Someone had asked this elsewhere but then deleted their own post and I don’t know why! I was meaning to come back to it and read it, so rest assured that I won’t delete this one as there were some really interesting stories of unconventional ways people landed their work.
TL;DR: I got headhunted after directly emailing dozens of people and pitching myself as an available, on-call substitute in my line of work, instead of submitting job applications traditionally.
As for me, I cold-pitched myself via Google Maps and other searches as an available substitute to those in my skilled trade (upon moving to a different region) in basically a 50-mile radius, and eventually word of my availability reached a large, overarching institution that connected me with an organization that had a full-time opening. It took me probably 4-5 months from the move to the job offer.
Edit: My story is actually a little more complicated than that, now that I recall the details from years ago; there wasn’t actually a full-time opening at my now-workplace at the time, haha. What happened was that I was briefly interviewed and quickly hired as an assistant to an overwhelmed director who ended up getting massively sick and nearly died from COVID, so I subbed as the director. They had been having interpersonal problems with her and I rapidly noticed them in the weeks before she got sick and warned them of her. While I wasn’t trying to take her place, the higher-ups said they were aware of her shortcomings (she had basically said “Shut up” to another director higher than her rank, to give you one of many examples of how bad it was, and she must have been in her 50s if not 60s).
Nearly everyone at the org apparently loved my work while I subbed for her for nearly a full month, and they eventually fired her and made me her replacement after another interview. It was definitely unusual…
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Started company, hired myself, hired others to replace myself, retired in my 30’s (I’m not rich, I just don’t have to work much or at all if I don’t want to).
Nice! What field?
I started volunteering at my library and was hired when they opened up 2 new page positions.
Excellent! Yes, I’ve always thought loyal volunteers would be among the first considered for paid positions at the places where they offer their time. How’s it been?
Great! I never got an MLIS, but I have a position as a fulltime Library Assistant and I’ve been worrying in the library world for 15 years now.
Wow, obviously it must be excellent there or else you would’ve left. I’ve always admired library work and the institution of libraries, but I think my current full-time job keeps me just a bit too busy to try it out. Plus… I wonder how their budgets will go in the coming years…
I did eventually end up leaving my original library for one in a blue state. Library positions don’t pay a lot and the future of libraries is very much under attack. But you do it for the passion of literacy and helping the community however you can.
I got recommended by someone already working in the company. In the interview I admitted that I had not heard about the software I was supposed to work with, but was sure I could deal with it.
I dealt with it successfully, and will have my 30th anniversary working in that company in a few weeks.
Congrats. Good employers value honesty and adaptability!
Well, I got fired from a very stupid company (who would have guessed that healthcare companies needs more assistance instead of less during COVID? Not them.) when COVID hit.
Started my own company from the severance,so basically I hired myself and created my own job…and a few more.
Couldn’t be happier.
Interesting! Kudos to you for taking such a step. Is it in the same field?
Yes and no. Old job was more IT and process related, nowadays I work more in disaster planning , public health policy and process planning in healthcare, spiced up with a bit of medical intelligence.
Basically hospitals, large companies and government bodies are legally required to have plans for major incidents (from “hey,there has been a train collision, you get 30 severely injured in 20min” to “shit,we lost all power” or “IT outtake”) - we do the planning and training, including life exercises for you. You want to update your healthcare system/the placement of your prehospital resources(ambulances, etc.) as a state or government body? We do that that for you.
You need to know which hospital in a random African country is the right one for a tourist with a sudden rare disease or your insurance wants to know how safe it is to send on of your staff members someone right into the current emerging disease hotspot? We do that for you.
I applied, no college or advanced training necessary. I work as a Cadre (soft drill instructor) at a military academy for at risk teens 16-18 years old. The kids live on campus and have school on campus. They do push ups, formations and yes sir no sir. In 6 months they get their high school diploma and are encouraged to go into either education, enlistment military, or employment. We prepare them and do deep, realistic dives into their goals and dreams.
Minimum to be a cadre all you have to do is have a clean back ground and apply. To be a good cadre you have to genuinely care for the cadets and be willing to hold them to the standard even if it’s something ridiculous seeming. We look for hard workers who are not afraid to tell a angry cadet he must perform 30 push ups for speaking out of turn.
I love this job, I’m good at it, I’m creating a new generation of cadre who are also good and in turn we are creating the next generation of citizens.
Our pay is ok for the area though I’d argue we’re still lower middle class for our state. Our job offers 3 days off (40 hour weeks), free meals (eat what kids eat) and during the day we get time to relax while the cadets are in class.
Only BIG downside for my job is you can’t have a beard, only mustache.
I’ve been with the same company for 17 years. I dropped out of college right before the Great Recession started. I had no prospects or ambition other than paying rent and keeping by stomach full. My dad sent me an ad from the classified section of the paper (actual physical print paper) for an electrician job.
I was impressed initially that the company did not lay off a single worker through the entire Great Recession. In fact, they promised every employee your full 40 hours every week regardless if they had enough work for it. There were months on end I was just sitting in the company office waiting for them to get more work, but at least I was getting paid 8 hours each day. They also paid for me to go to school for my electrical license and offered pretty good insurance.
I started as an entry level pre-apprentice, worked my way through the apprenticeship program and got my journeyman electrical license. I was a foreman for about 9 years before they promoted me into the office as a Project Manager.
Now that’s an excellent workplace!
entry level pre-apprentice
Doss that mean you had no experience with the topic at the time of hiring?
Doss that mean you had no experience with the topic at the time of hiring?
Yes
There is hope!
In my experience, a LOT of commercial construction companies prefer to hire inexperienced workers in order to teach workers “their way” of doing things. Residential tends to go for more experienced workers because they don’t have the time or money to train workers.
If you go union, the union will set you up with apprenticeship school and help you find a company to work for.
I (late 20ies, then mid 20ies), after a failed degree and multiple stints in a local psych ward, just did the most boomer thing possible, walked into a shop at the local mall and asked.
I only wanted to work 10 hours a week at first, but the manager misunderstood and submitted me for 20, I was too nervous to correct her.
The trial day apparently went well, they sent me home after 2 hours instead of 6 because they were sure they wanted me. Didn’t tell me that tho, so when she sent me home after 2 hours, I cried the 4 remaining hours feeling worthless.
The next day they called. I accepted, I worked really hard. 3 months later the temporary manager was moved somewhere else and for some reason they made me manager. That was two years ago.
Some days I love it. Some days I hate it. But I never expected it to work out like that. I know I can’t do this forever, but it’s good for now.
It’s a long story so I will try and bullet point it as I don’t have a lot of time to answer.
- Mid to late thirties and I’m thinking I’m a failure at life. Think I have ADHD but never diagnosed. Had 50+ jobs to this point and I always quit or lose them for poor attendance etc, mix in a little fraud to supplement wages.
- Apply to an insurance company and begin training. Someone I had screwed over (I am a better person now) reported me to management and they fired me.
- decided to apply to Apple as a Christmas temp and get hired for 3 months.
- excel at being faux extrovert and apply for Genius Bar as a Technical Specialist. Get hired.
- Begin work at the Genius Bar where I thrive cause being a fake extrovert actually makes you happier at times, but you leave work drained.
- Realise we have healthcare and seek an ADHD diagnosis, which I got.
- surrounded by talented people and infinite support from management I decide to do a software development bootcamp.
- excel at coding as I had always been interested and I am even at a higher level than the teacher and they’re blown away by my projects.
- suck at interviews and so do another bootcamp, 😔, as this one also get you interviews.
- excel at this bootcamp too and still suck at interviews.
- must have gone for 30 jobs and didn’t get any.
- start to feel down but finally get hired to a small company.
- life really isn’t any greener over here and I still struggle to maintain happiness.
- company I work for is excellent. All about work life balance and the work is secondary to us.
- been 18 months. Got a pay rise after 1 year. Then 6 months later we all get a pay rise again and a reduction in hours.
- we only work 33 hours a week now with 21 days holiday which goes up one day each year until you’re at 25 days.
- don’t have to lie about why I am sick. If not having a good mental health day then I tell them and I am not expected to work.
That sounds like a solid company you’re at! Glad you found it. What do you do there?
Thanks. They really are.
I’m a software developer with 4 others and two owners who also code most of the time.
We are consultants so we get approached my clients exclusively via word of mouth. They treat the clients just as fair as they treat us so we get lots of repeat work and recommendations. Quite a large local authority too which is nice.
We can be making a whole host of different applications which I don’t want to disclose here in case that isn’t something I am allowed to discuss. Basically though if you could think of a system for a business then we could make it.
Not that I am the smartest person but one of the owners is the smartest person I’ve ever met and I don’t believe there is anything they couldn’t build.
Wow, that is some high praise. Very cool!
Same response as last time: I didn’t get it - I created it. I’m a self-employed contractor.
How do/did you find your clients, then?
I’m a 911 dispatcher, basically every dispatch center in the country is always hiring. There’s a lot of turnover, obviously it’s not a job everyone is cut out for and people get burned out, but also people use it as a stepping stone or career builder to move onto other things, a couple of my coworkers want to be cops and this looks good on that application, one went to work for FEMA, a couple have gone to be the dispatchers at local stations, people get promoted or transfer to other county positions (my agency is part of our county department of public safety, in some areas it might be part of your sheriff’s department, local PD, etc) or just go chasing higher paychecks or dream jobs (pay varies a lot around the country, we make decent enough money where I am, but some places really pay peanuts)
I saw an ad on social media somewhere that they had a hiring event going on, so I went. I was working in a warehouse at the time, and a job where I could sit down in the air conditioning sounded really attractive.
Civil service type jobs were already on my radar, I looked into becoming a park ranger for a while, and I’m an eagle scout, so I had a solid grounding on first aid and such.
I showed up, filled out an application, took their aptitude test (we, and a lot of other agencies use something called criticall if you want to get an idea what that test was like. Some typing, reading comprehension, map reading, listening to some sample calls and answering questions about them, etc.)
I passed the test, so as part of the hiring event I got an interview on the spot. If I applied outside of that, I probably would have had to schedule separate times for the test and interview.
I did alright in the interview so they scheduled me for a job shadow to come in and sit in the room to listen to calls and radio dispatch for a couple hours.
Then a while later I got my conditional offer. I had to get a hearing, vision, and drug test, and schedule a psych eval with the county psychologist.
You all know what hearing and vision tests are like I hope, for the drug test they did a hair test. I shave my head, so I was expecting them to take some beard hair, but apparently their policy is to do underarms if that’s the case.
The psych eval wasn’t anything too in depth, sat down with him for a few minutes, chatted about my mental health (no real issues there) then I got handed a very long test booklet to go fill out, lots of multiple choice questions that seemed to basically be gauging if I can play well with others.
And I assume at some point in there they ran background checks and such. Some places get really in depth with that, interviews with the sheriff, polygraph tests, etc. but mine was all pretty out of sight and out of mind.
Then class started. About a week into it we had to go to the county detectives office to be fingerprinted. But otherwise after that it was just all training.
Requirements here are pretty minimal, clean background check, high school diploma/GED, ability to pass all the pre employment screening, etc. At my agency past drug use isn’t necessarily a disqualifier, as long as you can pass the drug test to get hired and don’t get caught lying about anything you have done. Some other places are of course more strict about that.
If anyone thinks they may want to pursue a dispatch job, your local agency may list the job under a couple different names, dispatcher, calltaker, telecommunicator, etc.
Interesting, thanks for the detailed explanation. Are you also using this role as a stepping stone to a target career, out of curiosity?
I shave my head, so I was expecting them to take some beard hair, but apparently their policy is to do underarms if that’s the case.
Didn’t know that! I guess it’s to address fully clean-shaven people…
Personally, I’m happy to just chill where I am for a couple decades until I can retire. If I have to work, this honestly feels about as good as it gets for me. I don’t have any desire to climb the ladder or go hunting for a new job.
I like the hours/schedule, we do 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 rotation, which is pretty common in this field, so it’s a long shift but it’s a long shift sitting in an air conditioned bunker, and unless you come in for overtime you never have to work more than 3 days in a row without a 2 day break. Now those 3 days are weekends, which sucks, but the flip side is every other weekend you have a 3 day weekend. And if you plan your vacations and such right you only need to take 2 days to get a whole week off, so my PTO can go a long way. Here we start off with about 2 weeks of vacation time (“about” because it’s based on 8 hour days and we work 12, it more or less works out the same but you’re always kind of left with some fraction of a day carrying over) then after 5 years you get another week, and again at a couple other milestones years. I actually really struggle to use up all of my PTO personally because nearly everything I do fits into a 3 day weekend.
Benefits are solid, pension, decent medical plan, sometimes you can qualify for first responder discounts, etc.
Different places have different policies on this, but where I am what you do between calls is pretty much up to you, as long as you’re not bothering anyone or making a mess, you can bring in a laptop and play video games or watch movies, read, work on some crafts, whatever as long as you can put it down when the phone rings.
I work night shift, so things can get pretty dead and you get a lot of downtime between calls. Most people work 7-7, but I managed to snag myself a 3pm-3am shift, which I think is great- I get to sleep in until noon every day, but I don’t have to turn my schedule totally upside down if I need to do something in the morning.
We’re not union in my county, and while normally I’m all for unions, it’s worked out well for us so far, because one of the first concessions that tends to get made in contract negotiations is mandatory overtime in some form because like I said everywhere struggles with staffing issues, and so far they’ve done a decent job of keeping our pay competitive without it (probably because I think the dispatchers in most if not all of our surroundings counties are unionized, so they know we might jump ship to them if they don’t pay us competitively)
And for all of those practical reasons, it also feels good to know I’m helping people. I have absolutely saved lives in my time here, I’ve delivered babies, I’ve helped people through disasters and all manner of scary situations.
And it’s always interesting. When the phone rings I never know what’s going to be on the other end, which of course has its ups and downs, but it’s always interesting. Some of the people and the things they call about are absolutely infuriating of course, but no matter what it is I always get a great story. I never come home to my wife asking me “how was your day” and have to answer with some boring “same shit, different day” kind of answer, there’s always something interesting. Sometimes it’s something I’m proud of, sometimes it’s something I’m pissed off about, sometimes it’s funny, sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s “can you believe somebody actually called about this?”
Boss left the company we both worked at. About nine months later, I hated my new boss and wanted to quit; he offered me a job.
I’ve risen through the ranks since then.
That is one awesome boss you’ve got!!
My previous job was via linkedin. I think this one was as well.
How many applications did you wade through between the two, out of curiosity?
I don’t remember for the first one (almost 10 years ago). I think I interviewed at a few places. The second one, I interviewed at a number of places and got my current job. I live in Japan and applied for jobs in Japan and tried to also apply to jobs from the US that allowed remote (as I also have US citizenship). All of the US ones fell through (not surprising given timezones and other issues).
They needed more people where my sister worked, so I agreed to work there.
Hopefully you two get along if your presence overlaps over there!
I did a phone interview at 11 am and told them I needed a determination by 3 pm. They hired me at 1 pm. I don’t know why I did that, and I don’t know why it worked, but here I am.
I don’t know why I did that
It could have potentially put pressure on them versus imaginary competition, haha, though perhaps they desperately needed to hire anyway.
Graduated around 2008 as the economy was crashing, and struggled to find anything. Eventually got hired at a call center for a large company (about a year after I had applied for it). After a few years of that I was able to transfer into a different department where I didn’t have to deal with customers directly, then kept getting promoted to different positions until I found one I was really comfortable in.
Cool! What role is that now?
I’m kind of in between the business and tech. I make sure some of our internal software is running correctly and I run SQL queries and stuff to look for problems in our data. I can help create stories to pass to IT for them to develop fixes for issues or for new functionality in our software.
