No. 14037Anonymous 17th September 2021 Friday 6:22 pm14037Career guidance after being a reclusive NEET for a few years
I graduated from an Oxbridge uni two years ago with a 2.ii after getting mad depressed and smoking zoots constantly, totally squandering my time there.
Been two years and I'm still zooting away my problems, but I'm now a mid-20s zero-CV NEET and have no idea what to do.
How do I achieve a useful career now that I'm post-uni with no work experience, semi poor grades and getting on a bit compared to the fresh 21y/o grads.
You have to get out of NEETdom first, and ASAP. You need a job, any job, and as long as it's a legitimate job you are on the first step to climbing out.
You have a bit of paper from a good uni so you're a lot better set than me in the long run; the problem with being a NEET is it's a lot like a person in debt with defaults trying to get credit. Nobody will even look at you twice and you instantly get rejected at the first stage of the process. Thus your pool of options is limited.
If you think you're above warehouse work or driving the Tesco delivery van, or whatever it is you have to do at the bottom of the ladder these days, I've got bad news for you. You're not. You're going to have to do one of those jobs. Everyone has to go through an entry level job. You have to get that year or two of "I am capable of showing up to work" on your CV before better employers will even give you a second look.
There's no way around it I'm afraid, unless you're one of those posh spoiled pricks whose well connected daddy gets them a job somewhere. So that's your first step, apply for any old shit entry level job and grit your teeth through it for a while.
Once you're over that hurdle you can start to think a bit longer term.
Oxbridge opens doors for you no matter what grades you have.
You should have very little difficulty finding a job, it just sounds like your problem is that you don't know what you want to do.
What subject was it in?
>>14039 >If you think you're above warehouse work or driving the Tesco delivery van, or whatever it is you have to do at the bottom of the ladder these days, I've got bad news for you. You're not. You're going to have to do one of those jobs. Everyone has to go through an entry level job. You have to get that year or two of "I am capable of showing up to work" on your CV before better employers will even give you a second look.
Yeah. Mine was in a sandwich factory (I posted about it before somewhere) and it really does get you in some good habits. If nothing else it'll give you a kick up the arse in life when you realise that there are people who have putting things in cardboard boxes for 20 years, day after day, and they'll never get another job.
Also you went to Oxbridge, see if you have any mates you can call.
It's not really true though, especially in the current employment market. With the economy re-opening, demand for workers is massively outstripping supply and there has never been a better time to be looking for work. With an Oxbridge degree, entry-level is more like a junior office job at a minimum. OP has a very good chance of getting on a graduate training scheme, particularly in the public sector.
>>14039 is right that OP should just get any job ASAP, but I think he is being unduly pessimistic about the employment prospects of someone with a very prestigious qualification. Even if you do take that shelf-stacking job to get the ball rolling, you should immediately start applying for something better.
Two years isn't a particularly serious CV gap for a new graduate, especially given what's happened over the last two years; it's easily explained away with something like "I went travelling after university, came home at the start of the pandemic and got stuck with my mum who was shielding". Employers understand that people's careers have been disrupted by the pandemic, especially people at the start of their careers.
Go to the JobCentre. In many ways they're useless twats, but they know the big local employers and can get you onto a variety of free training schemes and work placements. Your CV gap is a very modest problem by their standards - they're used to dealing with total no-hopers with problems like illiteracy, serious criminal records or a total inability to interact like a normal human being.
While I think it's a shite state of affairs that anyone should have to endure the poor pay and conditions in such jobs, and it's just an unfortunate necessity if you find yourself in the category of "unemployable", I think working at a truly shit job for a year or two does build character. It grounds a person and gives them a bit of perspective on the more privileged positions they will go on to hold.
There's nothing more intolerable to me than someone who walked straight out of uni and into a good job without ever having endured hardship. Those are always the people who are the least dependable, least hard working, who will whinge and moan about the slightest little problem because they don't know how good they have it. They're spoiled, they're usually bloody useless pricks, and I despise it when I see it.
I just can't even relate with someone who has walked such an easy path through life.
I left the University of Southampton (not Oxbridge, but top 20 in the country), spent two years as a NEET, then worked in a food factory for another year. Then I did telesales. I consider myself a failure at adulthood. But now I'm flying through the dizzying heights of entry-level IT support, a mere 13 years after graduating, so fuck you.
The best thing about Oxbridge is the connections. Ask them first of all. For one thing, they'll know you and already trust that you're competent (unless you truly were a wastrel), and that's the first hurdle sorted. Applying for entry-level jobs is soul-destroying; you've spent your whole life being asked how you'll spend your millions once they are immediately handed to you in the working world, and then Burger King won't even ring you back because literally anyone can flip burgers and you're not special. If you don't have any connections, get any shit job and then go for a graduate training scheme. Fudge the dates on your CV if you need to look marginally more respectable, or say you taught English in China. I have university friends who got onto graduate schemes six or seven years after graduating, and I don't think anyone thought that was weird.
OP here. Genuinely thank you for the replies, much appreciated and lots of good info, special thanks to >>14039>>14043
>>14038 Somewhat my problem. I've never really known, other than a vague "make big money to attain freedom in life" goal.
>>14040 Chemistry. My overarching feeling is that I spent three years doing ever more complicated puzzles and this was considered an education. On par to just having done sudokus the whole time I was there.
>>14045 Yeah I don't really have any connections from there. I'm not from a typical oxbridge background so really struggled making meaningful relationships with very clique intense Eton types etc. Not that they were specifically rude/etc, just cliquey and didn't seem to like my poor ass that much - or I'm a naff person to be around who knows.
NHS m8. Get yourself a job as a bottom bitch lab assistant or pharmacy technician, your qualification will enable you to actually progress from there (potentially with taking additional modules/certificaations etc).
>>14046 It's probably still worth trying the networking thing. Don't ask the people you know, but if you can find someone you don't know but who went to the same...house? College? as you, you can just talk about that during the interview and let them assume you were one of the gang. LinkedIn probably has lots of this information listed.
Teaching is definitely a possbility. With an ever-increasing gap on his CV, OP will struggle to land a private-sector job worthy of his formal education, but all is not lost if he's still in his mid-20s.
In the mean time, I would go on the lookout for any job at all that gets you out of the house every day and gets you at least a few hundred quid a month. Two years is a long time to not be doing much of anything. It's not just two years of non-existing job experience, but possible employers will also be skeptical if you can just hit the ground running and get back into an everyday work routine from one day to the next.
There are jobs that can ease you back into a daily routine. You could do part-time work delivering food, or some low-level customer phone support. You don't have to work in a warehouse or supermarket.
There's a whole world of civil service jobs out there with an application process designed to cut out connections. If I remember right sifters and interviewers don't actually see your job history either because they certainly hired me with a year gap. Apply for HEO and at a push SEO unless you have management experience. Pay is shit but you can get a nice/work life balance in a very secure job that looks good on your CV if you ever want to escape, plus you're not selling rubbish to people all day.
If anything the problem we have is that not enough people apply and of those they seem unable to provide answers to the competencies so posts just go unfilled. I don't think it would be wrong if you asked for advice on competencies if you need it. Saged ticked because I don't know if I should be recruiting arse-pissers.
My personal favourite part, and by favourite I mean I am enormously angry, is when they ask the recruitment consultant, the woman whose job it is to find you a job, the woman who works for the company that actively stands in the way of you finding a job on any job website, for tips on how to get a job, and she says:
>Corinne Mills suggests drawing on your personal network. Friends, family and acquaintances will collectively know hundreds of people, many of whom will be hiring.
So in other words, nepotism. These companies have fucked the job market so that you need to go to them, and when you go to them, they just say "hope you have a relative who can hire you because I ain't doing shit." Recruitment companies are like landlords; parasites who enrich themselves by making society worse. I despise them.
>>14056 That doesn't explain how I got my first civil service job. My mate helped me fill out the applications. A few days later, I got a call from him saying he couldn't remember what Uni I went to. I told him, and later that day I was invited to an interview.
Reading your post now - I think he might have told his sifter mate to pick out the application that had my Uni on it.
