I've had this job for nearly four years and before that, I was in the unemployment hell as well.
If I wrote 50 letters, I only got one or two replies. E-mails were ignored completely so letters were my only alternative. Calling? Too expensive. While a letter costs like 50 cents to post, a phone call would mean getting connected to another department and another person, only to be told I needed to call back later.
Looking for work really used up more money than I had to spare which is why I started to give up after a year - without looking for a job, I could just about get by with the unemployment benefits. I was emotionally drained as well, since it's hard getting rejected so much.
I wish I could say stuff like "you'll find work soon!" but those are empty words. The truth is that looking for work is mostly luck. I got my job because a woman got pregnant where my father works and he told my current boss that I needed a job and so I ended up here. He was very happy with my work and actually fired someone else to keep me here so it confirmed what I believed: that I'm an asset to a company.
The trouble is getting your worth through to companies when you're unemployed and the truth is that there's only one way for this to happen: word of mouth from people they know. Nearly everyone who's hired here knows someone else in the company so the best course of action would be to talk to friends and family and see if they don't know some opening in a company they work in or whose owner they know.
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