The lack of employment/Laid off/Thread

Sent off my resume and cover letter! I think that all my work formatting and stuff was all for naught, as i think that Amazon's resume importer strips the text out of the document and shoves it into a text field (I clicked back by mistake on the app and found my resume dumped into the "copy and paste your resume" text box. Kinda annoying, and I started the application over again to make sure that I didn't dump it into the text box, but oh well.
 
Well, it looks like I'm joining this club.

I was fired this morning. All because a manager had to cover up their ass for their mistake and I got the backlash.

:(
 
Sorry to hear that, as if you already had a traumatic month. :(
 
katwalk said:
Yeah it's pretty horrible. Every kid out of high school is basically told you HAVE to go to college, totally mandatory, and you are guaranteed a decent paying job when you get out. Yeahhhh, not so much.
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That would be true if people went to college and got degrees that are semi useful. I think the universities should be ashamed of themselves for letting so many students become psychology and sociology majors, do people really expect to get a job with majors like those?

Looking at the demographics vs. jobs at my company alone, you can immediately see the problem. In the computer engineering, electrical engineering, and computer science side of things at my company, almost all of the employess are from Asia (Indian, Chinese, Pakistani, etc.). Why is this? because no one in this country wants to man up and learn this stuff in college because it's "too hard" or they had such poor math and science programs at their high schools that they were never inspired with the possibility to express themselves with numbers.

The worst part is, in the US, this trend will get worse. As our industries in this country keep moving further away from manufacturing and production and moving closer and closer to service. The demand for information technology will continue to grow and grow and the current generation of students will not be ready.
 
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The mindset that is passed on to kids is that every crap degree counts for something and even if you can't find a job in your field you can find some sort of generic office job or something.
The engineering section of my school seemed pretty filled up to me, so I don't think people don't try but it's probably likely they get there and find out college thinks you know calculus when high school only taught you up to to trig. They expect you to know calculus for an ART DEGREE, I seriously got to school only knowing up to algebra 2 because hur dur art degree and took an into gen ed class that while possible to pass without knowing calculus, your highest grade would be like a 70 and you would need to do everything else perfect.
 
Cellos88GT said:
That would be true if people went to college and got degrees that are semi useful. I think the universities should be ashamed of themselves for letting so many students become psychology and sociology majors, do people really expect to get a job with majors like those?
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As a social science/liberal arts major I can assure you that employment figures are almost as good as for engineers. The world may be built by engineers, but it is not run by engineers alone. You should not underestimate the importance of other fields and the amount of gainful employment to be had in these.
katwalk said:
The mindset that is passed on to kids is that every crap degree counts for something and even if you can't find a job in your field you can find some sort of generic office job or something.
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"Every crap degree" alone won't get you a job. But if you're good at something and have no degree at all you will hit a dead end in the career ladder. But if you got a degree, literally any degree, you can rise higher.
A friend of my dad works in mid-level sales management for a large carmaker headquartered in Northern Germany. They urged him to get a degree, any degree even how in his late fourties cause they want to put him in a higher position and company policy states they can only hire college graduates above his current level.
 
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Dr_Grip said:
As a social science/liberal arts major I can assure you that employment figures are almost as good as for engineers. The world may be built by engineers, but it is not run by engineers alone. You should not underestimate the importance of other fields and the amount of gainful employment to be had in these.
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I agree that those majors have their place for those that really care and are dedicated to it but I'm not arguing that. The problem is that there is a surplus of people who graduate with these degrees and the reality is that there are simply not enough jobs out there to cover the surplus.
 
Cellos88GT said:
The problem is that there is a surplus of people who graduate with these degrees and the reality is that there are simply not enough jobs out there to cover the surplus.
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I am not sure about this. What is stupid is to get a social science/liberal arts degree and think one will get a job just because of it. I agree with you that unlike with what Germans call a MINT degree (Mathematik, Informatik (computer science), Naturwissenschaft, Technik) there are few job offers that read "$TITLE_OF_YOUR_DEGREE wanted".
It is definitely wise, if not mandatory, to figure out what you want to do with your social science/liberal arts degree and aquire the necessary skills to find employment before graduating, for example through internships or part-time jobs. Multinational consultants like McKinsey love to hire liberal arts majors with work experience because they are trained in out-of-the-box thinking. Same applies for the junior management recruitment at large companies.

Otherwise, without any experience outside academia, one will have to work one's way up almost as hard as an unskilled worker, I'll give you that. But it still does not change what they call the academic pork cycle: Every few years the industry moans the lack of engineers and demand that more people enroll in engineering programs. Then many young motivated people follow this advice and enrollment spikes, leading to supply being much bigger than demand once they all graduate... thus enrollment numbers drop and the cycle starts again...
 
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Dr_Grip said:
I am not sure about this. What is stupid is to get a social science/liberal arts degree and think one will get a job just because of it. I agree with you that unlike with what Germans call a MINT degree (Mathematik, Informatik (computer science), Naturwissenschaft, Technik) there are few job offers that read "$TITLE_OF_YOUR_DEGREE wanted".
It is definitely wise, if not mandatory, to figure out what you want to do with your social science/liberal arts degree and aquire the necessary skills to find employment before graduating, for example through internships or part-time jobs. Multinational consultants like McKinsey love to hire liberal arts majors with work experience because they are trained in out-of-the-box thinking. Same applies for the junior management recruitment at large companies.

Otherwise, without any experience outside academia, one will have to work one's way up almost as hard as an unskilled worker, I'll give you that. But it still does not change what they call the academic pork cycle: Every few years the industry moans the lack of engineers and demand that more people enroll in engineering programs. Then many young motivated people follow this advice and enrollment spikes, leading to supply being much bigger than demand once they all graduate... thus enrollment numbers drop and the cycle starts again...
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I agree that there should be more emphasis on building experience while in college but even then it only goes so far. I know a multitude of kids who've done internships but still can't land a job.

I don't know, I feel like there will always be a demand for computer scientists/engineers especially as the internet starts reaching and growing into developing nations. Also with the growth of nanotechnology and its imminent marriage with the medical industry that industry will inevitably boom.
 
If ever there is a shortage of media studies qualified people Ukania will be right there with millions of them - woot!
 
I'm throwing in the towel and going back to the devil I know: retail....

Let's see how this goes...
 
Cobol74 said:
If ever there is a shortage of media studies qualified people Ukania will be right there with millions of them - woot!
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Funniest thing about Media Studies degrees is that basically nobody employed in the Media actually has one.
 
[video=youtube;Gzs-4kY4REc]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gzs-4kY4REc&hd=1[/video]
 
jmsprovan said:
Funniest thing about Media Studies degrees is that basically nobody employed in the Media actually has one.
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And anyone who thinks that a media studies degree has anything to do with working in the Media clearly has not done his or her research (jmsprovan, that's not aimed at you!).
 
I have two more interviews this week.
One of the English language schools is looking for someone to motivate the students (ages 12 - 14) through activities.
Seems simple enough, but I can't be sure what it's like until I get to the second interview phase on Tues.
 
Crap, it appears that I spoke too soon regarding my not so triumphant return to retail...I plan to check on work study jobs tuesday.

Hive said:
I have two more interviews this week.
One of the English language schools is looking for someone to motivate the students (ages 12 - 14) through activities.
Seems simple enough, but I can't be sure what it's like until I get to the second interview phase on Tues.
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that sounds Cool. Good luck.
 
Cellos88GT said:
I don't know, I feel like there will always be a demand for computer scientists/engineers especially as the internet starts reaching and growing into developing nations. Also with the growth of nanotechnology and its imminent marriage with the medical industry that industry will inevitably boom.
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"Lack of engineers: full speed ahead into the pork cycle". Der SPIEGEL is not the pillar of sound reporting it was until the early nineties and especially their online department tends to oversensationalize stuff out of proportion. Still, they would not outright make something up.
 
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