I am worried about a good friend of mine and her employment search
First of all, it is difficult to find employment in my city. Just recently, the paper profiled a woman who moved here. She is a cabinetmaker by trade, but has experience in fast food, administration and money loan companies She sent our dozens of resumes in 2.5 months with only a single response, telling her they were not interested. Employers see applicants as just a number. Also, menial jobs are being taken up by people who won't to retire or graduates who cannot find work.
I can relate to this experience. Job hunting sucked. I really lucked out. None of the retail stores, fast food places of academic jobs I applied to bothered to even acknowledge that I applied.
My friend is desperately searching for work. She is the type of personality though that is going to have a very very tough time finding work that will take her on and that she will enjoy.
I really hate to say this, but she isn't the right type of person to be working in a lot of retail setting (think Claire's or American Eagle). She is very short, plain and quiet. When you walk into the stores she applied to, the women are bubbly and very particular about their appearance.
She refuses to work most fast food but has tried her luck at the chain coffee shops. Once again, she is very very quiet. She had worked in a grocery store prepared meals department for a summer and was let go because she couldn't handle the pace.
She is almost done an arts degree but it took her 7 years to do it. Her GPA is so low she is a risk of flunking out. She is too shy to talk to professors about jobs or seek out jobs on campus.
She had worked at a call centre for two summers and hated being left on her own in a cubical.
I offered to look over her resume and cover letter. I guess she got desperate and finally sent it to me. Her cover letter was a paragraph long and didn't discuss why she wanted X position and why she was suited for it. Her resume listed her junior high job of organizing books in library and all of her high school extracurriculars and awards. There were no extracurriculars and awards from university. The boyfriend and I cleaned that up for her.
I am really worried about her. She wants to work. She needs to work. She just has every little single thing going against her. I wish there was something I could do!
