I have one of those email jobs: Digital Project Manager, eService…for a travel insurance company. It’s embarrassing to the point that I literally had to tell my therapist about it today. It allows me to pay the bills, though, and buy records, and pursue less embarrassing things in my off time. But @Randall if you ever want/need help with your resume, holler at your boy—I took professional writing/technical communication classes in college and literally had to take classes on resume writing. I even turned it into an odd job to get by during the 2008/9 recession, so I’ve got tons of experience.
JOBS
I love talking about jobs. Not sure why. Maybe it's because everyone has their miseries.
I currently work as a writer for a municipal government. Part technical writing, part UX writing, part longform "reporting." It's easily the best real job I've ever had. The culmination of much work, much suffering.
The best fake jobs I've ever had are tour driver, art critic, boat captain. I really did work those jobs but they weren't sustainable.
The current job comes after many years of freelancing as a writer or working deep in the salt mines of document factories, getting micromanaged by buffoons. I also had a stint working in Kafkaesque warehouses for racist idiots. This radicalized my views of labor.
Hoping to stay in the current job as long as possible because I love writing and technology and being annoying with the questions. It also helps that I believe in the work. Money and meaning and mobility. That's how I evaluate potential jobs. This one checks all those boxes.
Have been recommending that friends check out city/county/state jobs. I had never really considered it before the current situation.
Gonna bring my LinkedIn QR code to the Corporate Retreat.
I used to do website shit (SEO, content writing) but got laid off and have been the stay-at-home parent while my wife works full time (she's a technical writer). I'll probably start looking for jobs next year, which I'm kind of dreading.
Nathan Loud I can see you in a captain’s hat
I started teaching 10 years ago. It can be hard and heartbreaking, but it can be wonderful too. I'm always recommending school jobs to my middle age punk friends. The classroom assistant jobs require very little experience and no special certification or training. Schools are desperate for people right now too.
- It's meaningful work you can take pride in. I've taught 250 kids how to read so far.
- Union health benefits are rad
- You get holidays and summers off, plus sick days, and personal days.
- The pay is not fantastic, but it's consistent and pays bills.
- You really do become connected to the community you serve. It feels good.
[village-people.gif]
Also will echo the resume assistance offer above.
The gist, I would say, is that a resume should be optimized for the applicant tracking systems that HR groups use. A single column on the resume is easier to parse. No images, no typos, etc. Make it easy for the machines.
A lot of time the first people to see your application materials are the dumbest and most useless people at the company, who don't know anything about the job or about anything at all really (no offense, HR).
Use words from the job description like it's mad libs. Write a cover letter that's generic enough (but true to you specifically) that you can customize it to a particular job in a few minutes without trying too hard. It's a good idea to do this with the resume, too: have a "master" resume that you can copy and tweak (and save) easily, using words from the job ad. Saving the application materials and the job description is a good idea for when some HR flunky crawls out of your email inbox to set up a call.
Of course, most of this advice only applies to bigger organizations, but a sharp resume and cover letter would be great for a small company as well.
Also, I recommend to people to check out Slack and Discord communities surrounding a topic of interest. Say you're interested in the environment or some shit. You get on the "I love birds" Discord and check the jobs channel or whatever. It can be a nice break from black hole of job portals, which are depressing and demoralizing. Also going to Meetup dot com events can be interesting, but I find it embarrassing to say that out loud, and I have just lost several punk points.
Depending on your job kink, you could check out a recruiting or a temp agency. I have some thoughts on recruiters (idiot grifters), but I'll save that for another time.
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Nathan Loud I have some thoughts on recruiters (idiot grifters),
I tried to use a headhunting agency once and they sent me to a sketchy credit-loan place - I realized that it would involve getting lower-middle class people to take out loans with ridiculous interest to buy a jet ski or some other useless shit. After the interview, the headhunter said to me, "They didn't think you had enough of a go-for-the-throat attitude". (backhanded compliment, I guess!) Then he asked about my credit rating. This was 1996 in the US, so I was shocked that your credit rating would affect employability and mine wasn't too hot at the time: I was offered credit cards nearly everyday when I graduated college, got a few, and then lived within walking distance of a great record store...oooops
I started working on getting an English teaching gig in Japan soon after the headhunter experience and never went back... 
buh bye!
Been a chef for the last 31 years?!!? Cooking at a university residential college for the last 2 years, feeding hundreds of students a day, but I just quit as the body isn't holding up anymore. Going back to school at age 60.
Worked in records stores, bookshops before cooking.
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Worked as a stagehand for 15 years. I was a volunteer first, got paid later and worked my way up to stagemanager throughout the years. I got to meet great people see a lot of bands live that I otherwise would not have. I studied history next to that job. No, it would be more appropriate to say I did the job next to my studies. I tried to get a teachers degree, but flunked. I really couldn't stand the teacher's room and kept being amazed by how teachers seem to have forgotten what it was like to be 15. I didn't dislike high school, but I sure as hell wasn't considering the importance of the history subject at the time either.
So I got back into live music full time again. As the years progressed I got sick of being squeezed out by the music industry. The weirdos became sparser and careerism started to rear its ugly head. I felt taken advantage of by my employers, but didn't have the balls to quit. I did not know what else to do and did not want to leave the world I had walked around in for so long behind.
Then COVID hit. There were no live events so I no longer had an income and was forced to do something else. I started working at a group home for kids with autism, learned how to do my job on the floor and got an education on the way. It was very hard in the beginning. The hours were far from ideal and the work intense. It didn't get much more punk than there though. Lots of piss, poop - fortunately no one ever threw excrement at me, but I have been hit with a toilet brush on several occasions - swearing and violence. After three years I left, because I felt like I wasn't learning anything new and the behavioral scientist and manager in charge were not taking me nor my team as seriously as they should.
I got hired by an organization that puts a roof over the heads of young homeless people, been working there for a year this week. It gave me a different perspective on the work I did at the group home. Turns out things weren't half bad there. Plus the kids were grateful at times. None of that with the youngsters I'm working with now. I'm playing with the thought to get back to working with disabled children again, because it was more meaningful. It's a shame I am not able to see what's good about a job when I'm actually doing it.
I still work festivals on the side and pay the storage I rent for Don't Buy Records of the money I make that way. I really like doing that work, but wouldn't want to be financially dependent on it anymore.
I repair and refurbish Polaroid cameras. Before that: printing, design, making websites.
Randall You may have a vague recollection I work for a major General Contractor construction company. You have to have pretty good qualifications to do what I do, but if you've been working in a mill shop or whatever, you could work your way into project management for that. Releasing records is essentially project management- coordinating between bands, pressing plants, printers, distributors, post office, customers, getting paid, paying everyone else, etc. In my mind that would translate.
Randall haha! thanks 
i work a very demanding job as a planning editor in tv news.
What does this mean? Local or national? (If you can divulge...)
What does a planning editor do? I'm imagining you're looking at a calendar like, "yeah Mother's Day is coming up, we better interview some mommas."
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Nathan Loud i work directly with reporters on setting up stories across the state (uny not nyc). i dont know what a calendar is.
I've spent my career in P&C Insurance. It's a pretty interesting industry with a range of work from claims adjusting to agency back office. Between home and auto, plenty of work is out there. Might be worth looking into!
I used to work on basic office level jobs thst were all shitty money wise until I started learning web develepment professionally. Since 5 years ago working very happily on that, I do enjoy coding a lot.
I'm a circulator, a circ guy. I've managed circulation for commercial magazines since the late 90's (except for an insane diversion as a remedial math teacher in The Bronx for 6-7 years) - It's a very niche job that was totally in demand until about 2009. Magazine Circulation is generally split between New Business and Retention - & my niche within a niche is being a retention marketing guy - new business is the sexier flashier side of the business but retention is the rhythm section. I manage renewals, subscription billing, and general fulfillment stuff. I like that it has different elements - a "creative" side with designing mail packages and writing copy and a heavy analytical side - I do have some mad Excel skills. Maybe not exciting stuff but it's not always doing the same stuff day in.
Obviously the print magazine business not a promising industry of the future - but the commercial magazines you still see today have mostly proven to be survivors and are not likely to fold any time soon - and the great news for me is Circ Retention is essential to that equation. I started in the last of the golden era when mags spent like crazy to get bigger circulation because advertising dollars more than covered all that expense. That went away when advertising money shifted to the internet. Magazines that learned to make their circ departments profitable were the only survivors. There are quite a few old magazines that survived as brands but not as many real print subscription magazines left.
Currently doing a day (paid) in a community garden, a day in a record shop and the odd day doing cheap design jobs for people with limited money, so it’s a good mix, but very low waged. Fortunately we can live cheaply.
We’re keeping our wages low so both kids get full student & maintenance loans, so they’ll be saddled with debt!!
After 25 years of working for record labels I am now a full time tour manager. I've been lucky to keep pretty busy since making the switch and happy to say that I work(ed) for (mostly) not insane or bummer folks.