StreetcarBlanche,

Over a year I was in your position. I kept applying for temporary job agencies and kept getting the run around. I applied to their jobs posted online and called the job agent and they always said the job was filled. And every once in a long while, a job agent contacted me and I would get back to them and send them an updated modified resume, references, etc. as they requested but I never heard back from them weeks later. And when I asked, they said the position was filled.

A few times i got responses from indeed job postings but many of them were scams. And a few interviews from places that went nowhere. It was very discouraging.

I was working part time as a cashier but I didn't want to do that anymore. I was lucky my boss let me work as few hours possible as it's difficult to job hunt while you work and the employment centers won't register me if i work too many hours.

I was worried about my age too because most people in my field are young and I didn't work in the field for so long, so i had no recent experience. I was with an employment center that specialized in my field but they didn't want to help me for employment so I wasn't registered with them. I won't name them because i don't want to bad name any place. For some reason, they didn't take me seriously because i didn't want to join social media and other demands, the job coach didn't think i was trying hard.

However, I was still volunteering off/on with a group held at that employment center to help people get experience but I couldn't take it seriously.

My friend finally told me to try the ymca employment center but I told her that i saw ymca the previous year at a different location and had no help (when i asked to practice mock interviews, my job coach didn't want to give one on one practice and didn't want to meet in person for any reason and only wanted me to self practice with documents she attached for me).

My friend said she got her job through them at her location. So then I had to close my file with my previous ymca location and meet with the ymca to open a file and through them, I had a job developer and got to make appointments to mock interviews with a job coach. The job developer did not have good English but she told me very helpful things like always act confident and that volunteering gets you jobs and they count as work experience and she found out herself that employers did not hire her and took priority over someone who volunteered for 4 months and she saw i was volunteering and showed me how to put that as unpaid work experience.

So then I started to take volunteering seriously. I took online courses that I believed would help the project. I told the project manager how he can improve his project with modern tools. With his support, I gained relevant work experience on add it to my resume and he was happy to be my job reference. I had a friend who was very good at grammar and organization who helped me with resume.

And when i had a job coach to practice mock interviews, she was very helpful. When I showed up for mock interviews, she noticed I didn't have work clothes and she asked if i wanted to be referred to a non profit organization called Dress For Success whose mission is to help unemployed women get work clothes for job interviews and work.
They helped me pick out business clothes that would have cost me a fortune. And they send me email invitations for makeup and conference.

The job coach actually had leads on jobs and told me about a position and asked if i was interested and i said yes. And she told me if i am ever interested in a job posting, she could connect me with the employer. I was so impressed. I never had so much help from a employment center.

It encouraged me to work harder with my volunteer. And apply for so much job postings. I stopped applying for job agencies and only applied to companies and job postings directly from companies, job boards, non profit organizations and the government websites.

I apologize for the long post. I will stop it here because I am getting too tired and maybe too hard to follow. But because of these things i did and finding the right people to connect with, i have a great job now that i never thought was possible. When i got the support needed, i was able to work harder to get somewhere.

I hope it was helpful.