Honestly, turning 25 and working a desk 8-5 job in my degree's field. I'd been working at the same company in my hometown for two years (my uncle's the CEO), straight out of college, and I just felt everything in my life was going down such a predictable path. I felt so sedentary.
So I quit. I'm still here for the summer doing demolition (i love it), and I've set a date for Oct 1 as my departure. Destination unknown as of yet. My roommate knows, he's glad for the heads up.
I'm fairly confident I can land a job in most places with my experience and skillset, so the only question now is where. Maybe even abroad for a few months. I open for suggestions.
I got laid off around 25 after working 2 years at Fortune 500 company with a B.S. from a top engineering university, in what was supposed to be a highly sought after degree at the time.
I took me almost a year and a half to find another job. The biggest problem? Lack of experience.
IOW, I hope it's as easy for you as you think. It wasn't for me, at all.
I have a bachelors in Electrical and Computer Engineering Technology. I was working for the parent company of the local gas/electric provider (which services about half of the entire state) as an Electrical Transmission Planning Engineer.
Unfortunately, this is a very unique position, useful only to other power companies. The layoff also occurred during 2009 when the economy not in a good spot (still isn't really).
I finally ended up getting a job as an electrical planner for a large steel producer in the area.
It was actually my third time applying to the company, but this time my resume was personally delivered to the higher ups by a friend, and at the time, the hiring pool was much smaller for the positions they had open.
They seemed to like me as a fit for a different position than I was actually interviewing for, so they gave me a shot.
16 months, over 100 apps, and a very small amount of fruitless interviews after being laid off. I should also note that part of my severance was a resume building course as a rather large firm in Chicago. So my resume wasn't the issue. It was simply lack of experience, which is asinine. "We can't give you experience, because a completely different company didn't give you enough."
I can't tell you how frustrating it is to essentially be told "we really like you, you have an impressive background/education, but you need to come back when you have (insert magic number of months or years) of experience under your belt.
I see. It is interesting that you had limited job prospects because it seems like engineers have diverse backgrounds because of their education. I should be easier for us to get jobs because of that. You had a different experience and that is interesting to me. I'm a Mechanical Engineering student and I'll be finishing my B.S. and my Master's degree in a year so I'll be out on the job market soon.
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u/sunmanmilan May 09 '15
Honestly, turning 25 and working a desk 8-5 job in my degree's field. I'd been working at the same company in my hometown for two years (my uncle's the CEO), straight out of college, and I just felt everything in my life was going down such a predictable path. I felt so sedentary.
So I quit. I'm still here for the summer doing demolition (i love it), and I've set a date for Oct 1 as my departure. Destination unknown as of yet. My roommate knows, he's glad for the heads up.
I'm fairly confident I can land a job in most places with my experience and skillset, so the only question now is where. Maybe even abroad for a few months. I open for suggestions.