a bunch of people are in my inbox rn asking me how to get a boring office job so here’s an answer
[Transcription:
So something that I’ve talked about several times on both my Twitter and my Tumblr is that I think that a lot of people who are like “burnt out gifted kids” or like people who did really well in school but are now struggling to find a job or don’t know what they want to do for work, umm, that anyone anyone like that could really benefit from having a boring office job.
I’ve had other people with similar experiences to me back me up on this, and naturally this invites the question, “How do you GET a boring office job?”
So today I’m going to tell you!
So, a lot of people have pointed out that it is kind of hard nowadays to find “entry level” work. Like, if you go to a companies job board and you look for an entry level job, most of them require several years of experience, which by definition is not entry level.
Part of this is because automation has eliminated a lot of jobs that don’t require some kind of specialized skills or experience, part of this is because companies artificially inflate the requirements on job listings in the hopes that fewer people apply, and the people that do apply will be more qualified, thus giving them an easier hiring process.
And part of it is because a lot of the entry level jobs that are still in the corporate world are NOT posted in the company job board, they’re NOT posted on LinkedIn, they’re NOT posted posted on Indeed, they’re NOT posted on any of those websites,
because those jobs are MOSTLY done through Temp-To-Hire.
Which basically means that, rather than working for the company DIRECTLY, you are essentially rented out to them by a temp agency or employment agency. They’re the ones you send your application to, they’re the ones who do your interview, they’re the ones who write your checks.
And then after about 6-8 months of that arrangement, if the company you’re doing the actual work for likes you, they’ll take you on as full employee.
Companies like doing this because it lets them do essentially a trial run of entry level employees where they don’t have to give them full pay and benefits for the first six months, and it also lets them outsource the hard work of digging through hundreds of job applications to a third party.
So if you want to get an entry level corporate job, don’t go to the companies, go to the temp agency.
Find your local office of one of the big national staffing agencies like Robert Half, or Randstad, or LHH. Go to their website, apply for tons of jobs, and specifically apply for jobs that are listed as “Data entry”, “Receptionist”, or “Mailroom”. Those positions tend to pay decently, if you work for a good company they’ll have good benefits, and the hours are not crazy stressful. Plus they’re not public facing so you don’t have to deal with customers.
That will not just put you in consideration for those jobs, it’ll also bring you to the attention of recruiters, and they’re gonna try to match you to a job even if you didn’t apply for that one specifically.
Repeat that process a couple weeks over and pretty soon you’ll get a call from a recruiter offering you an office job that pays above minimum wage.
End transcription]
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