Finding and Keeping jobs - Tips and Advice

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I'm gonna volunteer in the lunch room for a school for autistic children.

There are many wonderful people talking on this thread with varying situations. Higher education does not hurt as long as you are in a life where you have the opportunity to take course work whether it is you supporting yourself, your parents, or if you or your parents are okay with dealing with the loans and/or financial aid and/or scholarships that may be entailed with the "terms" too.

Someone on here mentioned resins/plastics. If you think you want something hands-on, your best bet is to look for a trade school where they tend to focus on more hands-on education.

If you have absolutely zero experience, volunteering somewhere, especially somewhere where you want to get a job and especially if you have the credentials, will help you get experience and potentially references too. If you have experience, volunteering experience will not help much if at all, and trying to get some kind of paid job can help, even if it is like substitute teaching per diem where you are an employee, but don't get anything unless you can get an assignment and sign up for one, keeping the employment gap as small as possible makes a big difference.

If you know social interactions are a problem, look for a counselor at school to talk to if you can talk to a counselor at school, or try to look for one outside. It may be worth the investment if you think it is the only thing holding you back from a career, or a job that will lead to a career.

In the US it is considered almost mandatory. where in Norway are you?

I find myself not even knowing what field to work in due to my resume beeing so extremely diverse.
I've had to struggle for survival and had to try out various things and never developed a profession per se. I am the person that knows "a lot of things" but none of those up to perfection.
I speak quite a few languages (German, Croatian, English, French) and started with some swedish.

I was trying to apply in multiple countries but I don't know whether I fit certain requirements and if I would be able to fullfill their expectations.
I lack the feedback of a person in the business and I lack the networking aspect, I don't even know how to start apart from LinkedIn. I recently even talked with some people about needing "buzzwords" for applications on indeed, because else no one would find my resume. *sighs*

In my whole life, with all the crappy jobs I have ever had, I have never yet sent a thank you note for them allowing me the pleasure to come in and be interviewed by them.

99% of the times if they want to hire you - they will hire you right there on the spot.
If they look at your resume and start asking a bunch of questions - you probably aren't going to get the job.
If they get hostile - which has happened to me several times recently - then you know the interview is over.

Two years ago - I drove to Latrobe PA 5 times for testing and interviews for Latrobe Specialty Steel.
The last interview there was 6 people in the room all giving me the third degree - asking me questions faster then I could answer them and asking the same questions over and over again to see if my answer would change.

I got so mad - I should have just walked out of the interview.
When they asked me if I went on the internet and did some research and looked to see what they did or not, I was in a real bad mood and to get back at them I said NO! - ONE STEEL MILL IS PRETTY MUCH LIKE THE REST.

I hurt their feelings and that was the end of the interview.

I didn't have a job or any income and I had spent over $100 just in gasoline just to go to these test sessions and interviews and I didn't get the job. I would have been better off had I just stayed home and drank beer.

The funny thing is - Steel Mills are ran on Electricity.
They own their own sub station and from time to time it breaks down and my brother who has worked for the largest electrical suppliers ABB / Siemens / ARRIVA as a field service tech and is now a project manager for Siemens goes there all the time to fix their breakers when they have a problem.
If I would have asked my brother to put a good word in for me I would have got the job and if my brother would have talked to some of his social contacts - one of whom he goes to church with - I would have got the job.

As it is right now - the next time they have a problem, my brother isn't going to just drop everything and drive the 7 miles from his house to look at it or fix it. He will put them on his schedule and when he gets around to them, if he feels like it - he will fix it for them.
If they have to go someplace else - oh well!

If you go on their web site - you can read a blog where Latrobe SS bragged about putting in a new furnace a couple of years ago and they were operating it before the building was built and it was the coldest winter on record and those poor people all had to work outside in sometimes sub zero temperatures for 12 hours at a time.
Not exactly the best place in the world to work, but money is money right!

I guess in this Totalitarian system we have , (in the USA and UK), you just profusely thank anyone with capital for even considering to hire you. Not to mention you don't even know who these employers are, they could be seriously abusive to their employees.
I've encountered quite a few employers here in the USA that are very abusive, they pretend to give you choices but then when you exercise those choices they come down on you like a ton of bricks, verbally abusing you, sometimes physically, and emotionally....

Writing thank you letters to the powerful and rich only further disenfranchises you further and steals what little bit of dignity the system had yet to take from you.

Everybody deserves work, everybody deserves a stable job.

If you live in America, you mean?

It doesn't sound like a constructive attitude though.

im new in this site and i can say that to keep a job you should be positive and be confident whatever you are doing because this will be your key to success.

LinkedIn is a good place to start networking. I've used it, and some of my students have used it successfully. It's basically a professional version of Facebook.

I usually recommend to my students that they create a profile on LinkedIn, as it's a good place to start networking.

Good manners at an interview are important.

Think before you answer the question

Make sure you actually answer the question. (I"ve left a few interviews wondering if the guy heard me ask the question)

Send thank you notes. I can't possibly imagine how this robs you of any dignity. I found out that 80 people applied for the job I have now, and 3 were interviewed. I was one of 3 selected out of 80.

Include some memorable things about you in the Thank You.

Try to sell people on your strengths. It's hard. Even to this day there is a huge disconnect in how people see me and how I see myself. They think I'm a computer genius, I think I'm an average computer guy. I've learned though to "play along." I'm paid attention to what people say about me, and learned to relay those as strengths.

People don't do that all that much in the US anymore, either. People used to, but not it's a statistical oddity.

Wow that is so true and is the only thing in the world that can get me within 50 feet of another human being or get me to even pretend to be a little bit friendly... being at work bored out of my mind!! But as for being able to keep a job, no. It is just too hard no matter how lonely and miserable I am just sitting home.

Sensory issues go crazy, people talking at me and I can't even understand what they are saying, I try to talk back but they can't understand me, trying to hide the fact I am panicking, have no idea what is going on around me, can't communicate or connect better than an autistic five year old... all of this and my trainer wonders why I cannot learn anything???

My last job was a hoot! They give a good looking trainer... bare in mind my sensory issues, right? The guy stands WAY too close (really WAY too close as if he was trying to crawl over me to get to the other side), his cologne smells WAY too good, and I couldn't pay attention to anything he was saying! Every time I would breathe in all I could smell was his cologne so strong that I would lose focus completely. And then you know how hard it is for us to maintain eye contact, right? So I kept having to remind myself to look at him when he was talking, but consciously doing that would distract me from what he was saying, and then when I would look in his eyes I was distracted by how increadibly blue they were, and then by trying to figure out the eyes' expression (yes, you know we all struggle with understanding eye expressions), and then I would zone out and lose track of myself looking TOO deeply into his eyes and so he would get uncomfortable or recognize I wasn't paying attention... and that is when it would all just fall apart (sigh)

Nothing was getting "through" so they switched me to another trainer, a woman in her probably late forties. Well she was kind of (slow/different). There was absolutely no communication there between the two of us at all- it was like two five year olds in the playroom trying to communicate how to learn this job. I was immediately fired

But to look on the bright side, I got some much needed social interaction and I genuinely liked the people I worked with, I learned a lot from them, I 'connected' better than I ever have in my life and there were moments when I had a good time... I even cracked up laughing once!! I never had one full-out panic attack (something I am very proud of) and ever since I am finding myself desiring social interaction- probably for the first time in honestly 5 years

And they expect thank yous now?
That's definitely a secret I never heard about.

The best thank you note I got to write included a link to current projects that the person might be interested, and I also took the time to note down a couple things I had genuinely enjoyed discussing with that person.

When I had gotten the job, and it looked like things were rocky, these two pieces of information really helped me keep that job just that little bit longer.

These two pieces of advice were given to me by my aunt, who is the principal of a large school and has had to deal with many staff issues over the years.

1) People are going to tell you things that you are not going to want to hear. And it is in your best interests to listen, to think about their feedback, and to act accordingly.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, I feel that this involves not only "playing the game" but trying to see things from their point of view. A former manager told me once in confidence that I was OCD when I really wanted to be good at locking up at night and being helpful. I thought this over, thanked her for giving me hard news, and told her I would implement what I could ASAP.

2) First impressions count. How you react to news counts.

If necessary, take a day before you have to tell someone how something made you feel, so that you can make the other person feel like you are listening to their point of view too.

I don't know if I'll ever get a job. I'd like one, but last time I had one to many things went wrong for me. I never could do the job properly. I'm just too stupid, lazy, and proud. I have no friends. It's just not worth it. I need to die. Is anyone willing to kill me?