"I'm always curious about what people who are members of the 'long term unemployed' are doing while unemployed."
School. School, school, school...
First I had to learn to program, but that wouldn't be enough. Companies want university degrees -- no one hires a relatively smart kid and trains them anymore -- and I lacked the money for university, so I would have to get into IT or a specialized field.
The web was getting big but the early 2000s bubble had burst by the time I had a solid understanding of the LAMP stack, so with no experience I was competing with people who had been doing professional web dev for years. That meant no work, so back to school.
Jobs were opening up in IT, so I studied network administration. Potential offers went sour because I didn't know Office, so I kept at school for that. Around that time HP laid off 2,000 engineers, many of whom were experienced IT people. After that, it was difficult to find any ads for IT work in the area.
I secured a 3-year unpaid internship where I worked with GIS, but every GIS job requires a university Geography degree or more prior experience than I have.
There were usually a few jobs open for Autocad users, so I took Autocad courses. By the time I had completed the courses, the job offers required prior work experience.
In all that time I managed to get one job that got me enough money to get a 4-year CS degree. I couldn't find any work in the next six months, so I went back to school to refresh my IT skills and finish up a 2-year math degree. With that done, the job market looks worse than it did last year, so I'll probably be going back to school in the fall.
School. School, school, school...
First I had to learn to program, but that wouldn't be enough. Companies want university degrees -- no one hires a relatively smart kid and trains them anymore -- and I lacked the money for university, so I would have to get into IT or a specialized field.
The web was getting big but the early 2000s bubble had burst by the time I had a solid understanding of the LAMP stack, so with no experience I was competing with people who had been doing professional web dev for years. That meant no work, so back to school.
Jobs were opening up in IT, so I studied network administration. Potential offers went sour because I didn't know Office, so I kept at school for that. Around that time HP laid off 2,000 engineers, many of whom were experienced IT people. After that, it was difficult to find any ads for IT work in the area.
I secured a 3-year unpaid internship where I worked with GIS, but every GIS job requires a university Geography degree or more prior experience than I have.
There were usually a few jobs open for Autocad users, so I took Autocad courses. By the time I had completed the courses, the job offers required prior work experience.
In all that time I managed to get one job that got me enough money to get a 4-year CS degree. I couldn't find any work in the next six months, so I went back to school to refresh my IT skills and finish up a 2-year math degree. With that done, the job market looks worse than it did last year, so I'll probably be going back to school in the fall.