing up, making noise, and not hiding or being invisible.
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Getting an associates degree can help you a lot if you have the ability to do so. There are a lot of medical jobs that you can nab with a 2 year degree. X-ray tech, cat scan tech, MRI tech, ultrasound tech, etc. You can also do back of house stuff such as medical coding or IT for hospitals. You can also get an associates in chemistry and work in a lab. You can work as an insurance actuary. Maybe look up what certifications your local community college offers. Certs usually lead to jobs.
If school isn’t in your budget yet, or just not your thing, landscaping is almost always hiring, as are construction jobs. They’re hard on your body, but it’s a job to start with. Someone mentioned trucking, a CDL is a great idea. Again, not easy work, but it’ll pay the bills until you feel like doing something else. Forklift certifications are good to have as well, although I’m not positive on how long those take.
You have a lot of options for sure, and you’re young. The world is your oyster, it’s just up to you to put in the effort.
While I can’t tell you how it works for everyone, I can tell you how it worked for me. I too grew up in the deep south, small town of 100 people, middle of absolute nowhere. I do have a college degree but in a field entirely unrelated to what I do.
It boils down to playing the game a bit. General rule of thumb is that you should never stay in a position for more than about 2 years. You SHOULD if possible stick with a company for 3-5 years. This will cover two things that recruiters are looking at on resumes, promotability and tenure. The basics of it is that at 2 years you should be seeking a promotion, if it doesn’t come, you’re looking for a different company. It’s annoying, but ‘raises’ at most companies are ass and won’t outpace inflation. You’re chasing a ‘raise’ through either a promotion or a new job.
My journey. I started out in the hotel industry, thought it would be a good way to go (Protip, it isn’t). Pay was shit, work life balance was awful, working with the general public is a nightmare. I made something dumb like $10 an hour as a Secretary. But at 2 years I got promoted to Sales Assistant, 1 year from there I took a slight promo/side-grade to the Front Desk (Not a pay increase but into a position where I had more promotion opportunities). 2 Years at the desk before I was manager of the FD. Still shit pay, still shit hours. Realized pretty quick that was where my upward mobility would stop, but even in the south 35K a year won’t pay bills… What I did have though was 6ish years at a company and 2.5 promotions.
I found a small tech company that would let me answer phones on their support team. Pay was roughly what I made before (But I was already living on ramen and cold sandwiches so whatever). What it really was, was a place where I had chances to move up.
1.5 years before I made senior, 1 more before I made tier 2. From there I had a chance to work directly with clients as a tech consultant. It was a job that I truly didn’t like, but what it did was put me in a place where I could regularly interact with a bunch of people that owned business. A place to make connections. Not the job I wanted but I took it. Another year and I made senior as a tech consultant. It was at this point that my long term clients actively started trying to headhunt me. For the first time in my life I got to choose my job. I took a job for a company I liked making roughly what I made as a senior. Got another promotion, and that’s roughly where I am now. I fucking love my job. The people I work with are good humans, the pay is sufficient, just bought my first home :).
Now, it didn’t actually take all 20 of those years for me to be comfortable. The first 6-8 where rough, I ate ramen, cold turkey sandwiches, and slept on a mattress on the floor in a one bedroom apt with 0 furniture lol. About 8 years in I could afford real food and furniture. By year 12 or so I had enough money to actually do things like take a vacation.
The moral here is, it sucks, but play the game a bit. Your degree or lack there of is almost irrelevant. My degree is in Historical Culture studies… I work in Tech :P. Your resume showing you got promoted every 1-2 years is what people wanna see. Pick a job with upward mobility, even if it isn’t what you want, actively apply for promotions, position yourself to know people, suffer through the ramen phase.
Side tip, look for jobs in big cities that allow remote work. If you’re in the south, think Austin, Dallas, Atlanta, etc etc. They typically pay better because they’re used to paying people based on what it costs to live in or around those cities.
Sorry for the book. Hope it helps :).
This is really great advice and something I’ve experienced as well.
However, one caveat is that startups work a lot differently. You can promote a lot faster since you’re usually doing multiple jobs at once and learning a lot of new skills at the same time. They usually don’t care too much about specific work experience either. Can you think on your own, build a team or be apart of one, and can you an execute quickly?
And as always no one cares about specific degrees (especially in management), the more general you talk about it the better. People actually understand what area you were interested in, you stuck with something most people don’t do and for a degree (and, don’t really care in what).
Also, over communication is better than no/poor communication. That’s helped me probably the best to promote than anything. Well, that and doing things no one wants to do, especially when on a new team. Gains brownie points almost instantly.
Don’t apply for positions you can’t possibly fill. But do some judgement. If you think you’re pretty close to what they ask then apply.
That is so young to worry about a career. What jobs have you been applying to? There are other ways to get into trades, if that’s what you want. Or just working at the grocery store, they seem to want to promote men so much more than women. All the managers at the ones around here started as baggers, all are dudes. If there is a Whole Foods, they have programs to learn butchering, cheese mongering, pizza making, baking.
But get a job first, any job. My kids all started out working at the skating rink, crap job but it’s so much easier to get a job when you have a job. Will your parents let you stay there and save money?
You need to figure out what fields interest you and then get qualifications for it. The lack of response might be a CV issue, have someone you trust look over it and give you pointers. It’s okay to lie and embellish on a CV.
Try to apply to any/all Union apprentice programs. I think most only have open application once a year.
You’re facing an extra tough time right now because computing has optimized the hiring process so much, it’s difficult to get your foot in the door, and geopolitics are complicating things.
You’ll need to keep in mind that 21 is still quite early in your life, and the world and pop culture really pushes an “instant success” mindset that sets all the wrong expectations.
You’ll need to do several things, unfortunately all at once. First, deeply understand personal finances. Understand that you need to “pay yourself first” (savings/investments) and then what’s left over is what you have to manage expenses and debts. If you keep yourself out of debt you’re better off. Bogleheads Wiki changed the way I viewed my money: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page
You’re going to have to continue school. You need an Associate’s at a minimum. Go to a public community or municipal college. With an AA from here, most states will grant you automatic admission to public state universities. Research this. Regardless of what your views are on the utility of college degrees, you have to play the game. A college degree is a clearing house to larger companies. Trade school, is another option.
You’re going to have to work, to finance your costs of living plus your education investments, unless you’ve got someone or some financial instruments which let you focus on school.
With respect to college specifically, you’ll get out of it what you put in. Many folks will say it’s a waste, that “they didn’t learn anything new” while they went through. Well, that just signals to me they phoned it in; maybe they got lucky and got a break on their job, too.
From there, you’ll have your personal finances on lock, and one or two degrees (AA and a BA, and maybe a certificate or two) and you’ll be much more competitive.
The real game changer after all this is networking. The saying goes: It’s not what you know, it’s who you know. The best jobs don’t get posted to corporate websites, or if they do, they’re posted for labor law compliance and they already have a candidate in mind. Become a master at socializing (≠ partying), hint: it’s mostly just listening to other people.
It takes time. Be patient. Stay focused. You’ll get there.
I’m going to second the college info. My ex phoned his CS degree in and didn’t have anything to show for his skills when it came time to find a job.
I hustled, kept my grades up, and was honest with my professors when I didn’t understand something. I got an internship across the country and as soon as I came back the main professor for my major helped get me two more internships while he also helped try to find me connections with his old jobs. I know I’m not the only one he did this with.
But now I’ve been working for a unionized job with my degree for 4 years and am climbing up the ladders.
Put in effort and try to be your honest self and it raises your chances of things working out.
The never respond makes me think it could be a cover letter/resume problem - check resources for those. And like other people mention, contacts help when your resume isn’t stellar. Consider reaching out to people directly on LinkedIn (I did this for a local engineering company that didn’t have any jobs posted… but they still hired me). Might help if resume or cover letter is getting filtered out by AI during the process.
I’d take the Jack Spirko route. You’re supposed to be broke in your 20’s, from what I’m aware of, and you’re supposed to be working a job, or learning a trade. However, due to numerology, I determined that a trade isn’t right for me.
Highly recommend getting “Laws of Life”, his book, and his second iteration once it comes out. It’s on Amazon, so just look up “Jack Spirko Laws of Life”, and you’ll find it.
Heres my 37 year old adhd fueled emoloyment experience with no higher education. Not sure what the fuck DL is but it gives insight to your intelligence for assuming anyone will know what the fuck DL is so the list is adjusted accordingly. Take tons of adderall so my work ethic is amphetamine driven and it usually took 3 to 5 years to go from zero experience to hitting a ceiling. Only career paths I didnt progress all the way thru is nursing but gave example of path every nurse I know took who made a career out of it amd advanced their education. Each degree level comes with massive pay increase opportunities. The highest ceilings are Nursing, Procurement and IT. The most secure single certification lifelong careers Linesmen and Machinist. Fastest career path to the grave or being/feeling like youre famous: chef.
Machinist: 3 month certification class. Employers often pay for the class if you agree to work for them on completion.
CNA: 3 month cert. Again, enployers often cover course costs. Good experience towards, which employers also usually offer tuition reimbursement, nursing degrees which have very high ceilings d3pending on type of nursing degree you have. Can go for 2 years, work, need more money, go for 2 more years, work for more money, need more money, go to school for 2 more years, work for more money… Basically all the way from LPN up to Nurse Practitioner who are basically doctors.
Linesman: 2 year degree. Union. Work for local electrical department with government pension/benefits.
IT certs from Cysco: cheap, free courses available, most places will accept in place of degree fields without paying outrageous tuition for degree.
Classically trained chef: apply to any metropolitan restaurant, work your way up from dishwasher to sous chef with no prior education or experience. Must be able to handle high stress high demand work environment. Must be extremely competitive and good at doing drugs and drinking.
Procurement: basic understanding of relevant software and commercial purchasing. Starting employment usually begins with incoming sales and processing orders.
DL means Drivers License, a quick google search would’ve told you that
Just think of it this way, if a guy who doesn’t know and can’t figure out what a “DL” is can get a job, you’ll be fine.
1st search results is acronymfinder with 116 results for DL. Fuck off lol
What’s your deal? DL is obviously “drivers license”, lmao.
Why is that obvious?
Because next to having a pulse, the ability to drive and get yourself to a workplace is literally the most important qualification for any job you could ever do, and it’s typically a question on entry level job applications.
Maybe for where you live but not for my neighborhood.
