Part Time Jobs?

Cisco Inferno

Right now, I'm unemployed and am going to school full time. The job-search isn't going as well as i planned. There's practically no part time jobs available unless its the few that require 2-3 years of experience which i don't have. I'm also unable to find any internships at the moment.

Should i look at geek squad or something? I doubt it would be easy to get a full time job with no degree either. Maybe I should find a non-it job? It's definitely something i'm afraid of doing. I only have a technical resume at the moment.

What did you do during college and how many hours per week?
any advice would be appreciated.



I also added my resume for review.

Turgon

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

Right now, I'm unemployed and am going to school full time. The job-search isn't going as well as i planned. There's practically no part time jobs available unless its the few that require 2-3 years of experience which i don't have. I'm also unable to find any internships at the moment.

Should i look at geek squad or something? I doubt it would be easy to get a full time job with no degree either.
Maybe I should find a non-it job? It's definitely something i'm afraid of doing. I only have a technical resume at the moment.

What did you do during college and how many hours per week?
any advice would be appreciated.

Forget geek squad and volunteering.

Spend 100 hours researching all the companies in your radar that provide computer services or solutions. You will need to get the yellow pages out. Contact all websites by email, send letters, make phone calls. Be ready to attend an interview at short notice being positive, well dressed and CV in hand. Expect 95% of all effort to go nowhere. Anyone that had a good idea or something useful to sell got knocked back 95% of the time. Be resilient. There are lots of companies that do this, many small, some larger. Be ready to impress over the phone or face to face with the following:

1. Work ethic
2. Flexibility
3. Initiative
4. Care for the customer

Expect some work if you put 100 hours in. The work will be frustrating and difficult but one break leads to another. All companies require hardworking, flexible, careful, customer facing, intelligent people.

Good luck!

jamesleecoleman

I suggest checking out the work study positions that you school might offer.

ptilsen

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

Should i look at geek squad or something? I doubt it would be easy to get a full time job with no degree either.

Just to clarify, are you looking for a part-time job just because you go to school full-time, or because you think it would be hard to get a full-time job with no degree? Because the idea that you need a degree to get a full-time job is pretty crazy. Your certifications and the skills I assume you have alone are more than enough to get a full-time job.

Keep in mind that almost all job postings, even entry-level, list experience requirements that are not actual requirements. A typical tier 1/2 helpdesk position may list "1-3 years, MCSE or MCITP:EA, 4-year degree in CS/MIS/Similar", but what they really want is someone who actually has technical knowledge and is smart enough to learn how to do that job quickly. If they really expected to fill those positions with experienced and certified candidates, the positions would never get filled.

Part-time IT jobs are hard to come by, but they do exist, and a resume that represents your skills, certification, and experience well, you should be able to get one easily.

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

Maybe I should find a non-it job? It's definitely something i'm afraid of doing. I only have a technical resume at the moment.

Unless you are desperate to make ends meet, don't do it. If it takes an extra couple months to find an IT job, it is well worth the value it adds to your resume. Non-IT jobs that don't involve management or something useful in IT have almost no value on an IT resume. They're better than nothing, since they still show work history and even accomplishments, but ultimately they don't demonstrate any technical ability.

To summarize:
1. Get a good resume put together that reflects your skills and any experience you have, even if you have no true professional experience.
2. Apply to any job you think you can do, regardless of the qualifications. If the employer looks at your resume and thinks you might be qualified, they will ignore their own job posting.

Turgon

Get the yellow pages out and contact all the computer companies in your 50 mile radius direct. There will be hundreds in the phone book.

Cisco Inferno

im gonna add my resume to the main post for some butchering

hackman2007

Here is some feedback on your resume, others will likely chime in, but thought I would give you some initial feedback.


Your skills and abilities section bleeds too much in to the Technologies section. Personally, I would remove the Skills/Abilities section.


You want to DEMONSTRATE you have the knowledge, not TELL.


You also need to go through your resume and make sure everything is 100% correct. An example is the first bullet point, "Computer troubleshooting skills. PC repair and hardware knowledge." I think you meant to put a commma instead of a period. This is a big deal. Sloppy resumes do not show attention to detail.


For switches (under the technolgoies section), what switches in particular? List the models.


It also seems like you are reaching a bit with the hardware. It seems like you are just listing hardware. Your certifications already demonstrate that you have this knowledge, no need to list it.


Microsoft Office Suite = Microsoft Office
IE = Internet Explorer
Firefox: Mozilla Firefox
Chrome: Google Chrome


And like the hardware section, it seems like you are reaching in the software section. Are you really an expert with each of these technologies or just listing them?


Now down to the education section, remove the high school. You are in college, it is assumed you made it through high school.


As for the duties description, again make sure everything is 100% correct. It's not an IPad, it is an iPad.

MentholMoose

jamesleecoleman wrote: »

I suggest checking out the work study positions that you school might offer.

Agreed, and if you can't get a work study position, try to get a regular job on campus. On campus student positions will probably have the most flexible hours of any job you can find since managers are used to dealing with students and will be especially accommodating. Competition will be fierce, though. Expect any opening for a student position to have dozens or even hundreds of applicants, depending on the institution size (when I got a student job in 2004, I was hired from a pool of at least 50 applicants). Treat student positions just like you'd treat a "real job". Just because you're a college student doesn't mean it's okay to submit an application with messy handwriting or to show up to an interview in board shorts and flip flops.

If you get a student position and put in the effort, there is a high probability that you will be hired full-time after graduation. From what I've seen, IT departments at many colleges are filled with alumni. I was previously working full-time in IT at a college and I was the only person in the systems and networking group who was not an alumnus... everyone else had worked there in a student position before graduating. However, having worked at another school (even though it was a part-time student position) helped me get that job. That student position has been very beneficial to my career, essentially serving as the launching pad. It helped me get a part-time desktop support paid internship at a bank, which in turn helped get me get a real job as a junior systems administrator before I even graduated.

As for what work you can expect to do as a student worker, it not always just entry level. Yes, college students are cheap labor so you can expect most entry level IT positions (help desk, desktop support) at colleges to be filled by students. But some students are capable of much more and are tasked accordingly. While working as a student, one of my coworkers designed and built the website for one of the largest departments on campus. It was one of the best departmental sites on campus even though most similarly sized departments had spent big money hiring outside firms. With that on his resume, he had zero trouble getting a great job after graduating. Another student worker I knew was basically a junior network administrator and he got hired as a network admin after graduating. And if I hadn't scored that junior sysadmin job, I would have accepted an offer for a network security position on campus (yes, student workers even did network security there). It will vary by school, though.

Cisco Inferno

bump.

could i please have my resume raped some more? thanks

tpatt100

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

bump.

could i please have my resume raped some more? thanks

Well for one stop using that word.

Another is start networking with friends and families to see if there are opportunities where they work or people they know.

Everyone

Cisco Inferno wrote: »

bump.

could i please have my resume raped some more? thanks

Your experience is out of order. ~1.5 page is bad, you don't have enough experience for a 2 pager, get it down to 1 page. Ditch the objective (replace with summary), ditch the skills and abilities, ditch the technologies. Change "Employment" to "Experience" and work your skill keywords into that section... actually just go read any of the last 5 or so resume threads I've responded to, because I'm starting to feel like I'm repeating myself in every single one of these.

kurosaki00

I remember applying for geek squad and getting interviewed...
I didnt got the job

Yet... Most of the people Ive come in contact from geek squad are retarded. At most, they know how to create a facebook profile.