HELP! I'm Under-Employed and I Hate It!

Dear Liz,

I read your columns religiously. I'm an avid fan! I don't know whether your advice applies to me, though. You write a lot about office-type career jobs. I want a job like that, but I'm stuck in a low-paying job right now. In fact I have two and a half low-paying jobs.

My college degree did not prepare me for the actual work world. My degree is in International Studies with a minor in Italian. Surely that combination should be good for something! Right now I'm waiting tables (my main source of income), editing a poetry journal part-time for peanuts and teaching one course at our local community college.

I'm sure you know this but underemployment stinks. It's demoralizing. I feel like my hard work in college went to waste and I feel like a disappointment to my parents.

I am happy to have the community college course to keep my mojo up when I feel like a total loser, five years out of college and living with a roommate to make ends meet.

Please give me some inspiration and tell me I'm not a failure for not having launched my career at an age where many of my high school and college friends are buying condos.

Thanks,

Brianna

Dear Brianna,

Thanks for your kind words, and for sharing your story. You are not the only person who has ever felt like a failure or a loser. I can't think of one person I know who hasn't felt that way at some point. I'm not sure I could trust a person who hadn't experienced the dreaded Mojo Drop at least once. How would we feel our power without suffering through its absence?

It's scary to lose your mojo and doubt yourself, but the learning is powerful when our resolve is tested the way yours is being tested now. As you climb out of your mojo-depleted state and remember that you have everything you need to reach your goals, you're going to stop worrying about the job-juggling present and focus on your future.

You'd be a great 'career-type' hire for gazillions of managers, but before you can help them see your awesomeness, you have to see it yourself.

It is tempting when we're dealt a disappointing hand of cards to look around for someone to blame. If throwing the responsibility for your present state on the college that 'didn't prepare you for the real world' would solve your problem, I'd be all for it.

The truth is that blaming your school or evil employers for your situation won't help you. All it will do is reinforce the victim-y feelings you're already experiencing. You are no victim -- you're a powerful woman, juggling three jobs and growing muscles like a power lifter at the gym!

You are fine right now, with your clever combination of jobs and your yet-to-be-deployed International Studies degree and your saucy Italian proficiency. You are only waiting for the learning in your first 26 years to coalesce into a mission that will speak to you and draw you forward. Once that signal comes through, you'll be unstoppable.

Right now, you are tuned in to the wrong channel. You are listening to blathering sheep who say things like "Anyone who isn't working in a career job by age 26 is a loser! Anyone who needs three jobs to survive is a failure!"

In order for your Brianna flame to shine its brightest, you've got to put that hater talk aside and focus on your path. It's time to tune in to another channel, the Brianna heart channel that is trying to be heard.

Your school experiences were perfect. You haven't taken one false step on your path. Waiting tables has been an incredible learning experience. Editing has given you a richer understanding of the power of the written word to inspire. Teaching at community college has opened your eyes to the possibilities for yourself and your students.

What do you want to do with all that amazing life and professional experience? What's next on your path, Brianna? It's your choice. You get to decide, and you must.

Look at the drawing just to the left of this paragraph. It's a waste of your mojo to say "I'm a loser." That's a dead-end path. It's another mojo drain to say "The world is too hard" or "My school let me down."

None of those dodges and hedges will help you. Choose the middle path on the road and say "Everything is unfolding the exactly the way it should."

When you get enough altitude to decide on the next step in your career, obstacles will recede. Everything will get easier. Underemployment is grueling, but the muscles you're building now will serve you forever.

In a very short time you'll look back on these days and congratulate yourself for your fortitude. Right now, your job is to stop fretting about your current state and get altitude on your career by answering the question "What do I want?"

Let's say that you've completed the Reinvention Roadmap course and have decided that you want an international Marketing position. You want to work in a firm that has customers in Italy, so you'll get to use your Italian. Will the new job require a move to a new city? It might. If that's the job you want, the move won't feel like a massive undertaking. It'll be the next step on your path, and an exciting one!

Why would employers hire an unconventionally-qualified, quirky International Marketing person like you when there are so many cookie-cutter candidates available?

They'll do it if they catch the Brianna spark you're rekindling now. Hiring managers love candidates who know themselves and have enough maturity to get past "I'm smart and a hard worker" to "I have a few ideas about what you're up against in your international marketing programs. May I test some of those assumptions with you?"

Can you use this reinvention process to look at your path so far, figure out where you've come from and where you choose to go next, and then brand yourself for that direction? When you do, you'll be amazed how good you look on paper - and how good you feel!

Every day in my travels I meet brilliant and talented people like you with non-traditional career backgrounds. Hiring managers have problems that need to be solved, and your job now is to figure out how you're going to plug into that system of pain and solutions and stop worrying about what some weenie resume screener (robot or human) might think about your past. Small-minded people won't faze you when your flame is high!

You are the perfect candidate for tons of International Marketing jobs, and hiring managers will see that connection when you see it yourself.

Think about your autobiography, Brianna, and the screenplay you'll write about these muscle-building years. Nearly every person my age has stories like yours, stories of deprivation and 12-packs of ramen and crazy roommates. You will come through these trials unscathed and stronger than ever when you remember three things:

• You are perfect now;
• Nothing can dim your flame unless you let it; and
• Your career is up to you and no one else.

We are all rooting for you!

Best,

Liz

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How to Escape the Underemployment Trap Questions and Answers

How is Brianna going to hide the fact that she's been a waitress, a part-time editor and a part-time community college instructor when she writes her resume?

Brianna isn't going to hide anything. All three of these jobs are terrific preparation for a young businessperson.

But won't her resume get tossed out of applicant tracking systems because Brianna will be lacking the keywords that keyword-searching software is looking for?

Brianna isn't going to submit her resume through any applicant tracking systems. She's going to send her Human-Voiced Resume and Pain Letter directly to each hiring manager she targets, through the postal service.

What Marketing-type Business Pain can Brianna possibly have solved so far?

Tons! She's a communicator -- she edits poetry, engages community college students and upsells customers every day on appetizers and desserts in her restaurant's menu. She's got tons of stories to tell!

You're so enthusiastic, but as a young person like Brianna, I'm not.

I understand. We are taught to approach a job search, particularly straight out of college, with the mindset "Please, someone, hire me, I beg you." This is a horrible way to start any project. We won't feel our power when we look at a job search as a problem that someone else must fix for us.

We'll bow and scrape and grovel when we don't see what we bring to the equation, and that will only get us a mojo-crushing job that won't grow our flame. When we realize that we really do have valuable experiences and instincts to bring to an employer, our flame grows.

But what if a hiring manager doesn't like Brianna's funky background and her non-standard job search approach?

Then she'll go on to the next one. How many employers are out there?

But not all of them have suitable jobs posted at any given time.

Brianna doesn't care about posted job ads. She isn't going to limit herself to responding to posted jobs. She'll send a Pain Letter any time she feels like it!

This is a very different way to job-hunt.

True! It's called the Whole Person Job Search, and it's taking the world by storm.

You sound like a marketer yourself.

Not me! I'm an HR opera singer with a fistful of markers.

And colored pencils, I assume?

Yes - and erasers!

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