Job Hunting

I have applied for 28 jobs in the last 3 days and I've already gotten 6 rejections for entry level positions. I left a career in television news to pursue what interests and fascinates me. I just managed to get my CompTIA A+, managed to do rackspace's CloudU cert, and I'm studying for the Network+. I get the very distinct feeling I'm going to continue adding to my pile of 97+ rejection letters now with IT help desk letters due to only having hobby and volunteer work in the IT field. Anyone have any advice besides to be patient and something will come along?

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mikey88

Talk to an IT staffing agency and have them find you a contract role. That's how I got started and probably the easiest way to break into IT.

Cisco Inferno

yep this is reality.
Let us see your resume minus personal information. Getting a noob resume to look well is actually quite harder than one can imagine due to lack of exp.

Also, contract companies can actually be effective when you are a noob. More annoying later down the road though.

koz24

You have to try to keep your head up and keep an overall positive attitude, as a negative one could rub off on the people interviewing you without you even noticing what you are doing. I know it can be discouraging but you have to keep trying after making some key improvements.

What Cisco Inferno suggested is a great start. There could be some problems with your resume. Getting some different set of eyes on it is a good idea. Next would be your delivery, how you conduct yourself and how you present yourself. That one is harder since none of us are there when you do it. It's a skill you will have to learn though.

MrDrew

I'd be great if I could get in front of a human

I can't even get past the send us your resume part.
Formatting is all screwy but here is my resume.

EDUCATION
2017-2018 Bachelor of Science, Cyber Security and Information Assurance, WGU
2002-2008 Bachelor of Arts, Mass Communication/ Journalism - CSU, Fresno.

CERTIFICATES / CONTINUING EDUCATION
2017 CompTIA A+, CloudU

EMPLOYMENT
2016-Present A-Miller Depositions (Matt Miller) – Freelance legal videographer. Responsible for the video and audio recording of depositions.

2012-2016 KMPH Fox 26 (Jim Turpin) – Full-time video editor and technical director for the 10 O’clock News. Responsibilities included editing local/national packages for broadcast, in charge of scheduling and training for the part time editors. Assisted with day to day troubleshooting of the systems and servers on and off premises, ran cabling, and assisted the IT manager with various duties.

2010-2012 CSUF Henry Madden Library (Maria Pena)- Data entry, archival photography and scanning of maps and books for digitization. Created and implemented photographic guidelines for the digitization of historical items.

2010 CSUF Arts and Humanities Development Office (Melissa Freeman)- Design & creation of Bone Appetít: The Fresno State Cookbook cover and dividers.

2009-2012 Fresno Philharmonic Orchestra (Lisa Stallings/MaryFrances Semsem) Event photographer/videographer for various concerts.

2007-2010 CSUF Teaching Learning Technology (TLT) (Randy Vaughn-Dotta) – Duties included digitizing photographic negatives for archival purposes, portrait photography, event photography, art installation photography, production of high quality prints & digitization of items used during the centennial.

2007 Kids Invent DV Camp (John Reynolds)- Film editing team leader, two sessions.

2004-2006 KVPT Channel 18 (Leslie Davis) – Designed & uploaded “still stores” using Auction Track & Adobe Photoshop for annual televised Great TV Auction.; set up, moved equipment and items during the actual auction, as needed; assisted Premiums Coordinator (Nancy Farr) with tracking and organizing inventory, as well as shipping materials to members.

2004-2006 Fresno Arts Council – City Hall Art Installation (William Raines) – Installed & removed all of the art exhibited monthly on each floor of City Hall. Duties included moving the lighting dealing with the wishes of each individual artist to best display his/her work.

2003-2004 Phoebe Conley Art Gallery – Installation Assistant (Abelino Bautista) - Painted walls, moved lighting to best display pieces, secured art to walls or on pedestals.

2000-2011 Lake Sequoia Symphonic Music Camp - Photographer & Videographer (Eric Sherbon) Duties included helping maintain & provided pictures/video for camp website, as well as producing a recruitment DVD.

COMPUTER SKILLS
Proficient in HTML5, CSS, Adobe Creative Suite, Final Cut Pro, Edius, AVID Media Composer, Microsoft Office, iNews, NewsKing.
Basic Knowledge in Python, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Illustrator, Viz RT, Chyron.

MrDrew

I'm using Zip Recruiter, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor, and a few random named ones that advertised on the other sites. If I could find a company to mail my stuff to I think I'd probably have a better chance of getting in front of someone.

DatabaseHead

Too much noise on your resume. I'd have to really stare at this thing for a while to decide what I would do. Iterations are your friend. I'd consider putting the computer skills up towards the top as well, but call them something else. Rename Computer skills to technical skills. Sounds a lot more professional.

I can tell you one thing, the dates and the jobs confuse the hell out of me.

ITSpectre

Honestly the shorter the better... Your resume should only be 2 pages long, anything longer and it gets tossed. I would not list ALL your jobs... but the last 3 to 4 jobs should be listed... I would put what you assisted your manager with instead of "assisted with various duties". what systems did you troubleshoot??? What systems??? What type of cabiling did you run... was it coax, etc... Your leaving off valuable info that can land you a IT job. You have to tailor your resume to the IT field... people want to know what systems have you used, what type of server was it... was it running Win server 2008,2012, 2016?

2012-2016 KMPH Fox 26 (Jim Turpin) – Full-time video editor and technical director for the 10 O’clock News. Responsibilities included editing local/national packages for broadcast, in charge of scheduling and training for the part time editors. Assisted with day to day troubleshooting of the systems and servers on and off premises, ran cabling, and assisted the IT manager with various duties.

I would rephrase this like:
Full time video editor and technical director for the 10 O' Clock news. Responsibilities included editing national packages for television broadcast, in charge of scheduling and training for part time editors. I assisted with troubleshooting the following systems (add systems and servers), ran cabiling, and assisted the IT manager with remote support for Win 10, Office 365, Active Directory, and citrix. (just an example)

Chevel

I'm in the same boat as you, its hard to be positive but try not to think about too much. Eventually something will come along!

MrDrew

With that jumbled mess I've gotten offers to work for banks, insurance companies, and production environments but not in IT >.<
Thanks DatabaseHead and ITSpectre I'll tweak my resume with your suggestions, what you guys have to say is quite helpful thank you for the assistance. Amazingly enough that all fits on one page with my contact info tossed in the mix at the top of the page.

NetworkingStudent

DatabaseHead wrote: »

Too much noise on your resume. I'd have to really stare at this thing for a while to decide what I would do. Iterations are your friend. I'd consider putting the computer skills up towards the top as well, but call them something else. Rename Computer skills to technical skills. Sounds a lot more professional.

I can tell you one thing, the dates and the jobs confuse the hell out of me.

Agreed!! There is just to much going on here. First off I recommend adding checking with you unemployment office, or the college you went to for updating the resume.

Here are my recommendations:

Add your contact info, but use a fake name since you're on Tech Exams forum

Your First and Last Name (Use a larger font)
Address, City, State ZIP
Phone Number (Easiest to reach you and with a professional voice mail greeting.)
Your Email (Use or create a professional email for use in your job search.)

Please move all years as your job to the left marign, instead of the right.
See this link:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B62C7HpuIwINek1aWV9KR1U1cHc/view

Keep these jobs I listed below, and the drop the rest:

2016-Present A-Miller Depositions (Matt Miller) – Freelance legal videographer. Responsible for the video and audio recording of depositions.

2012-2016 KMPH Fox 26 (Jim Turpin) – Full-time video editor and technical director for the 10 O’clock News. Responsibilities included editing local/national packages for broadcast, in charge of scheduling and training for the part time editors. Assisted with day to day troubleshooting of the systems and servers on and off premises, ran cabling, and assisted the IT manager with various duties.

2010-2012 CSUF Henry Madden Library (Maria Pena)- Data entry, archival photography and scanning of maps and books for digitization. Created and implemented photographic guidelines for the digitization of historical items.

Do you still do IT volunteer work? If you do this needs to go on your resume.

TheFORCE

MrDrew wrote: »

With that jumbled mess I've gotten offers to work for banks, insurance companies, and production environments but not in IT >.<
Thanks DatabaseHead and ITSpectre I'll tweak my resume with your suggestions, what you guys have to say is quite helpful thank you for the assistance. Amazingly enough that all fits on one page with my contact info tossed in the mix at the top of the page.

None of your past experience relates to IT or is somewhat relative to IT. You are targeting IT jobs with a non IT resume. That's why you are not receiving any calls and only receiving rejections.

Make a version of your resume where you only showcase your IT skills as they relate to an IT job you are targeting. This will make your resume much leaner and get you some access to entry level jobs.

MrDrew

NetworkingStudent I pretty much cut down to those three already with the other folks suggestions :P I like the formatting on your example and yes I still do IT volunteer work, I'll toss that on there. TheFORCE thank you, that's what I realized once I posted here and got some replies. My resume is too broad and unfocused and I need to dial it down to JUST tech oriented.
THANK YOU EVERYBODY

stryder144

MrDrew...one way to think about your past experience is how it relates to technology (as already stated). Here is my suggestion: where did technology that you learned about in your A+ and CloudU studies intersect with your jobs? Did you have to connect the equipment to a network, store data on a cloud service (Box, Dropbox, iCloud, etc), or in any other way troubleshoot technology issues? If so, highlight that experience.

As an example: I had a student who worked security in the gaming industry. Over the course of a week or so we had numerous conversations about what he did in that position. One thing he mentioned is that if the slot machines glitched out or their screens no longer worked, he would have to secure the machine and swap out the parts. He also had to investigate the reason for the glitch, just in case it was a case of someone messing with the slot machine. During the class he got visibly frustrated and I asked him what was wrong. He answered that he would never get a job in IT since he had no practical experience. I walked him through his former job duties, but used technology terms instead of gaming terms. For instance, he didn't swap screens, he swapped monitors (which is what it was). He swapped out faulty graphics cards, hard drives, etc but the slot machine manufacturer would use slightly different terms...all of which he touched and understood as computer components once he let go of the terms he was used to using. After that, he understood that he had roughly 10 years of IT-related secondary experience, which calmed him down. I did caution him, though, to make sure that he talked about his experience in the context of his actual job and not try to over-inflate or lie about his experience. He got a job fairly soon after getting certified and I am certain that part of the reason why was because of how he presented his past experiences.

x12319x

job hunting is harsh man

mzx380

TheFORCE wrote: »

None of your past experience relates to IT or is somewhat relative to IT. You are targeting IT jobs with a non IT resume. That's why you are not receiving any calls and only receiving rejections.

Make a version of your resume where you only showcase your IT skills as they relate to an IT job you are targeting. This will make your resume much leaner and get you some access to entry level jobs.

+1 for this

shochan

You might check Simplyhired.com too...been finding some decent IT job posts out there lately. Also, keep uploading a new resume every month, even if it's a simple edit on the job boards you have your resume on. It seems the job recruiters enjoy seeing a new resume on there & you will get more bites that way. I also upload my resume to rezscore.com w/o my personal info on my resume just to see if it is decent or not after my resume edits. I would say if you get at least a B score, you are doing fine. Don't get discouraged either, you have to remember, IT is a competitive field, lots of talent out there and you just have to shine brighter. Cheers & Hi5!

labscloud

Did you ever land a job?

Moldygr33nb3an

Good fishermen bring a tackle box. In the tackle box are lures for different types of fish and water. Make sure you have a tacklebox full of different resumes, depending on the job and environment. Help Desk positions want to know how well your customer service skills are. Have a resume emphasizing your customer service skills in your past jobs. Technical positions want to know how good your analytical and troubleshooting skills are. Have a resume highlighting these skills and past experiences with these traits.

I'm not one of those "Your CV should only be 2 pages" guy. Tell your story. Be as in-depth, but relative as possible. If that turns into 4-6 pages, so be it. Just make sure its relative to the job.

TechGromit

MrDrew wrote: »

I have applied for 28 jobs in the last 3 days and I've already gotten 6 rejections for entry level positions.

Where did you find these job leads to apply to?

MrDrew wrote: »

I'm using Zip Recruiter, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor, and a few random named ones that advertised on the other sites.

This is part of your problem.

Let’s pretend for a moment I have a job opening in my company and I would like to fill the position. The first place I would post the job is my companies career portal, let’s say I get 17 applicants and I feel 8 of them are qualified enough to interview for the job.I call them up, conduct interviews and hire one of them. So if I get enough applicants to apply to my companies career web site portal, why would I post the job opening to Zip Recruiter, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor? All of which cost me hundreds of dollars at minimum to advertise on, often a lot more.

If your restricting your job search to just the big search engines, your only seeing the hard to fill positions, not only are you opening yourself up to fake jobs, scammers, stale listings, recruiters posting the same job over and over, not to mention increased competition from other candidates that are just as lazy as you when looking for employment. It’s only logical, I’m only going to pay to list jobs on Monster, if I can’t get enough qualified candidates to apply to my job posting on my career portal, that costs me nothing.

Do yourself a favor, research all the mid to large size employers in your area, write down/ record the career portal website for each of them, check each one at least once a week. Not only will you find that you have more job selection, the jobs listed will be “fresher”, no scammers or fake jobs. Yes, this is a lot of work, but when you looking for work, your job is to find work. If you limit yourself just to the popular search engines, then your missing out on a good number of job opening that never get posted to these websites.

You can of course continue to check the job boards, there always employers too small to have a web portal, and harder to fill jobs will still be there, but I would look at the big employers web sites career portals first.

Icecube0045

TechGromit wrote: »

Where did you find these job leads to apply to?

This is part of your problem.

Let’s pretend for a moment I have a job opening in my company and I would like to fill the position. The first place I would post the job is my companies career portal, let’s say I get 17 applicants and I feel 8 of them are qualified enough to interview for the job.I call them up, conduct interviews and hire one of them. So if I get enough applicants to apply to my companies career web site portal, why would I post the job opening to Zip Recruiter, Monster, Indeed, Glassdoor? All of which cost me hundreds of dollars at minimum to advertise on, often a lot more.

If your restricting your job search to just the big search engines, your only seeing the hard to fill positions, not only are you opening yourself up to fake jobs, scammers, stale listings, recruiters posting the same job over and over, not to mention increased competition from other candidates that are just as lazy as you when looking for employment. It’s only logical, I’m only going to pay to list jobs on Monster, if I can’t get enough qualified candidates to apply to my job posting on my career portal, that costs me nothing.

Do yourself a favor, research all the mid to large size employers in your area, write down/ record the career portal website for each of them, check each one at least once a week. Not only will you find that you have more job selection, the jobs listed will be “fresher”, no scammers or fake jobs. Yes, this is a lot of work, but when you looking for work, your job is to find work. If you limit yourself just to the popular search engines, then your missing out on a good number of job opening that never get posted to these websites.

You can of course continue to check the job boards, there always employers too small to have a web portal, and harder to fill jobs will still be there, but I would look at the big employers web sites career portals first.

Indeed pulls from company portals as well. Thats how I was contacted by both small and large employers.

Basic85

shochan wrote: »

You might check Simplyhired.com too...been finding some decent IT job posts out there lately. Also, keep uploading a new resume every month, even if it's a simple edit on the job boards you have your resume on. It seems the job recruiters enjoy seeing a new resume on there & you will get more bites that way. I also upload my resume to rezscore.com w/o my personal info on my resume just to see if it is decent or not after my resume edits. I would say if you get at least a B score, you are doing fine. Don't get discouraged either, you have to remember, IT is a competitive field, lots of talent out there and you just have to shine brighter. Cheers & Hi5!

Most jobs that I've encountered on job boards are low-level helpdesk jobs. Plus you'd run the risk of scammers, spammers, recruiters just collecting resumes for there database, etc. Yeah, I've notice more recruiters contacting me after I've updated my resume which is good and bad.

I agree it's a very competitive field and that's why I've considered to stop pursuing this field.

TechGromit

Icecube0045 wrote: »

Indeed pulls from company portals as well. That's how I was contacted by both small and large employers.

Indeed is a for profit service, if it's pulling ads from a company portals, then it's something the company is paying for. Not all companies pay for this service, thus you never see those jobs on Indeed. If I search for jobs on my company website, I come up with 214 open positions, but only 112 jobs show up on indeed. Xerox shows 262 positions on the website, but only 108 show up on indeed, Ernst & Young 1898 openings for United States, only 423 on Indeed. Unfortunately a lot of career portals don't allow any job, any location search, so I wasn't able to get numbers for a lot of the companies I looked at. Also companies like IBM indeed searches found lots of matches where company XYZ wanted someone with experience on a IBM AS/400, so there was no easy way to match up the job positions numbers I obtained from them and Indeed. Some employers like Microsoft and UPS, the job postings between the company website and Indeed matched up within a dozen or so positions between each other, out of thousands of job postings. Obviously they are good examples of the Indeed relationship you mentioned.

In short I think I made my point, if you relying exclusively on the genetic jobs boards like Indeed, Monster, Dice, etc, your putting yourself at a real disadvantage when it comes to finding and landing a job.