Your first job out of school is NOT a life sentence. The best move might be to take what you have learned so far and step out to complement it with a whole new set of experiences before deciding to settle-in somewhere for the long haul.
While it can seem daunting, if you remember that it is a job to find a job, read all the posts in the Job Search category of this site, and follow these three Tips for Early Stage Professionals, the results may well be worth it:
- Put your education at the bottom of your resume once you have any work experience. Education is most important only in getting your first job out of school. From then on it is about what you have done in previous jobs that support and make a case for what you say you want to do next.
- State clearly what you want to ideally do in your next job. Failing to be clear about what you ideally want to do next implies that you are too lazy to figure it out for yourself and you want the reader to do it for you…which will not happen. Describing something specific that you want to do next INCREASES the odds of getting ANYTHING . Not saying anything about what you want to do next increases the odds of getting nothing.
- Study up on and aggressively pursue networking. See How Leaders Create and Use Networks and Gittmore’s Little Black Book of Connections which lays out a modern version of the tried and true Italian approach to do someone you target a favor in return for a future favor!