I've given up and will try to join the Civil Service, ask me anything

[NawlinsNed]

I graduated from my university in December of 2002. Degree in Computer Science. Worked long nights and attended morning classes for 7 long years to finish my BS, attending school part time and driving an hour to and from school. GPA was... bad, but that was more due to a lack of sleep than a lack of intelligence, and I've got the letters from my professors to back that up. Not to mention that I outscored my profs in the CS part of a GRE type test that we were required to take to graduate and scored top in the entire college of arts and sciences on a graduate aptitude exam.

Spent 8 months looking for work in Dallas with no luck whatsoever, not a single interview, and I gave up and became a headhunter for a year. I hated that job with a freaking passion. Made alright money, but there's just something about asking people for references and turning them into sales pitches that doesn't feel right to me. I hate lying to people.

I left the company when I had a similar job in hand as a better opportunity, only to have the rug pulled out from under me right after I resigned the other position. I was forced to move back home, and I've been looking for gainful employment in something computer related ever since. 10 months hasn't yielded anything fruitful, so I took some civil service tests.

First test I took in April of 2003, but I got them renewed. Scored a 93 on the Professional Entry Test, which essentially means I missed 2 questions on the test. Yeah, I'm one of those high aptitude guys.
Didn't get me anywhere. Not even a call for any of the positions I really wanted.

So, I went on Friday to take the clerical exams. Got my typing score back immediately. 88 words per minute. 1 error in 5 minutes. I was in a room full of women and they looked at my score funny when I finished typing. Like babes are the only people who can type fast!?! Also took these wierd behavioral and customer service tests, and then sections on spelling and reading comprehension. I probably didn't miss a single question on spelling or reading, but I'm not so sure on the customer service part.

Behavioral exams are always annoying, because you can tell the truth and be disqualified. A buddy of mine comes from a great Christian family and has never taken a thing in his life from anyone, and he was flat out disqualified because a question on one test asked him if he had ever stolen anything from work and asked to bubble in the dollar amount. He bubbled none. Bastids.

So, anyway, I don't necessarily see Civil Service or clerical as beneath me, because they have great benefits, but I'm just frustrated that I'm having to go this route. I didn't bust my ass and lose my social life for 7 years to end up taking phone calls and getting coffee, but at this point, I've been so depressed over this that I've let most of my marketable skills wither, but I'm starting to get back into the swing of things. I was a better programmer than 95% of my classmates, and I'm the only one who hasn't found a job in the field yet. I'm just hoping that once I get in the system, I'll be able to move into technology and then move my way up. The State pays great money to programmers because they usually can't keep them, but ain't nothing bad about a state retirement at what the state is willing to pay. Beats not having a pension.

Ugh.

[KG]

1. does this mean you'll be working for 'da man'?

[NawlinsNed]

4. Nope,

I'll be working for Da Woman, specifically for Governor Kathleen "Screw New Orleans with a Red Hot Poker" Blanco.

[Heidi]

2. If I were in your position . . .

I'd take a civil service job if one were offered. It doesn't have to be forever, ya know, and it wouldn't mean you'd sold out or turned your back on the years you spent sacrificing to get an education. It'd just mean gainful employment, and you might learn some things from the experience. Go fo it!

[NawlinsNed]

3. It's not that I wouldn't be thankful for getting such a job...

... it's just that I honestly don't expect to learn much from a clerical job, as I was basically my own secretary for a year while being a headhunter. I filed my own papers, wrote my own correspondence, faxed my own faxes, etc. However, it is a way into the system, and that's always the hardest part. I'm just slightly annoyed at the difficulty I had finding a job at all, and that some of my buddies who dropped out of college because they couldn't cut it are gainfully employed making great money doing what I wanted to do. It's not that I'm looking down on the profession, it's just that it isn't what I ever wanted to do... I could have just taken some trade classes in high school instead of all those honors classes, gone straight to work at a plant, and would probably be pulling home about 100Gs a year with a good bit of overtime.

For a while, i was so freaking uptight about the entire situation that I couldn't touch a keyboard to program because I figured something had to be wrong with me or my skills. So... now I'm going to get back into it... so I need all the luck I can get.

[Heidi]

5. I'll send you some good vibes . . .

as you weight your options. I know you're not looking down on civil service, just trying to do right by yourself and your education. Maybe I'm too much of an optimistic, I really do learn something in almost everything I do, so you might be surprised by what you'd learn in the clerical job beyond the nuts and bolts of filing.

Good vibes on their way to you . . .

[cornermouse]

6. Have you thought about making up some business cards and

freelancing to small businesses on the side?

[NawlinsNed]

7. Yep

One of the things I'm doing is training to work with enterprise web back ends and frameworks. I do know Java but never fooled with J2EE, but I'm going to start out with Ruby instead, because there's some software that generates a lot of code for you.

I have about 10 websites laid out in a notebook with different concepts in mind, some of which are quite innovative. Most of them take advantage of Atom and RSS feeds and a new web technology called AJAX, which allows software like Gmail and Google Maps to update without reloading a page.

Ultimately, I hope to get some of them up and running as advertisement for my services, but if they start pulling in money (one of them should actually do very good business on its lonesome if I can work out a better "flow" for the site), that's just icing on the cake.

[cornermouse]

9. Good luck.

I think small business sometimes has trouble finding anyone willing to take on small jobs, but its a foot in the door and possibly a lead to something you really like later.

[xmas74]

8. A friend has a masters in English Lit from a well-known

university. She is a mail carrier. Why? Because the money was decent enough to live off of (she is up to almost $20 an hour I believe) and good benefits. She couldn't find anything decent w/ her degree.
If they offer you the job, take it. There's nothing wrong w/ working for them. Remember that change can also come from the inside.

[NawlinsNed]

10. Yeah, but...

.. I came from a really poor childhood. I didn't understand what the point of going to college was, and while I was a voracious reader and had an aptitude off the charts, I had nobody around me to steer me in any possible direction.

However, I got tired of wearing K-Mart sneakers and hand me down Toughskins jeans when all the other kids were wearing Guess, Girbaud, Nike, and Reebok. I saw my dad and my grandfather, two men who had worked at the same refinery for decades, never getting anywhere in life, and I thought that college might be a way out.

So, I went. By that point in time, my dad was making enough money to disqualify me from any grants, so I was paying for it on my own. Now, my worst fears are coming true. I had focused my life on avoiding work that required repetition instead of intelligence or imagination, and right now I have no choice but to accept a position doing exactly that.

It's just been such a struggle that I can truly look back on my college years and say that it wasn't worth it The last 10 years have been a waste, and that's hard to accept, since it was more than a third of my life.

[Ikonoklast]

11. Your education is not a waste

My father told all five of us children, "I don't care if you ever use your degree at any job you get. Even if you end up being a ditch-digger, by God at least you'll be an educated ditch-digger." Time will tell, don't give up.