I've been to Careerbuilder, Monster, Snagajob, and Craigslist and I apply for a lot of jobs but for some reason none of these jobs are being offered to me. I have a great resume which lists all the talents I have, I have even put together a nice cover letter to include along with my resume but still no jobs are being offered to me. On a lot of jobs a non US citizen will undercut what I am willing to work for so the position will be given to the person that's does it for less.

Some of the positions that I see a requiring skills that I know but they want somebody who has been using these talents whereas I have a basic knowledge of these skills but I have not used them in years. My Brother tells me I should go back to school to get a better knowledge of these things but schooling these days is not like it was 20 years ago. The pricing has greatly increased and I don't have another 2 years to wait until I start earning an income I need a job now.

A lot of the skills I have I self taught myself by getting books. These days it is even easier to learn something new because of the wealth of information that can be found on the web. Youtube has how to videos on pretty much everything these days and there are other sites besides just Youtube.

I used to be a computer programmer more than 15 years ago. When I was programming everything was first done in Wordstar and then compiled. There was no visual interface or assistance like there is nowadays. I needed to refamiliarize myself with the languages but using the new interfaces. I did some extensive searching on the web and found this one site "Virtual Training Classes" that had courses in everything. It only cost me $30 a month and in a month I can complete several of the courses plus at the completion of each course they give you a certificate.

Over the past three days, Easter Weekend, I have gone through three courses and obtained certificates of completion. My youngest son will never need a regular job because several years ago he learned PHP programming and nowadays he takes Opensource code and then modifies it and sells this software on the web. Last year he probably profited close to six figures. If I cannot find a job after these courses then I will probably do the same thing as my son.

Later this week I will start calling all the companies in the Yellow pages to see if they might need somebody with my talents. By the time a company posts a job on the web they will get hundreds of applicants and have a much harder time in trying to find somebody. The best way is to call them first, cold call them. If I don't find a job by the end of the week then I am going to have to try something a lot crazier to get a job.

There is no reason why I can't educate myself with software these days since a lot of companies give away these 90 day trials for their products. With self educating I will learn a lot quicker then going to school for the next 2 years. The unemployment rate in this country is at an all time high and we have to do what is necessary to gain the skills so that we have more job and career options.