So, I had a dig around and couldn't find a thread for this already, so here is the Employment thread! Basically, discuss where you work, where you'd like to work, etc.

Anyway, I'm currently a full time Uni student and unemployed. A couple of years back I worked full time as a programmer for a company that made HR / Recruitment software, which I might go back to after I finish my degree because I really liked the people there and got some nice perks with it (Christmas party on a cruise ship, waddup). I want to eventually be a game developer and start my own company, but obviously that costs more money than I really have.

So yeah, how about you?

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I want to work but nobody will give me a goddamn job. For reasons that I don't know, maybe they think I'm overqualified - which I am, yeah, but is it really that bad that I'd rather have a job where I don't have to have my brain on at all times? I'd rather do my mental training during other parts, not at my job.

As for where I'd like to work, either at Neo Tokyo, which is a manga store in the city or at Gamestop. I applied for a training position there in march, so we'll see if they'll take me this time. (Take me! Take me, please! I am a gamer, I know games and can talk to the customers!)

C-A

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Hmm, well, I'm not sure what things are like over where you live, but stores like that over here (EB Games, Minotaur) tend to get a lot of applications from people so it is very competitive. Unfortunately, for simple retail jobs like that, you'll usually be passed over for someone young in high school because they are cheaper to train and employ.

Your best bet, given your age, is probably to look at something like a cafe or restaurant, doing something like dishwashing, waitressing, etc. They pretty much have to hire adults because high schoolers can't serve alcohol, plus it gives them a more mature image.

Volunteer work is an option to if you can't find anything paid.

I hope that helps. ^_^'

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But that's a stupid idea! After all, High Schoolers are either gonna be busy with homework, trying to graduate or are gonna want to have evenings off to go partying. They should hire people like me, in their 20s, the ones who have the "I want to party" urge out of their system already - or never had one to begin with, like me - who will gladly take the evening shift.

I'm an employer's dream come true! I'll come in when they need me on a day off. I generally do not talk back, unless I have good reason to and tend to do things that are not really part of my duties, just to help out other colleagues or keep the guests in good spirits.

No, I cannot work in waitressing or dishwashing. I'm a vegetarian and the idea of having to wash or scrape plates where meat was or is lingering on it makes me gag. People like McDonald's should hire teenagers. Not Gamestop. No teenager these days is gonna be able to talk with a 20-something gamer about Super Smash Bros 3 or how a long-running series like Harvest Moon or Legend of Zelda started out.

Plus, spend money to train someone? I dunno, here in Germany, you do not really need to be trained to work at certain places. I mean, yes, Gamestop offers training positions (Ausbildungen) to like salesperson, but they do hire part-time employees who do not have that training.

And I'm not gonna do any volunteer work. I may sound like a cold-hearted bitch, but I will not volunteer. If I do something, I want to be paid for it. I think even my mother would be against my volunteering now, because both of us want me to get a job that pays some damn money.

C-A

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Last edited by CatMuto on Fri Jan 10, 2014 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I dunno, I'm in my 20s and I now spend way more time doing homework, trying to graduate and wanting to party than I ever did my teens. :P Plus, lets be a bit fair, they don't know you and they don't know about you not wanting to party. You have to basically emphasise all the benefits your going to give to the business when you apply (though I'm not sure how professional 'does not want to party' sounds on a resume, haha).


Then make sure you tell them that.


Fair enough, I wasn't aware of that. Though vegetarian restaurants do exist, I'm not sure how common they are where you live.


I'm sorry that I'm going to be blunt here, but knowing about the history of Harvest Moon, Super Smash Bros or Legend of Zelda isn't part of the everyday skillset of someone who works at Gamestop. You need to provide good customer service, be familiar with the current trends (Mario, CoD, Minecraft, etc), be able to speak to people unfamiliar with games (parents for instance) about content in the games (eg: stuff that might be hazardous to children like violence), know about some uncommon titles in case somebody asks "Hey, I liked this game, do you know of something like it," etc. You might get one person asking you what you know about Harvest Moon, but I can pretty much guarantee it will be a dime in a dozen, if that.

Also Super Smash Bros 3 is Brawl and I figure a number of teenagers could talk about that, but I digress.

What it really comes down to is how much you will provide the business over everybody else who applied. Compared to a high schooler, you probably have better availability (especially if you're not in Uni or something), so that's a plus. If you have previous retail experience then that is also a plus. Etc etc. If you are an employer's dream come true like you said earlier then you need to demonstrate it.

Though what I will say is, even if you don't get one of those jobs you applied for, there are other options avaliable. Hell, you could get paid just to talk about Zelda all day if you wanted, by posting opinion pieces and blogs and even forums. You're not likely to make a wage you can live on when doing these things (especially when starting out) but they are available for you right at this moment.


I don't mean formal training like getting a degree or something (that would be ridiculous, lol), but every company is going to have some sort of introductory phase were they basically teach you how to (in the case of Gamestop) do things like use the cash register, handle returns, handle pre-orders, handle the computer systems, where the games in the back are stored, and just in general show you how everything works. That still costs the business money and if, for instance, you and a high schooler have the same skillsets, but the other one costs half as much money to employ, then they are the more favoured candidate.

I'm not trying to make you feel bad or anything, I'm just trying to be honest. It's a crappy truth I had to face for years because I didn't have a job through high school and had a really hard time finding employment after I turned 18 (especially because I'm a terrible salesperson so retail was out of the question). It was years before I could finally get a job. :(

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From what I hear, Gamestop is a shit company to work for. The pay is crap, and you're pretty much fucked if you don't meet the quota for preorders.

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I do. I tell them that I am not the type who goes out to a club, comes home at 3 AM and gets up half-asleep at 7 AM to get to work.



I know I will never be that way towards a customer, but I will most definitely think "It has a 16+/18+ Rating on it, do you THINK it's okay for your TWELVE YEAR OLD to play it?" Of course, I'd never actually be like that in front of a customer. But with some games, you just look at the cover or back cover and know if it's appropriate. Hitman? Wouldn't let anyone young play it. Assassin's Creed? Eh.... from what I've seen, it doesn't seem too bad, but still no. Lollipop Chainsaw? It seems like a hilarious no-brainer game, but I wouldn't let anyone under 16 play it.

And I'm not saying that I just know about those games. I know about current games, too - granted, I don't know much about FPS/TPS games, but I can do a quick education on that if necessary. It's just that not every employee at Gamestop knows the older games or how things started out. (Oops, I meant Mario Bros 3, not Smash Bros 3)



No it doesn't. Any job I went to when I got those days of starting out - be it Roomservice recently, working the cash register at a store, doing the returns or even working as a legal aide in an office - it never cost them any kind of money to train me. They told me what to do, I got it and I did it.
That barely took 15 minutes in those cases.

C-A

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Umm, guess I can post my unsuccessful story here.

I've been out of college for 3 years now come May. Graduated with a degree in Elementary Education. Been spending the last 3 years trying to get a job as a teacher, but it's really, really hard to even land an interview. Found out quick it's ALL about who you know.

So basically, I've been subbing since I got out of college, hoping it'll get my foot in the door, and though teachers and the like have been saying great things about what I've been doing, it doesn't help when they aren't hiring and I don't have the funds to move out and chance getting a job somewhere else, especially since getting a teaching job, especially at an elementary level, is very difficult no matter where you go.

Honestly, if I can't land a teaching job, I really don't know what to do. I don't have a back up plan. Yeah, I used to want to be like a concept artist and create characters and such for video games and the like, but even wanting to do something like that would require going back to college and I don't have the time or money to be doing that now. =/

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I'm still in university so I don't have a profession yet, but I have had a bunch of different jobs in the past.

My first job was at a seafood restaurant, working as a dishwasher. I hated it and always went home smelling like fish but the people were good so I got by. I can't stand the smell of scallops anymore but I do think it was a good experience and I've got a better understanding how restaurants work now.

I've also worked as a page for the provincial government-- that was a job I absolutely adored. I got to see the action of the government in person, which is something I'm very interested in already. I was so excited to go to work and the pay was ridiculously good. I still miss it!

I worked for a photography studio, which was the worst job I've ever had. It wasn't so much the job itself, which was fine, but the people there. My self-esteem was terrible that summer; I was so unhappy. I firmly believe that how enjoyable a job is depends heavily on the people that work there-- if the morale is bad, everyone will hate their job. So many people walked out and never came back to work another shift.

Aaaand I've done research for my town. Easy job, no stress. I'd like to do that again ;)

When I get another job at the end of the semester, I'd like to work in a lab to get experience for school. I hate doing labs but I think getting better is something I need to continue with my degree.

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Hey hang in there, Dully. Times are tough for most of us but persistence is key (or so I hear). Have you thought about doing a PhD or something? A lot of teachers here in the UK are PhDs and are held in extra high regard as such.


During the summer last year, I was working as a mobile app developer for an enterprise apps start-up - which was a fairly cool job, because I made a whole freaking Android app in the end and met a lot of cool people there too (note to current CS students: If you want an internship, apply to start-ups! The experience you gain in, like, everything is ridiculous), but there was too much overtime with very little pay, so I'm probably not going back there again.

With regards to the future, I'm one of the fortunate few in a pretty good position right now with respect to employment. I'm in my final year of a CS degree, but through a ridiculous set of circumstances I've already landed a job offer from a leading investment bank as a tech analyst: Something that'd pay ridiculous amounts of cash, but I'm worried about the working hours and the fact that, ironically enough for an IB, the offer is NOT based in London...so I'm holding on to that one until a better opportunity comes along (I've got a couple of assessment days lined up this month, so fingers crossed!).

With regards to my long-term aspirations, IMO, unless it's a charitable cause, spending your whole lives working for other people is pretty sad (even my dad agrees with me, funnily enough), so I'd like to start a business of my own some day. I'm working on a pretty cool Android app in my spare time at the moment, so if I actually get anywhere with it I'll probably turn it into one of those cool start-ups (and then fail miserably, ho-hum).

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My first job was at a CD store. I actually liked it, but I quited after I realized it was affecting my academic performance.
My second job was, huh... A month ago at McDonald's and I resigned (and almost went nuts).

Actually, I'm much more of a theoretical person than a practical one, so I would rather stay in university for life than 'work' if I could (of course, without counting teaching and researching...)

I'm currently working a full time job doing data entry, even though my undergraduate degrees were in History and Spanish. I quickly learned that most places don't give a shit what you majored in - it's all about experience and who you know, as dullahan said. I'm also working on a graduate degree in library science, but I had to take a job unrelated to my field to be able to pay my bills and pick up insurance benefits. At least I had the option available to me, though.

Lots of people are in the same boat as me. We've got bachelor degrees or masters degrees, but we can't find anything in our field, so many of us tend to be either unemployed or underemployed. I'm in the latter category at the moment. I do know how much it sucks not to have anything on the horizon, though.

It also sucks that to get a good job, you need experience, but to get experience in the first place, you tend to need a job. Bit of a catch-22. So many of us are forced to take unpaid internships, which often don't guarantee that you'll land a job anyway.

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I work in Radiology IT at 2 hospitals.

I'll probably be in the minority of people who actually like their jobs, people give me a funny look when I tell them I don't hate going to work. My job isn't terribly important but I've been made to feel like I'm needed so that's nice.

Been there 6 years this October.



You'll get a good job soon enough, any school would be lucky to have you!

Or move here with me, you won't need your own funds while looking for work, you'll be my wife, a kept woman

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If you don't mind me asking, what do you do at work?

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I won't be surprised if you find this boring

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^That actually sounds pretty fun! You work in Hull, right? My mum started working in a Hull hospital yesterday - it'd be hilarious if you two bumped into each other (you might have done already - she's in Obs/Gynae, so makes decent use of Radiology...things, I guess).

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I do, yes! omg it would be so weird if I met your mum XD we get calls and e-mails from doctors who request images for MDT's so I'll probably end up speaking to her.

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I'm not really sure where I'd like to work yet, since it's still a little way off for me. I'm pretty sure I'd like to be a psychologist or something along those lines, so maybe I'd want to work for CAMHS or someplace like that.




That's so weird, my dad had to go there a few times for his old job. I don't think it was in Radiology, though.

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LOL, holy crap. If you ever come across a fairly short Asian lady who tries too hard to sound white called Dr. Junejo, thats her.


Whoever coined the phrase "it's a small world" had absolutely no idea how small the world really was....

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Wow it really is a small world, I'm slightly freaked out XD

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I know, me too! What a coinkidink!

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