Career Advice (again)

[skip-tracer]

As part of my plan to "level up my life" I need to get myself together work wise. This is probably going to be much harder than losing weight and being healthy, in all honesty I'm completely clueless and could do with some words of advice from anyone who has found themselves in a similar position.

I made the mistake of choosing a totally idealistic degree when I went to university. I studied Music Technology when I probably could have had less fun but gained a much more meaningful degree by doing something like IT. I graduated in 2010 and spent a year or so living in a city and failing to find work until the money ran out, then I got incredibly depressed and that derailed everything even further. So now I'm 24, living in the spare room of my dads house in a small town I can't stand with no meaningful qualifications, no work experience and no career prospects at all.

I've tried to teach myself more skills lately. I've learned a lot about web design but it would take years for me to become employable in that area at this rate. I looked in to going back to university to study something like that but the way funding works in the UK means that it's significantly more expensive to study for a second degree if you already have a degree of the same level.

I'm going to an open evening at the university I studied at to find out more about doing an MSc in Sound Engineering. I'd really enjoy doing that but ultimately I know I'll come to the end of it and be just as hopelessly unemployable as I am now. On the other hand at least it's better than my current situation.

I know I'm not the first person to feel this way in their mid-twenties. How the hell do people get through this?

(Sorry for the rant...)

[RunningGirl]

When I left sixth form I didn't go to uni and because I was only 18 when I started looking for work, I was pretty unemployable. Eventually I landed a job as a child minder. I say landed a job...my sister was in dire need of a nanny and was willing to pay. This was pretty good as it kept me off the dole for a few years and by the time I finished there I was 22 and ready to jump back into job hunting. After a couple of weeks I got a crappy job as an Office Junior that paid basically peanuts but was good for experience and managed to get out of there after a year and a half and got a PA job where I am now. Now that I've got a few years of entry level PA experience under my belt I'm starting to look for a more senior PA role.

So I think the moral of my story is that sometimes education isn't everything and it is possible to start at the bottom and work your way up without needing a degree in anything.

[ROOCHOP]

It depends entirely on what you want to do, as far as I know when I looked in to courses in music production, a lot of the career side of things are quite old school. Who you know and all that.

If you want to work in the film industry then its start as a runner pretty much every time, if its computer games then harrass them until they decide to give you a break.

3/4 years at uni or 3/4 years working your way up in the field you want to work with a degree in your back pocket already.

[70Kel]

I agree with RunningGirl a degree isn't always the way to go, even having a degree you still have to work from the bottom in most jobs. I would be focussing on getting a job and then reassessing as you go, good luck:)

Ps a lot of people end up in careers by mistake e.g working in a role they love/enjoy that is nothing like what they thought they would be doing!

[RunningGirl]

Ps a lot of people end up in careers by mistake e.g working in a role they love/enjoy that is nothing like what they thought they would be doing!

Totally agree with this. I never thought I wanted to be a PA until I worked as an office junior and my immediate superior was the PA to the MD. She was so switched on and seemed to love what she did I thought wow I want to be just like her. I'm not quite there yet, but I'm not far off! :-)

[TinkG6]

I never got to go to college as expected (long boring story) so I dove right into working full time and started low but worked my way up. I'm now 28 and have a pretty decent position for my age despite having no degree. Sometimes that hurts me when interviewing, sometimes it doesn't. I really like what I do, but is TOTALLY not what I would have even expected 10 years ago. I just happened to fall into it and grew with it. My advice would be is get ANY job (as long as you can support yourself, obv) just to get your foot in the door in the field you want, and network and move yourself up the ladder. It will happen if you are really dedicated to it.

[nicknack]

In just wanted to offer some advice. I did my B.A., M.A, and Ph.D. in psychology, with a focus on music perception and cognition, and after some postdoctoral work, I now run a research lab that studies auditory development in infants. My advice is to step back and consider your existing skills not in only in terms of their original intended goal, but how they might be part of something else. Here's a music tech example: I run practically all my studies using Max/MSP/Jitter, which was then only "Max", and only handled MIDI. I first learned to use it as an undergrad in an electroacoustic composition course in the school of music. It's not really intended as a research tool, but it is if you think broadly about its potential, and it has allowed me to do many things that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Similarly, some of the best collaborations come from two people, one with methods and one with questions, meeting each other. You have technical abilities. I think that you're much better off focussing your energy on discovering a new, and perhaps surprising, context in which to apply your strength and interests, rather that start from scratch with something else. Unfortunately, this process is intimidating and awkward because it means contacting people out of the blue, in different area that you may know little about, in order to find out what they do, and what they're interested in. Informational interviews. Don't think too much about doing this as a hunt for a job (because people might dismiss you more quickly), but rather a hunt for possibilities that you wouldn't have otherwise considered.

My two cents. Hope it helps.

[Reenzo]

I will add to the mix of thoughts with my story and hopefully it will help, or at least put some perspective on things. This'll take a while, so apologies for the long post.

I studied marine biology, oceanography and engineering in college but left after two years. No degree.

At the age of 19, I road a motorcycle from Illinois to California (got there on my 20th b-day :-) with $800 in my pocket. Talk about no prospects!

I opened up the job section and took a job selling perfume door to door (I say "took a job" because they took any warm body)

Within 5 months, I had piled up 7 speeding tickets all around LA county, had my bike impounded and had to spend a week in LA County Jail since I couldn't pay the fines.

When the perfume thing didn't work out (imagine that!) I did telemarketing selling copy machine toner. Didn't do well at that, but had my first business lesson (which I didn't realize until much later): I was much better with people in person than on the phone.

After about two years in LA, I moved to Palo Alto, CA near San Francisco and started waiting tables. This move was prompted by a friend I had met while renting a room in his house in LA. We are good friends to this day.

Through a family connection of his, we got involved in importing floppy discs from China and Russia and selling them to Silicon Valley software developers and duplicators. Another unsuccessful venture, but many more business lessons, the most important being: the people you meet and the connections you can make will be key to your success and/or failure (no one does either alone!)

About 8 yrs of working on various similar import/export businesses (night vision, nesting dolls, commodities, retail store launches) followed with various ups and downs, but no breakthroughs to self sufficiency. For most of that time I really I supported myself bar-tending and waiting tables.

Ultimately, 13 years ago, I took my rather eclectic resume and went to a head hunter in Silicon Valley.

At the interview about two hours into it, in possibly the nerdiest moment (i.e. truest!) of my life, the lady asked me, "so what's your perfect dream job?"

My response, in complete seriousness : "I want to be an international trouble-shooter for a multi-national company."

After she stopped laughing (it wasn't much, but she really did laugh), she told me she didn't have any clients looking for that job description but she did know someone who ran a logistics company. Turns out he was a branch manager of the San Francisco office, but the upshot is I went and got a job at his company which at the time had 120 offices around the world and handles logistics for all the top companies you can think of.

Six years after I started with them, I took on the role of "Global Account Manager". So I get to manage the relationship between my company and some of our larger customers. In other words, I am an international trouble-shooter for a multi-national company.

Moral of the story is that your schooling or degree are not what matters. YOU matter. YOUR IDEAS matter.

Keep an open mind and positive attitude, go do SOME kind of work, find what gets you going.

It took me 2 years of college, and 11 years of searching all the wrong directions, but I got there.

I believe the same open mind and attitude will take me to the next steps in my life.

Sorry, that was more like 10 cents but hopefully it helps!

[skip-tracer]

In just wanted to offer some advice. I did my B.A., M.A, and Ph.D. in psychology, with a focus on music perception and cognition, and after some postdoctoral work, I now run a research lab that studies auditory development in infants. My advice is to step back and consider your existing skills not in only in terms of their original intended goal, but how they might be part of something else. Here's a music tech example: I run practically all my studies using Max/MSP/Jitter, which was then only "Max", and only handled MIDI. I first learned to use it as an undergrad in an electroacoustic composition course in the school of music. It's not really intended as a research tool, but it is if you think broadly about its potential, and it has allowed me to do many things that wouldn't have been possible otherwise. Similarly, some of the best collaborations come from two people, one with methods and one with questions, meeting each other. You have technical abilities. I think that you're much better off focussing your energy on discovering a new, and perhaps surprising, context in which to apply your strength and interests, rather that start from scratch with something else. Unfortunately, this process is intimidating and awkward because it means contacting people out of the blue, in different area that you may know little about, in order to find out what they do, and what they're interested in. Informational interviews. Don't think too much about doing this as a hunt for a job (because people might dismiss you more quickly), but rather a hunt for possibilities that you wouldn't have otherwise considered.

My two cents. Hope it helps.

That's an interesting idea. I do feel like I have a lot of skills in the field of audio engineering but I should probably think of career paths that I could follow other than just "audio engineer". I'm generally not great with numbers and don't have a genuinely scientific background which makes the field of acoustics or research a bit out of my league, which is a shame. A lot of what is holding me back is my less than stellar social skills and a tendency towards anxiety in social situations, it's a difficult industry to find work in if you're not good at networking.

Also, Max is great. Such a ridiculous amount of depth to it though, the scope of its possibilities is really intimidating. At the moment I'm trying to get back in to using it as I'm starting a new project based around the idea of generative composition using stimulus like mood/ weather/ heart rate/ current world events, sort of like a real world version of game soundtracks. Though at this point it's all a bit of a mess.

[70Kel]

I will add to the mix of thoughts with my story and hopefully it will help, or at least put some perspective on things. This'll take a while, so apologies for the long post.

I studied marine biology, oceanography and engineering in college but left after two years. No degree.

At the age of 19, I road a motorcycle from Illinois to California (got there on my 20th b-day :-) with $800 in my pocket. Talk about no prospects!

I opened up the job section and took a job selling perfume door to door (I say "took a job" because they took any warm body)

Within 5 months, I had piled up 7 speeding tickets all around LA county, had my bike impounded and had to spend a week in LA County Jail since I couldn't pay the fines.

When the perfume thing didn't work out (imagine that!) I did telemarketing selling copy machine toner. Didn't do well at that, but had my first business lesson (which I didn't realize until much later): I was much better with people in person than on the phone.

After about two years in LA, I moved to Palo Alto, CA near San Francisco and started waiting tables. This move was prompted by a friend I had met while renting a room in his house in LA. We are good friends to this day.

Through a family connection of his, we got involved in importing floppy discs from China and Russia and selling them to Silicon Valley software developers and duplicators. Another unsuccessful venture, but many more business lessons, the most important being: the people you meet and the connections you can make will be key to your success and/or failure (no one does either alone!)

About 8 yrs of working on various similar import/export businesses (night vision, nesting dolls, commodities, retail store launches) followed with various ups and downs, but no breakthroughs to self sufficiency. For most of that time I really I supported myself bar-tending and waiting tables.

Ultimately, 13 years ago, I took my rather eclectic resume and went to a head hunter in Silicon Valley.

At the interview about two hours into it, in possibly the nerdiest moment (i.e. truest!) of my life, the lady asked me, "so what's your perfect dream job?"

My response, in complete seriousness : "I want to be an international trouble-shooter for a multi-national company."

After she stopped laughing (it wasn't much, but she really did laugh), she told me she didn't have any clients looking for that job description but she did know someone who ran a logistics company. Turns out he was a branch manager of the San Francisco office, but the upshot is I went and got a job at his company which at the time had 120 offices around the world and handles logistics for all the top companies you can think of.

Six years after I started with them, I took on the role of "Global Account Manager". So I get to manage the relationship between my company and some of our larger customers. In other words, I am an international trouble-shooter for a multi-national company.

Moral of the story is that your schooling or degree are not what matters. YOU matter. YOUR IDEAS matter.

Keep an open mind and positive attitude, go do SOME kind of work, find what gets you going.

It took me 2 years of college, and 11 years of searching all the wrong directions, but I got there.

I believe the same open mind and attitude will take me to the next steps in my life.

Sorry, that was more like 10 cents but hopefully it helps!

Great successful work story!

[nicknack]

Yes reenzo. Great story. Someone should start a thread in which people describe the circuitous paths that people follow to end up where they are.

[StephJinx]

In all of your descriptions of your studies, what you know, what you want to learn...

You never said anything about what you truly want to do. You mentioned a project

What about music gets your heart thumping? Do you want to help a band, or produce albums, or work with disadvantaged kids in finding something that they love? For that matter, is music truly your passion or is it a hobby you got a degree with?

I guess for me, I would start with an idea of what truly makes you happy - something you're passionate about, that you would leap out of bed every day to get to work on. And once you figure it out, you can start planning how to get to. It's just like the way it is highly recommended to have a fitness goal to work towards.

I know it can be really intimidating, so I guess a good place to start - if you have no idea - would just be sit down for 5 minutes, think and brainstorm. Write it all down, don't edit what comes into your head! You might be surprised at some of the connections that you make.

I am a firm believer that people need to be happy in their workplace. Getting a job for the sake of having a job might leave you miserable if you don't have your dream to work towards.