Hi chapo, How the fuck do you find work when you have major gaps in your resume?
Short story: I went through a long fucked up period dealing with addiction and mental health issues. I'm fairly okay now mentally/psychically. But I'm having a real hard time finding work. Last time I had a "real" job was over five years ago, also around the time I graduated college. But I have nothing to put on my resume since then. I have zero networking connects, no one to put as a reference.
I need a job real bad but I don't know what to do. With no experience and no connects I feel like no one wants to hire me, but I can't fulfill those requirements without finding work that I can't get. I fucking hate it.
I'm also dogshit at doing interviews and I don't know how to explain long work absences without freaking out employers. What can I do?
P.S. I don't wanna say where I live for privacy reasons but I do not live in America.
Short term: Get a shitty job that takes anyone with a warm body just to get some experience on your resume. The holidays are around the corner, and warehouses and couriers are going to be fucking destroyed - you're now an asset to them! Will they fire you after the holidays? Absolutely, but now you have experience and a little bit of money! String a couple of these together and boom, no more resume gap.
Long term: Make up a "company" that's really just you and an excuse to teach yourself a new skill. Make a logo for it and a twitter/instagram account (facebook I'd avoid since you have to link your account), schedule semi-regular posts, and then document yourself learning the new skill. Create the company on LinkedIn so it looks more legit. Give yourself a job title that doesn't mean anything, like "Project Manager" or "Senior Digital Consultant". Congratulations, you now have a really good-looking resume item, a new skill, and you can say that you have some experience with social media management and logo design! You are now qualified for a menial office job with a salary and benefits.
As for contacts/networking, you don't necessarily need it if you can cold email. Never apply directly to the position - you'll get filtered out by the algorithms. Instead:
For pure networking, you can also work the angle of "I'm interested in your field and just want a quick chat" to get them on the phone - worst case you'll get info about whatever industry you're targeting, best case you'll get a lead on a job.
That long term plan sounds like a great idea but also kind of complicated. Should I look at other, existing companies to use as a template or is there some kinda guide out there? Also don't know how I'll explain what I did as "project manager."
Very good advice though thanks!
It doesn't need to be a "project manager" title necessarily - when I did this it was to teach myself Python, so I gave myself the title "lead programmer". It might help to give yourself a bullshit title related to whatever you're trying to learn, just so there are fewer questions. If you're angling for an office job it helps to teach yourself some computer skill - GIS, Excel, website management, etc, you'll be the "Head Programmer" or "Lead Analyst" or "GIS Specialist", or something like that. And these skills are typically best learned through projects anyway, so you wouldn't be lying with a title like "Project Manager".
As for explaining what you did, tell them what you did! Don't necessarily tell them that you're the person behind the whole thing on your resume (though in person that can sometimes, not always, be a positive - it "shows initiative"!) But you can put:
And then have something to back that up!
It's worth noting that this applies to salaried office jobs only - for menial labor, just lie and say you have 2-3 years of experience. It'll get you in the door, and at smaller companies they barely look at resumes, they just need warm bodies.
I already have some computer skills, I'll try to brainstorm some ideas about fake companies/websites I could make and "jobs" I can have. It sounds like a lot of work though, I'd have to make fake social media profiles, fake linkedin profiles, etc. Did you find that you had to put in a lot of work to make your company look real or was it just enough to have a website and maybe a defunct twitter account or something?
Don't think of it as a fake company, you're not really pretending you're not the person behind the whole thing, you're just not being particularly upfront about it on your resume. It feels fake because you're making it all up, but you're doing the work for real, and all companies and job titles are made up anyway! You're just picking your own title, really.
As for the social media stuff, once a month, take a day to schedule 5-6 posts on linkedin/twitter/insta/etc, and make a blog post about what you've been doing for the past month. The posts don't have to be in-depth - you can an article related to the field with a brief sentence and honestly that's enough. Knock it all out in the morning on the first of the month, work on the skill the rest of the month, and suddenly you have professional experience after a couple months. It takes maybe a day of dedicated work to set it all up. I didn't even need a website, just the social media was enough, but if you have web design skills and can set up a website that's a major plus.