How to help a friend get a place/job in a few days!

September 1, 2006 10:06 PM

Friend needs job/place to live badly...bad string of luck...suggestions?

A friend of mine is 29 and went to UC Berkeley and studied film. He was working in the Bay Area at Kinko's and other odd jobs scraping by while doing his art, but was priced out and had to move back to his mom's place in Carlsbad, CA.

He was looking for full-time jobs, but doesn't have 3 - 5 years worth of steady work experience at any one job. He has some video editing experience, but because of the area he's in, there aren't that many video editing jobs around. He got practically no jobs responses in about 8 months, which is crazy but true. He figured he could work in the video game industry as a QA tester, but even those jobs were hard to come by.

He has about $1000 and his mom had to move to a smaller place, so he has to move and doesn't know quite what to do. Are there any suggestions? He needs to move somewhere, anywhere, in a day or so!

posted by dvjtj to Work & Money (6 answers total)

Can he type? Does he know Excel, MS Word, etc.? Sad, but true: temp work is generally easy to come by and pays pretty decently (in the $15/hour range if you've got decent computer skills). He just needs to learn how to use a multi-line phone and he's all set. And he can collect unemployment for any week in which he isn't temping.

The BA alone will get him some admin jobs. All he has to do is call some agencies and schedule a test. (They'll have him tested out on advanced functions of word, simple Excel stuff, Powerpoint if he knows it.) He can also learn other programs at the agency while waiting for a gig.
posted by brina at 11:22 PM on September 1, 2006

He figured he could work in the video game industry as a QA tester, but even those jobs were hard to come by.

He's not looking hard enough.
posted by frogan at 11:39 PM on September 1, 2006

If he's desparate enough he could walk through the mall and find something for the short term. Minimum wage isn't good, but eight months with no income is even worse.
posted by leapingsheep at 8:20 AM on September 2, 2006

So he "studied" film at Berkley, and now wants people to pay him to play video games. Sounds like your boy's got quite a work ethic there.

The quickest way to score honest cash is to work construction. It's easy to get a job that will pay cash. It's dirty, hard, work, and the lifers treat the newbies like shit. On the bright side, he'll be so exhausted that he won't care.

This kind of work is readily available throughout California. He should dress in some grubby clothes and go to the nearest Home Depot. Look for the crowd of er...earthy looking gents standing near the roadside edge of the parking lot.

As for a place to crash, shitty motels still can be had for around $40 a night in California, if you get away from the major cities.
posted by Optamystic at 10:01 AM on September 2, 2006

Heh, I have a teenager (17) that may someday be this 29-year-old. My (imagined) game plan for getting him out of my apartment by age 22 or so (if threats and cajoling don't work) is to announce that I must move to a smaller place, and then move. But I digress. There are a lot of copy-coffee-type jobs in the Bay Area, but housing prices are sky-high. He should find a crappy share situation in Oakland (with lots and lots of roommates), and pound the pavement for work. Part time becomes full time fast enough if you show up and work. If he doesn't find work he's not looking hard enough.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 10:46 AM on September 2, 2006

Sounds like he wants to start at the top, more or less. He needs to troll the local TV stations and see what low-level work he can get, and then move his way up. My brother did that and became, in ten years or so, a highly-paid video editor.
posted by Lockjaw at 3:59 PM on September 2, 2006