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Ritznit
Dec 19, 2012

I'm crackers for cheese.

Ultra Carp
I hope it's okay to make a thread here, I wasn't sure if my stuff was best suited in a megathread or not.
(Note: I live in Germany, so extremely US-specific advice might not be great, but I'm still open to any input and will do my best to adapt it to where I live)


Long story short, I'm 27 years old and have never had a serious paying job. The closest I've ever gotten was making some chump change with drawings online. This has mainly been due to a long history with mental health problems which are too long to list here, but the gist is that I deal with severe anxiety, depression and a bunch of trauma-induced garbage. I'm finally at a point in my life where I have a good therapist and got medication that is actually helping, so while I'm by no means magically fixed, I have way more of a leg to stand on than ever before. I finally feel like I can be a fully functional adult, which is admittedly thrilling.
I'm also starting a household in Germany with my husband who is from the US and has 40k in student debt there. He has found a very decent job, but the financial situation would make a decently reliable second income extremely useful, especially since we want to get out of debt sooner rather than later.

I've been by no means lazy in the time I spent struggling with brain garbage - I have done a lot of volunteer work in several fields, teaching me a bunch of skills and helping me discover talents I didn't know I had. Wasn't all rinkydinky stuff, either - My experience ranges from working closely with children at the local summer camp to doing a lot of PR and stage MCing for an event that has ~1200 attendees every year. I speak English on a native level, I like speaking in front of crowds and have been told I'm quite charismatic and entertaining at that sort of thing. I have translated business correspondence from English to German and vice versa, I've negotiated contracts for the organization I was with in English, and written a bunch of text and PR material. I'm also a self-taught visual artist and can draw and design pretty decently.

Now my problem is, how do I turn any of this into a paying job?

On paper, I'm basically useless. Germany in particular loves when people have degrees and certificates in just about anything they can do, and I have nothing to show in that regard besides the references and recommendation letters I received from the organizations I volunteered for. Due to being a depressed, anxious and bullied kid in school, I barely finished at the Realschule-level (in Germany, highschools are seperated into three tiers, and I finished at the mid-tier level. You need the highest tier to even be able to go to university) and I have no further degrees to speak of. I attempted to get my high tier-highschool degree but wasn't in professional treatment yet, so I flunked out of that twice and in my state this apparently means I cannot try again, at least not through reputable official schools.

I've applied for just about any old job before to give things a try and learned a bunch of stuff about myself - Mostly that I've improved myself a lot, but high octane retail work and related work is still out of the question for me. I had a trial day at a very busy cafe and had to quit halfway through because the intense stress gave me a nervous breakdown. Not great. Turns out try as I might, I don't have the nerves to deal with customers who grumble at you if you take 5 seconds longer than normal for their morning coffee. I applied for basic grocery jobs and such and didn't even hear back, so no idea if I could have performed at those. I can deal with stress, but I think being powerless in the face of very petty abuse from customers is a problem for me.

I'm very fortunate that I have a financial foundation via my husband, but it's really just about enough and I'm not happy having nothing to do. Ideally, I'd love to just go whole hog on my art and freelance all of it, but that's a luxury I don't have as long as the debt is a thing.


So, here I am, clueless and worried and eager to find some sort of decent job that I can handle. I'd be happy about any and all advice in this direction, especially from people who have experience with long-term unemployment or mental illness as well and can share some experiences about how to manage that in the job market. How do I apply best even with the gaps in my work history? What do I say when I'm asked why I've been doing nothing but volunteer work for 8 years? What kind of paths should I look into? Saving up money for certificates to prove my language skills for example, or trade school, or whatever?


I don't have high expectations, I just want a job that doesn't make me have nervous breakdowns, so hit me with whatever thoughts you got. Thanks a bunch in advance for your time, y'all.

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KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
You typed a lot of words, but you didn't seem to really describe what kind of job you like and enjoy, or think that you might like and enjoy. Let's start there.

You get stressed if people grumble at you when things take longer than five seconds. I hate to tell you this, but in every single job someone is going to criticize you. It is probably good to not work in a retail/customer facing environment, but you in parallel need to develop better tools to deal with "abuse." I am deliberately using quotes because someone telling you to hurry up or ask why something is taking so long is not abuse.

There are a lot of very menial jobs that exist that you can just kind of show up, do the thing, and go home, but you will still get criticized from time to time. (Think like cleaning/janitorial, warehouse work, etc)

Ritznit
Dec 19, 2012

I'm crackers for cheese.

Ultra Carp
Yeah, I apologize for rambling. The problem is that I literally don't know what kind of job I'd enjoy that would also pay on a regular basis. As said, my ideal situation would be getting properly into freelancing with my artwork, but I'm fully aware that the amount of time and investment that would take isn't something I have right now. If possible, I'd like to use my language- and/or presentation skills in some way.

Like I said, I can deal with stress. I can deal with criticism too. Some of the events I've volunteered for are pretty goddamn stressful even by the average person's standards. I (badly) described that I don't think I can handle the specific kind of customer service work where there's a giant line of people, they're all in an awful hurry, and they get noticabley mad because I can't operate the register easily yet. The place I tried out at is the busiest cafe/bakery in the whole area, too. Definitely not a great idea for me in hindsight, but I really did want to try a bunch of things.

So yeah, criticism really is fine. I'm thankfully not that sensitive. I just know the usual entry level stuff people bring up is retail and at least the brand of retail I got to try so far was too much.

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005
I am literally dead and have gainful employment. If my decaying remains can find a job, you can too. :v:

Serious talk, though: Write down a list of your skills. I don't even mean "things you think are employable" skills, but all skills that make you unique as an individual. You mention German and English language. Do you speak any others? Just to throw an option out there: My wife takes hindi lessons from a teacher on italki.com. You could set up a curriculum and start teaching German to overseas students, as an example. I don't know how good the market is for German language teaching on it, but I know it's good enough for people wanting to learn Hindi that my wife's teachers are raking in (USD) low six figures while living in India.

Think about other weird things you could do. You mentioned sketches and artwork. Are you a good artist? Are you good with kids? Does your country/state allow you to teach art lessons after school to children without a billion art and childcare certs?

Give things like that some thought. Maybe you have some neat combo that you can use to work around not having certs. I honestly don't know much of anything about German employment law so there isn't too much else I can really suggest. :smith:


Edit: Another example of what I mean re: neat skill combos -- I have a friend who brings in (brought in?) about $15K-20K a year doing custom repainting of faces/features on high-end dolls. She was big into doll collecting for a while, and once she realized that people would pay her to have fun with her own hobby, she supplemented her day job with it.

Sundae fucked around with this message at 18:47 on Jun 3, 2019

BarbarianElephant
Feb 12, 2015
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.
Perhaps you should focus on part-time or temporary work until you are used to working. My hunch is that you could deal with stress when volunteering because you knew you would have plenty of time to decompress afterwards.

Ritznit
Dec 19, 2012

I'm crackers for cheese.

Ultra Carp
I'm in the process of moving and my brain hasn't been doing so hot due to all the stress, so I apologize for not responding more quickly. I do appreciate the responses, though.

Sundae posted:

Serious talk, though: Write down a list of your skills. I don't even mean "things you think are employable" skills, but all skills that make you unique as an individual. You mention German and English language. Do you speak any others? Just to throw an option out there: My wife takes hindi lessons from a teacher on italki.com. You could set up a curriculum and start teaching German to overseas students, as an example. I don't know how good the market is for German language teaching on it, but I know it's good enough for people wanting to learn Hindi that my wife's teachers are raking in (USD) low six figures while living in India.

Think about other weird things you could do. You mentioned sketches and artwork. Are you a good artist? Are you good with kids? Does your country/state allow you to teach art lessons after school to children without a billion art and childcare certs?

Give things like that some thought. Maybe you have some neat combo that you can use to work around not having certs. I honestly don't know much of anything about German employment law so there isn't too much else I can really suggest. :smith:

Skills I have, huh? Sure, I'll try.

- Eloquent with language, expressive and fluent in German and English
- Good at explaining things and presenting things to an audience
- Drawing ability, especially with cartoons and more expressive art/designs, less realistic rendering of things
- Can notice details very quickly and keep track of stuff other people don't tend to pay attention to
- Public speaking and entertaining, being an MC, good at dealing with guests and public relations
- Uh, really good at picking out voices of individual people? I can quickly identify VAs on TV by their voice and such
- Uuuuuh ... I know a lot about local history, birds and such because I'm prone to Wikipedia binges?? And I learn about subjects I put my mind to very quickly
- I'm also good at acting and voice stuff and would love to actually pursue voice acting but again, need some actual money for actual adult poo poo first


This is kinda hard, not gonna lie! But thank you for making me think about it.

I've worked with kids in a summer camp before, and I was decent at it, but admittedly working with kids scares me a little because I'm afraid of potentially rabid parents. Teaching them art classes after school or somesuch sounds fun, though. I'll have to look up if I need a teaching degree or other childcare certifications for that. Germany is intensely bureaucratic, so I have to assume there's a bunch of certs necessary by default.

I don't think I have any cool weird hobby I really excel at that I could turn into money, other than things I've mentioned so far.



BarbarianElephant posted:

Perhaps you should focus on part-time or temporary work until you are used to working. My hunch is that you could deal with stress when volunteering because you knew you would have plenty of time to decompress afterwards.

Yeah that's the idea. I think part-time work will be a good starting point. I think the reason volunteering was easier for me is the lack of pay, actually - Felt way less like I had to be perfect. If I feel like I have to be perfect, I am prone to freaking myself out so hard that I'll just shut down entirely. The volunteer work eats up a ton of my time, in particular because it's not as tightly organized on average, but since it wasn't paid it didn't feel like I had to be flawless to contribute.



In my own news, I've been looking into jobs in tourism. Since I like working for people and I like presenting and talking, I can see myself doing decently well at that. Problem here, too, is that even a dumb night porter job lists a finished advanced education in tourism as a requirement. Yeesh. I'm gonna have to dig around and try applying to stuff anyway. I think I'd particularly enjoy working for museums or other touristic things like that, giving tours and such.

Sadly the big question for me is still: How do I handle bringing up my long-term lack of employment? The truth is that I've been too drat depressed and hosed up in the brain to be gainfully employed. I received disability benefits for a while and everything. Now that I want to try to work, I feel like I'm being thrown into an environment with completely different rules. I have no idea what acceptable application speech is for "my brain was hosed up and thus I couldn't work". If I don't mention it in my application letter, it will definitely be asked about in an interview at the latest. Where and when do I bring stuff how, what exactly do I say? Legally no employer can ask me about my mental health history, but if I just say "I was sick" nobody in their right mind will trust me. What do I do here?

Sundae
Dec 1, 2005

quote:

- I'm also good at acting and voice stuff and would love to actually pursue voice acting but again, need some actual money for actual adult poo poo first

https://www.acx.com/help/narrators/200484550

There are a bunch of sites like these where you can take on narration jobs or you can post your samples + what you're willing to narrate. In the USA, there are some issues re: voice-acting unions understandably hating these sites (they undermine the guild and typically refuse to work with them), but you're in Germany anyway so not sure if/how that'd matter to you.

Not a real "job" or anything until you get popular/lucky, but I just wanted to let you know things like that exist. :)

ButtHate
Sep 26, 2007
27, in my experience, is not an abnormal age to get your first real job. Where are you located approximately? In some places, e.g. rural East Germany, it's going to be harder to get going without moving. Most of the stuff you probably already know, but:

Call the Arbeitsamt and get a personal consultation.
It kind of depends on the person you'll talk to, but it can be useful. Bring your CV and some questions with you.

Go to jobfairs near you, but inform yourself about the companies before and ask relevant (non-basic) questions to the ones you are interested in.

Consider if you would be interested in an Ausbildung. I know people who did start theirs in their late 20s after failed study attempt and they seem to be happy now. The pay will be very low in the first 2-3 years, though. You can find some of them e.g. through the jobboerse.

Consider getting your Abitur in an Abendschule once or before you have employment as your long term plan (once you are at a manageable stress level where adding the additonal workload wont crush you).

If you want a job that is manageable, consider working for the state. The pay for the lower grades (1-4 is probably your range) is ok compared to similar jobs and the stress levels seem (from an outside perspective) very managable. You have defined raises, 30 holidays, and some job security. Plus you could conceivably get a job working with kids, e.g. in a KITA. Can start looking here for open jobs and check out the appropriate paygrades.

If you are married and your husband pays taxes in Germany, change your tax class to III - V from IV - IV until you find real employment, if you haven't already (and even then, calculate if it is advantageous to keep it). Difference in your salaries could easily make this 100-200 Euro more a month.

Quit the church if you havent yet, unless that's something you want to be paying Kirchensteuer for with every paycheck.

edit:
Luecken im Lebenslauf. In your case I'd call it a "Auszeit aus gesundheitlichen Gründen" and not go into more details. Though do show that you still held some temporary employment and that you are now fully functional.

ButtHate fucked around with this message at 10:12 on Jun 10, 2019

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

I have a German friend who teaches mature-age English. This involves teaching classes of up to about 15-20 people, ranging in age from their 20s to their 70s at differing levels of skill.

She’s German-born and speaks it roughly as fluently as you, maybe a little less. She doesn’t have a uni degree (though she’s studying).

I don’t know how it pays, but it would at least create an employment history for you. It’s a part-time job, and lesson prep can be done in your own time as the schedule suits.

I have no idea how difficult this is to get in to or whether your city is large enough to support this.

Ritznit
Dec 19, 2012

I'm crackers for cheese.

Ultra Carp
Thanks a bunch for the input, folks.

I applied to a few part-time positions around me and just got an invitation for an interview. The position would be for a part-time receptionist at a hostel. It sounds exactly like the kinda thing I could pull off, but I'm really nervous about the interview. I'll gladly just say "Auszeit aus gesundheitlichen Gründen" but I have no idea how to handle that if that just makes the employer suspicious when I refuse to go into detail. I have no idea if an employer asking for detail is a red flag, either.

KYOON GRIFFEY JR
Apr 12, 2010



Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22
weird approach, friend

Just tell them "I took some time off for health reasons, but during that time I did a bunch of volunteering to help me figure out what I wanted to do when I went back to work. Through that I learned I like THING X which is coincdentally really important for this hostel receptionist job so I think it would be a great fit"

if your potential employer insists that you tell them what the health issues were, DO NOT WORK THERE. they can (fairly) ask if you need accommodation or if the health issues may interfere with your ability to do the work, but they should not ask you what, specifically they are.

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TofuDiva
Aug 22, 2010

Playin' Possum





Muldoon
One other option that you could consider - you mentioned that you are good with details, do Wikipedia binges, and you are bilingual and interested in a wide variety of things. You also seem to have good writing skills, so perhaps you could think about doing some freelance writing/editing, transcription, or other freelance work on something like Upwork?

That would be a way to bring in a bit of cash while you pursue other options, and you work in your own solitude or in cafes, whatever and wherever suits your style. I have known several people who started that way, found their niche, built an impressive pile of writing samples and nice lines in their resume in the process, and then parlayed it into full-time employment.

Just a thought! Good luck with the interview.

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