How To Find A+ Jobs?

I'm discouraged and not even trying hard anymore. I don't see any jobs advertised online anywhere that I'm qualified for. Okay, I see the rare job once every 2 weeks that I could qualify for though often it's a stretch. (No phone calls though)

I'm thinking F*** it. I should just buy a guitar, pursue my dream of being a rockstar and fix computers on the side.

Any advice?

My time is far too valuable to waste with this non-sense. I have great things to accomplish and instead I'm wasting my time applying for jobs.

Find more posts tagged with

Free for TechExams community: Cybersecurity salary guide

Compare cert salaries and plan your next career move

Button

Comments

I modified my Resume. The link to it is here:

http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/105459-new-resume-please-review.html#post891284

earonw49 wrote: »

You are definitely going A LOT and we all can testify to some really testing, terrible times in our lives. We all have been through it. Don't give up!

Create that resume, look harder, dig deeper and keep reaching out. You can do it

Keep us all posted!

I appreciate your encouragement. I'm glad things are looking up for you!

TomkoTech wrote: »

An A+ Certification is mostly hardware related issues. It isn't a help desk certificate. Most places that hire hardware techs require you able to travel to clients. Sure there are some that don't.

I don't know what the salaries are like in your area, but looking at the entry level ones I found 35k a year is on the upper 15% of those positions. You are looking at 20-25k a year positions until you get more experience.

I can't tell you what to apply for. I can only tell you that Microsoft Office is a prominent business application. If you want a job in IT help desk you will need to know the basics of the office suite. Unless you want to go the networking or linux route. In which case there are completely different sets of skills you will need to learn.

That's so horribly incorrect it isn't even funny. Where did you get the idea the A+ "is mostly hardware related issues"? I'm sorry but that's just wrong.

ElementaryOS wrote: »

I modified my Resume. The link to it is here:

http://www.techexams.net/forums/jobs-degrees/105459-new-resume-please-review.html#post891284

I've sat in on interviews in my previous position and to be honest.. yours wouldn't make it past being ignored. I hate to be that blunt but it's all too much, it's too busy. If I'm sat down with 200 applications to look at (and growing by the hour) via a web portal I've maybe 30 seconds I'm going to spend scanning each one before on to the next. You need to stand out, be honest about yourself, sell yourself but keep it straight to the point.

The impression I'm getting and I'm sorry if this sounds harsh but.. Your work experience is all over the place. It looks like you can't make up your mind what you want to do or where you want to work. My advice is to condense it. Cut your work experience down to the last 10 years at most. Organise your resume/CV in chronological order. Put your most recent work experience/training/certifications up front and center. Then let everything else come after that. If you can squeeze it into a single page that works best.

Think about it from the point of view of the poor b@stard that has to sit down and mow through hundreds of these things. You've got to stand out. Once you get your foot in the door you'll be fine I'm sure. Knock out the N+ and get some experience even if you have to volunteer things will get easier. Build up a network if you can e.g. LinkedIn is great for this but mostly people you know/met face to face. Networking and a good rep can get you job offers. Remember many organisations hire charter.. train the skills. If you've the right charter you'll get hired and trained anywhere.

I don't know what to do. I don't have money to pay anyone $300 - $600 to make a resume for me.

It seems that most or all of these online resume creation websites are dishonest scam jobs, but maybe I need to let myself get scammed.

My work experience is all over the place, yes. But I just got my Certification and I am going to stay in this field forever. I didn't have the self-discipline in the past to study for the A+ though I've wanted to for 10+ years. The tech support job back then didn't require a certification. I didn't even know how to turn a computer on or off when they hired and trained me. It was that job that made me interested in getting the A+ cert.

Heck, I'd be happy to not include any job experience on my resume! If it's all out of date and not relevant, what's the point?

Here's the thing. Irrelevant work experience is irrelevant. Integrity, honesty and reliability are traits everyone claims to have, but they are not directly quantifiable. Your potential employer won't go "well, this guy worked as a cook at XYZ Restaurant, he must be dependable and honest... and he even says so on his resume" Instead, he's going to look at your resume and try to think either, "what has he done that made him valuable," or, "what can he do that's valuable to me."

Instead of writing that you worked as a telemarketer in 5 places, write something like:

Remote Sales Associate - XYZ Company
* Hit or exceeded sales targets throughout my term of employment
* 95% positive feedback from clients
* Volunteered to work extra to help company hit sales targets

Might not be 100% SAR, but the point is, work with what you have. Don't make stuff up, but whatever you did, make it add value, even if it's little things.

Remove irrelevant things. You aren't applying to be a camp counsellor at the YMCA. No-one cares if you can play the guitar or that you worked in a restaurant (unless you did their corporate IT). People do care that you a) have the required skills and experience (which you for the most part don't), and b) added value to the organization.

Edit: PS: Craigslist is your best friend. I honestly don't know anyone that uses anything other than CL (or Indeed) to look for jobs. My company doesn't even post ads outside of CL.

Have you tried a functional resume? http://tinyurl.com/mgwrgav is a great example. A good one will bury irrelevant work history but show off relevant skills that you gained in those jobs. For example, if you worked in a team at a position you could state in a skills section that you've demonstrated effective teamwork. If you had customer facing jobs, state that you have shown exceptional customer service. If you worked in a high pressure position state that you've worked successfully in a high pressure setting. These are all skills that are relevant to most entry level IT jobs. Having some mystery on a resume might receive more callbacks. If you state you are exceptional at a skill they are looking for and haven't shown how you gained said skill they may want to contact you to discuss it. I've found this to be true for me, just make sure you can explain how you gained it.

Since I switched to a functional resume my work history has never come up in an interview, it's basically a footnote on my resume. They ask me about skills instead.

Also weekly resume updates on monster have recruiters calling me weekly often about jobs not posted online. Other job boards, not so much. Craigslist, unless they link to a website or phone number I've had no success with.

If you need to improve on interview skills, recruiting interviews are a great way I'm finding out. If you make a minor mistake don't be worried about it. They'll let you know, at least good ones will. They benefit from getting you hired and if they think you are a good fit they'll do their best to get you ready for a company interview. They are much more relaxed then company interviews in my experience. A great recruiter I had last week told me to never turn down a recruiter interview even if you aren't interested in the position. After the recruiter interview if you still aren't interested tell them asap to save them some work and tell them what type of position, hours, wage, etc. you are looking for so they can try to find a better match for you.

EDIT: Seems links to other posts don't work correctly so posted tinyurl instead.

Yay! Inspired by ptilsen's resume, I was able to create my own resume using LibreOffice. I am amazed at what I accomplished considering that I am 100% self-taught in using Writer and Calc!

Here it is:

Attachment not found.

Do I need a Cover Letter or Thank-you letter as well or is this good enough?

Ask For Opinion.pdf

aidan80 wrote: »

That's so horribly incorrect it isn't even funny. Where did you get the idea the A+ "is mostly hardware related issues"? I'm sorry but that's just wrong.

Look at all of the IT related job postings. In my experience the ones that list A+ as a requirement 85% or more of the time are hardware tech positions. Yes there are a few help desk jobs. So you can call it horribly incorrect all you want. Go look in the area he is job searching. The ONLY jobs listing an A+ are in fact traveling repairmen. You can say it's wrong all you want. That doesn't make it untrue.

ElementaryOS wrote: »

Here it is:

Attachment not found.

Do I need a Cover Letter or Thank-you letter as well or is this good enough?

Glad to see you took my advice and posted your resume. This one is a huge improvement over your first one but still needs a lot of work.

1) There is no way your resume should be longer than 1 page, you don't have the amount of experience need to fill up two pages.

2) Drop the "Entry Level Help Desk Technican" title, it is pointless

3) Your Professional Summary lacks confidence and clarity. "However, I do have..." "I was trained by them..."

4) Leave your references off of your resume, if they want them they will ask.

5) Clean up your "Other Experience", you have had 15 jobs in 16 years? Listing every previous job is not working in your favor in this situation.
Look at things from the employer's perspective, that tells them you are a job hopper and aren't likely to stick around for longer than a year so why would I give you a shot? My suggestion is trim it down so you keep that relevant job and your longest jobs so that you have a continuous work history - drop everything else including the jobs with "Unknown" dates.

ElementaryOS wrote: »

I consider spending excessive amounts of time looking for a job to be wasteful, when I could be focused on bigger things.

That type of attitude is part of your problem and likely explains your current career situation. Time spent creating and submitting a professional looking resume that properly sells your experience to employers is NOT time wasted, it is time invested in yourself and your career.

I don't have a lot of confidence. Being A+ certified doesn't mean that I have tons of hands on experience. I mean, I do, somewhat have experience. But that was 9 years ago!

iBrokeIT wrote: »

5) Clean up your "Other Experience", you have had 15 jobs in 16 years? Listing every previous job is not working in your favor in this situation.
Look at things from the employer's perspective, that tells them you are a job hopper and aren't likely to stick around for longer than a year so why would I give you a shot? My suggestion is trim it down so you keep that relevant job and your longest jobs so that you have a continuous work history - drop everything else including the jobs with "Unknown" dates.

That type of attitude is part of your problem and likely explains your current career situation. Time spent creating and submitting a professional looking resume that properly sells your experience to employers is NOT time wasted, it is time invested in yourself and your career.

How do you suggest I do this? By not listing dates? By just keeping the last 4-5 other jobs listed? By stretching the employment dates (lying)? Since my relevant experience is 9 years ago, I'm going to have gaps if I don't at least include all jobs worked since then.

Most of my "hopping" - in recent years, anyway - is due to layoffs, group layoffs. It wasn't just me being laid off. I've never been fired from a job. Well, I was once from a temp labour place, or at least I think I would have been if I went back there (never went back.) But that's it.

ElementaryOS wrote: »

How do you suggest I do this? By not listing dates? By just keeping the last 4-5 other jobs listed? By stretching the employment dates (lying)? Since my relevant experience is 9 years ago, I'm going to have gaps if I don't at least include all jobs worked since then.

Most of my "hopping" - in recent years, anyway - is due to layoffs, group layoffs. It wasn't just me being laid off. I've never been fired from a job. Well, I was once from a temp labour place, or at least I think I would have been if I went back there (never went back.) But that's it.

I don't think that experience from 9 years ago is going to really help. You're trying to get an entry-level position anyway that would be more geared towards customer service. I'd try to summarize as best as you could for the past 5 years at the most. I am sure you have good explanations for having so many jobs, but not everyone is going to take the time and research that or bring you into an interview and ask, they are just going to move on as they probably have a ton of other applications.

ElementaryOS wrote: »

How do you suggest I do this? By not listing dates? By just keeping the last 4-5 other jobs listed? By stretching the employment dates (lying)? Since my relevant experience is 9 years ago, I'm going to have gaps if I don't at least include all jobs worked since then.

Most of my "hopping" - in recent years, anyway - is due to layoffs, group layoffs. It wasn't just me being laid off. I've never been fired from a job. Well, I was once from a temp labour place, or at least I think I would have been if I went back there (never went back.) But that's it.

I suggest you reread my post three times because I covered everything you just asked.

You do not have enough experience and relevant work history to need a 2 page resume. You are competing against dozens of other candidates for an entry level position.

The hire manager should be able to scan your resume in 30 seconds and see: 1) you previously held a relevant job with customer service skills and had/have a stable work history 2) you have an A+ certification and 3) your contact information.

A lot of job listings I've seen state 'recent experience' and I agree experience 9 years ago isn't going to help unfortunately and definitely shouldn't be the showcase of the resume.

What sticks out to me the most is '15+ years of customer service experience' but it's so far down the resume most people looking at the resume won't see it. Is this an accurate length? Experience looks more like 7-8 years, which is just as good and can be explained. The next is the A+ certification, which is even further down. These in my opinion should be near the top. I know both of these are mentioned in your summary but they don't stand out which is important in today's fast paced world.

Were any of your previous jobs contracted? If so, state it, it would make the employment length more understandable to HR. I agree the 'unknown' jobs really have to go, it looks bad. I'd keep the rest of the experience if you can get it the resume down to 1 page with it. Employment holes are often brought up in my experience. HR really isn't expecting multiple pages for an entry level position. Also '5+ years of food service experience' seems irrelevant.

What do you mean by "ripped" tcp/ip stack? Might want to explain that.

I second removing the title, they are used for people in the field looking to advance to a related position, not for entry level. Think summary of you instead of objective.

It's been suggested in the crossposted thread but I second dropping the education section entirely if no post secondary degree/certificate, this may make your job search very difficult.

techfiend wrote: »

What do you mean by "ripped" tcp/ip stack? Might want to explain that.

Back in Windows 9x you would delete TCP/IP (Client for Microshaft Networks would disappear with it) and reboot and hopefully you could reinstall it on bootup. This is what was referred to as "ripping" the TCP/IP stack and was what we were trained to do. I had at least one time when we couldn't reinstall it and the customer was very unhappy. I had to refer the customer to the OEM for further assistance.

Okay, I shrunk things down to just one page and added a Cover Letter:

Attachment not found.

Thanks to everyone for the tremendous amount of help and advice I've received thus far!

I uploaded in .doc format this time, so please tell me if it loads properly in Microsoft Office. I created it in LibreOffice and I know there can be compatibility issues sometimes.

I could modify the "Other Valuable Work Experience:" headline to show my 4 most recent jobs instead, if you guys think that's better. More than 4 and it will put me to two pages.

Latest & Greatest.doc

I live in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. To my utter astonishment, I regularly see Level II and Level III Help Desk jobs being advertised on job search websites, but I never see any jobs available for a Level I Help Desk position. Do these jobs go under a different name? What should I be searching for? Customer Care?

Thanks!

Many Tier 1's around here are recruited, have you been in contact with recruiters in the area? Some are good, some not so much in my experience.

Is that how you landed a job?

Search for Customer Service Representative. Most of those are Tier 1 positions in a call center environment. Make sure you read the whole job description and they specify call center. Some mis-advertise.

Armymanis1 wrote: »

Search for Customer Service Representative. Most of those are Tier 1 positions in a call center environment. Make sure you read the whole job description and they specify call center. Some mis-advertise.

Thanks! I knew I was missing something!

I haven't landed a job yet and I've have stop pursuit of some jobs which may be a mistake but if I don't feel at least a little excited about the job after hearing what it has to offer I pass, have too many interviews as it is now. Recruiters have come to me with more tier 1 help desk positions the past few weeks than I've found posted online. Recruiters can offer some interesting positions that you may not appear qualified for but they will give you a chance. A recruiter pursued me for a NOC technician position but I had to decline the 80 hours in 8 days schedule. Today a recruiter from a place I'd never contacted pursued me about a desktop support role very close to me and there's rarely anything close to me. Then 2 recruiters I've interviewed with contacted me about help desk positions which I turned down since they were too long of a drive during traffic hours. Seems quite a bit different there then where I am though. I rarely see Tier 2 and 3 job listings, figured they were more of a promoted position.

IME there are good recruiters who can explain the job, answer your questions and get you on higher level positions like contract promotions. Then there are ones who can't answer simple questions about the job and keep pushing you to come in. I've encountered 4 good and 2 bad so far. Whenever I turn down a good recruiter's opening I always tell them why I am declining and that I look forward to hearing about future openings suited more for me. The bad ones I thank them for their time and consideration but it doesn't fit what I'm looking for.

Are you having any luck with your resume ElementaryOS? While it's a bit early to judge success, 2 weeks is probably a good early judgement but it would be nice to hear if you are getting any callbacks. If you post your resume on job boards remember to do weekly updates, even a delete and reupping the same resume puts yours back on top. Weekends I've found best time for this and I expect to hear some calls on Monday.

Wow, it's like you're a kid in a candy store! Good for you! But be careful, you may run out of offers after awhile. Where do you live that it's so easy to be offered jobs? What other education do you have besides the A+?

Thanks for the advice. Well, you see, that's the problem! I don't ever find any jobs on job search websites that I'm qualified for. When I do (I've found maybe 3 in the last month) I've not been called back (I got one call back but screwed it up.) That's why I'm wondering why I can't seem to find jobs that I'm qualified for.

With mostly well below average candy but months ago I would have taken anything. To be honest I would much rather pursue just 1 noc technician position that fits my schedule instead of having all these help desk opportunities, it's overwhelming and tough to focus at times. I haven't had any job offers yet but I do expect things to slow down with the holidays coming up. I'm in Minnesota, and have an AAS Network Engineering and starting WGU BS IT Security soon.

Check for IT recruiters in Calgary, just a quick search showed teksystems which I've worked with and is good, Aplin and some others. If you send them a resume they'll probably get back to you and ask to come in for an interview, which is mostly a get to know interview and should be pretty comfortable. It might result in some positions, you never know. Good recruiters can help you avoid mistakes too, they can offer quite a bit of advice. Everyone makes mistakes, I've had many in the job process, but hopefully you learn from them and don't repeat them.

So you've got some College behind you as well as the A+. Hopefully you can find something that fits your life. Personally, I'd take anything that sounds reasonably good and then move up later. Also, if it's a placement agency you can always tell them that you don't feel like it's a good fit and then maybe they can find someone to replace you and move you elsewhere.

I am kind of looking for an above average fit for me now, which means no call center, I'm not in a rush to get a paycheck. I met with Teksystems today and they are the top recruiter in my eyes currently. They offer some nice things over the other ones, like full benefits, contract termination, contract promotion, critiquing everything and unlisted positions. I had a well above average fit opening presented to me at the interview and it's completely unlisted. It might be good a idea for you to try to get in with them.

I appreciate the heads up.

What are you going to do?

Your welcome. Can you elaborate?

I had a well above average fit opening presented to me at the interview and it's completely unlisted.

What are you going to do?

Quick Links