I've now been unemployed for almost five months, and have been job-hunting seriously in this particular area for a little over two of those months. That said, I think I have done adequate research and come to the conclusion that I have identified the most irritating catch 22 in the universe.
You can't get a job without experience, and you can't get experience without a job. No exceptions.
...Okay, maybe a few exceptions. I guess if you have extremely good luck, shady connections, or rich parents, you might still be able to get a job. But I don't have any of these, so I can't be sure.
It used to be the case that if you had a college degree, that actually meant something, and you'd at least be able to get your foot in the door with a crappy entry-level job. Apparently, those days are no more, they must have ended just around the time that I graduated from Penn State with massive amounts of debt. I've seriously been applying to the most basic, barely over minimum-wage, clerical jobs, and 99% of them never even contact me. Of the few I've actually had interviews with, the consensus has generally been "Sorry, we hired someone with more experience." This really makes me want to smash my head with a blunt instrument. These are jobs that BARELY require a high-school diploma and a pulse. One or the other, in some cases. How much experience do you need to answer a telephone? It's starting to look like the only options remaining are either a) work at a call center, b) hang myself, or c) all of the above. Probably in that order.
(And no, I was not being serious just now, merely trying to make a point of how much I do not want to work in a call center.)
Technically, I do have some experience, but for the most part my employment history tends to work against me rather than for me. I didn't really work when I was in high school because I didn't need to, I barely worked when I was in college, save for some part-time jobs that I can't list as references because I didn't even know my co-workers' last names, and then there was the icing on the cake, teaching in Japan. Which seemed like it would look good on future resumes, but actually does not. Unless you're planning on going into the education field (which even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because I don't have a teaching degree) when you get back, or are good enough at Japanese to actually get a job using it, it really doesn't help at all. Potential employers will either be mildly impressed, as if you just told them you can eat 200+ hot dogs in 5 minutes, or they won't mention it at all. And if you're filling out job applications online, it's extra frustrating, because those little drop-down boxes in the "Employment History" section almost invariably do not have overseas options. Meaning, you end up being forced to list your previous employer as being located in "Tokyo, Pennsylvania", since Chiba prefecture is not one of the options and you can't proceed without choosing one.
And if your company is anything like mine, you can forget about listing them as a reference when you get back. They'll tell you flat-out that even if you were a model employee, they can't be bothered with that shit. But that's another story for another time, probably to be mentioned in my inevitable blog post about "Should you become an ALT in Japan?" Ahem.
So that's where I am right now. Anyone else experiencing this unfortunate phenomenon?
