I'm in a career desert and don't know where to go from here
Background: I graduated from college in 2010 (majored in economics & history; 3.4). I thought I wanted to go to law school or do something public policy related (UG internships were relevant to that). I got into some law schools just outside the T20 for the 2011 year but felt like that wasn't good enough given how awful the job market for lawyers was/is and I didn't go; I was also working at a small law firm at the time and realized that wasn't what I wanted my career to be.
I did a master's in economics at a fairly middling school without a clear career strategy in mind - I didn't know what I wanted to do, the field interested me and there was some degree of pressure on me from my family/friends to get a graduate/professional degree.
That was almost two years ago and since then I have had zero luck on the job market. I tried applying to some entry-level roles that don't require a post-BA degree (business analyst roles with less-prestigious firms like Protiviti and CGI; operations analyst roles at major companies like HP). I keep getting told that I'm too old and overqualified. But I don't have any relevant experience so I'm not a candidate for higher-level jobs either; I was turned down for a job with a business intelligence practice for that reason.
At this point, I feel like I missed the boat. Everyone's already filled pretty much all of their entry-level roles at this point. I'm not qualified for anything else. I'm working as an administrative assistant at a law firm, learning absolutely nothing and have zero opportunities for advancement. I don't know where to go from here or what to do at this point. "Go back to school" just means spending more money. I feel like I somehow managed to do everything wrong and really just wish there was a way to undo the past eight years of my life and start over.
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Would you be suited for sales personality wise, not necessarily in finance but an industry role?
I don't want to do sales. I don't have the personality for it.
Absolutely true.
OP: you need to figure out what you want to do. Personally I've gotten to a more advanced level of finance, and sales and personal skills are an absolute necessity. If you don't have technical skills in anything and you're just feeling bad about yourself, you need to determine your marketable skills: why would someone hire you? You need to drive revenue at some point or support it. Go out and figure out how.
What about admissions/student affairs work at one of your schools?
I'd still be in a poorly paying job with no growth opportunities. I'm tired of barely making $30K a year while I have to see people I went to high school/college with updating their LinkedIn to reflect their latest promotion.
Except that there are growth opportunities once you get into that line of work. You can also bounce around the admissions/career center pool. Just throwing ideas out there, I'd think any of these would be more interesting than being an administrative assistant.
I suggest you focus on stepping your networking game up. Go through your personal networks (family, friends, friends of friends), use LinkedIn and whatever other tools at your disposal to get in touch with people that are at companies you'd be interested in. Arrange informational interviews with them and see if they can drop any wisdom - if you come across well, they might know of an opening, or know someone at another company that knows of one. All it takes is one person getting your resume in the right hands. It really comes down to a numbers game - it might take reaching out to hundreds of people before landing the right job but if you truly want it, the experience will pay dividends.
There is a lot of "literature" out there on this topic, so spend some time seeing what has worked for others and apply it to your own situation. Good luck!
Stop worrying about what you should have done and starting thinking about what you are going to do now. From reading your post it sounds like the first thing you need to do is identify your target career. From there it will simply be a sequence of steps to get there.
its kind of hard to give advice because the only thing you've said is you don't like your current situation. we don't even know where you want to go....
so my suggestion is to first figure out what your goal is or else how can we even tell you how to get there?
I want to do strategy or human capital consulting. Since at this point I'm so far removed from what a candidate for that sort of thing looks like, I need to find something else to do.
I had a meeting with a career counselor from my UG who gave me a list of career paths econ majors tend to have and as I tried searching for possible entry-level jobs, I just got more and more despondent. Postings for anything banking-related only wanted finance or accounting majors; I've never taken a finance class in my life and have only taken two entry-level accounting classes. That basically only left jobs like "relationship banker" which is basically just a glorified salesman and I have no desire to do that. People keep telling me to apply to business analyst jobs but I've never used SAP/Sharepoint/etc so I'm not qualified to do that either.
Basically, I am turning 27 next week and I have gone nowhere professionally and I'm broke and I don't know what to do.
OP,
you should get some certifications in IT and try to break into a Tech consulting type of job. (think Accenture, Deloitte BTA, etc) These kinds of jobs aren't particularly selective of candidates and they pretty much hire anyone who have some experience with the IT business enterprise systems that they are trying to sell (SAP, Oracle, etc) and have decent communication skills.
I used to work at Deloitte within their tech consulting division, and I have to say, some of the people I met there weren't the brightest..
This job may not be what you want in terms of career (it wasn't for me) but it's one of few entry level jobs where you can realistically break into given your background. Plus, the pay isn't bad at all. Entry level analysts at Deloitte Tech get 65-75k base, which isn't bad. However, just as an warning: the work isn't very interesting at all and many times the work is mind-numbingly boring. But at the least, the pay is decent and you can leverage the work experience to get something better down the road..
You mention you are interested in doing strategy consulting. I have to say this honestly: sorry, given your background and work experience, you have no shot in hell at snagging one of these positions. Only way you could potentially break into a strategy consulting position is if you get some type of corporate job -> work several years -> do top 10 MBA -> get consulting interviews on-campus, then get an offer.
When I was at Deloitte, our S&O consulting division (management consulting branch of Deloitte) only hired 3.7+ GPA kids from top 15-20 colleges who also aced those grueling case interviews. For MBA hires, they recruit most of their hires from top 15 MBA programs. These jobs are like 15-20 times harder to get than an IT consulting gig at Accenture or Deloitte or Capgemini, and I am not exaggerating this one bit.
That being said, given your position, you shouldn't feel too picky about any job that may be open. Besides IT Business Analyst, IT admin, or IT consulting type of jobs, I am not sure of any other entry-level corporate job for which you could realistically expect to break in given your situation, besides sales. (which you mentioned isn't what you want to do)
Best of luck to you.
What kind of certifications would you suggest getting?
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