Hi folks,
Well, here's my story: I am a 27-year old, married male living in Queens, NY. My wife is a museum professional and makes $38,000 per year. I graduated from Georgetown University (Go Hoyas!) with a degree in government and worked for a few years in DC for a political publication (started at $38k, then moved up to $50k) as a research assistant/office manager before moving to NYC with my wife and working for a campaign consultant in Manhattan as a research analyst (for $47k per year). It was during the time with the consultant (a firm of about 60 people) that I realized that I hated working inside the campaign world - the people at the particular firm were nasty and demanding, the work was extremely stressful, and I felt like what I was doing was negatively affecting society (I would argue that the nature of the nonstop 2 or 4 year political campaign is why nothing gets done in DC). Shortly after the election, and after I had put in about a year and a half at the firm, my position was terminated along with several others. It turns out that this particular firm would hire young analysts a few years out of college with the promise of a career path with the firm, grind them out through the election at relatively low pay compared to the hours they put in and then fire them.
I'm now looking for a change in direction and no longer want to work in politics. The reason my wife and I moved up here is because my wife has a very big and very close family who live in the Rockland/Bergen County area, and when the time comes, we want to raise our kids in that family environment. So, our careers will be in this area and we're not interested in moving away from NY/NJ. One thing that I've found is that there's nothing like a sudden job loss to make you feel like you have absolutely no skills. I should narrow that to mean that I feel like I have no technical skills. I am a pretty solid researcher and writer, and wrote a few articles and was the primary copyeditor for the publication I worked for in DC. But it's hard to get a job simply by saying you're a good researcher or writer - there's a reason why people who are experts at Excel, know how to program Java or Drupal, know SPSS, etc. are more easily able to get a job.
I guess my first question is how does someone in my position even proceed with a job search. I've been out of work for about 3 months now and have been seriously job searching for probably two months. In that time, I've applied to about 40 jobs, some which simply consisted of filling out an application and firing over a resume and cover letter, and some for which I got in touch with the HR person by working through my network on LinkedIn. I've had five interviews, mostly for entry level jobs that have nothing to do with my past work experience (one was for an admin assistant, one was for a development assistant, one was for an office manager, and one is in the works for a friend of a friend who is creating a position in her office that would entail some back office work and research). What's discouraging is that I've been out of a pretty good college for about six years, and I'm still applying to entry level jobs because I simply don't have the skill set or experience for more senior positions. Do I just continue with what I'm doing (which is doing a search for "research" on LinkedIn and browsing through job positions - filtering to include only those where I have a first or second degree connection, also checking job postings on Idealist.org, NYC.gov, nyu.edu, etc.).
On another note, and I know this post is running long, shortly before finishing at my last job, I started to see a career counselor because I wanted to make a move away from campaign politics. She is actually quite good, and I worked through the typical work type and personality tests, but also did a lot of journal writing to nail down what it is that I really cared about. After a couple months of work, we came down to a few possibilities. The first was working as a financial planner/counselor - I talked to a number of fee-only planners, and discovered that aside from taking a big risk and opening your own shop, there are virtually no lower level fee-only financial planning jobs out there - you'd have to work for several years at a big brokerage or insurance group as a salesman selling financial products or doing the same for a wealth management firm that caters to the uber-wealthy. After dismissing this possibility, the next idea was teaching high school social studies which I'm currently in the process of investigating. I enjoy history and think I might like teaching, but I'm also very discouraged by the lack of jobs out there now, the job security once you have a job, and the relatively low pay. I also feel very strongly about not taking on student loan debt. My wife still has $35k on her grad school student loans which her parents bought out and who are allowing us to pay them back each month. In virtually every area, we live very Mustachian and despite a $1525 rent, our total expenses are less than $3000 per month (with my unemployment check, we take in about $3400 a month).
I know it's very difficult to give career advice when you don't know a person's unique situation, but I feel like there are no good routes to take for a real "career" change that don't involve going back to school. After the teaching possibility, another option that seemed to fit for me was accounting but not having done any accounting work in college, I would have to get my MBA in order to meet the requirements to take the CPA exam and again I don't want to take on debt.
Ok, end rant- thanks for listening. I'd appreciate any thoughts or advice anybody has.
