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Addressing L.A’s Less-Than-Stellar Job Market

After working your butt off in high school so that you can work your butt off at a good college, the next natural step would be to find a job that will let you work your butt off for money. Unfortunately in the current economy, this is easier said than done. The climate of downsizing and lay-offs is keeping us from getting jobs, let alone the chance to be fired from them, which is especially dismal for students who racked up debt or loans to pay for the education that was supposed to ensure them gainful employment.

This Survival Guide stumbled onto the saddest of websites, jobaphiles.com, where college students and recent grads compete for jobs based on who will work for the cheapest. Don’t worry, the site won’t be undercutting your pay yet, as it is only in the Boston area, but it does signal the sorry state of job hunting for recent grads. Case in point: I was recently interning at a magazine along with two other well-educated and ambitious young ladies. One was Cara, a recent UCI grad who is making ends meet, but not in her chosen field.

“I have a second job as a cashier at a retail store and even there I’ve heard rumors about layoffs. Thinking about getting a third job as a tutor.”

If you had not heard, the Los Angeles Times already amputated about 1/3 of its staff or something outrageous like that last year, which is none too good for the budding journalists of LA like Cara and me. Other industries might not be quite so dismal, but other grads I know have come up against relatively stable companies that are freezing their hiring indefinitely or cutting back in any way they can.

The obvious solution? Postpone the rejection: up your human capital by getting another degree! This seems to be the trend amongst twenty-somethings who aren’t finding fulfillment in their jobs, or aren’t finding jobs at all. The other intern at the magazine, Sarah, took this route. She was laid off from a start-up, and turned lemons into lemonade by going back to USC to study Art History.

“Times like these force you to be honest with yourself,” Sarah says of her choice to shun the search for another 9-5 desk job for academia. While she admits it is sensible to be practical about careers and income, she points out that we newbies have time to hold out for more intellectually fulfilling endeavors, a stance that might make the scarcity of jobs seem a shade less bleak.

Or you can do what I did and intern part-time for a while. Though it stings a bit to work for free post-degree, there is ample experience to be earned at places to which you might not have had access otherwise. And you can still work a retail or administrative job to pay the bills on the side, with the knowledge that you are also building your resume. And who knows, maybe you’ll get hired!But, if you still like food and electricity and material goods, take heed of some of this interview advice for first-timers:

Get to your interview early. “Duh,” you must be thinking. It’s worth mentioning that the myth of LA traffic is no myth at all, and will rear its ugly head when you least expect it. Waiting at the Starbucks around the corner for half an hour is better than sitting on the 405 when you should be in a waiting room.

Figure out parking beforehand. Do you have to pay to park in a lot near the building? Is it worth it to hunt down a spot and walk? Is there any parking available at all? I failed to do my parking research once and had to pay the maximum fee, $26.00 because I didn’t think to park at the Westfield mall next door. There’s nothing worse than paying to be told “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Turn off your cell phone. This is also obvious, but easily forgotten when you’re busy worrying about what you consider to be your greatest strengths and weaknesses.

Figure out your strengths and weaknesses. Yes, these are the most trite of interview questions, but believe it or not, they or some variation are still very much in use.

Dress appropriately. This is tougher in L.A., as everything seems to be more casual, especially in entertainment-related industries. “Business casual” is a safe bet, especially because overdressing can be awkward.

Just, um, don’t wear flip-flops.

~Shelby Chambers

Tags: careers, college, interviewing, traffic

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under Career in the City. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.