Before I get flamed yes I checked a dozen job sites and I can't find crap.

Here's my situation. I'm very near being A+ certified. Every thing I know in computers is self taught since I was 15. I have no job experience in any thing. Well I did work for Solectron for about half a year when I was a senior in high school back in 2000. But all I did was put parts on mother boards and feed them through a solder machine. And I unpacked boxes every now and than. Since than I don't have jack for any job experience.

All I have is my high school diploma and my (almost have it) A+ certificate. Every job site I've been to only gave me listings of jobs that require some where around 1 to 4 or more years of prior experience.

So my question from all of you who have better experience than me in these situations is what should I do, where do I find a job that I'm qualified for and I can put that A+ certificate to good use?

I live in Cedar Park which is just north of Austin Texas incase any one was wondering.

To get a job in any field today is hilarious. They practically want you to have a college degree (or two), speak 3 languages, have a car and drivers license with 10 years experience with computers professionally and not older then 25 years old. OK, I've over reacted a bit, but not by much.... What I advice you is 1)If you have a family to feed, get any job you can and keep looking after your dream job or 2)if you live with your parents and do not need to work, keep studying and learning and looking for jobs. IT is currently a big circus... you either get inside it by recommendations (or better saying, if you know someone, who knows someone on this field) or lucky.

Hopefully things will be better in the near future. Since I am the case 1, I took any job I could get and keep studying and sending my Curriculum from time to time...

Just a thought

I'm glad I'm not alone here. I would be case number 2. I'm 24 and still living with my parents. I know it sucks. I even tried the army thing for a while, 3 months in and they kicked me out. I don't feel like getting into that.

I thought it was just me seeing the pattern of employers wanting 100+ years experience with every degree out there. Now I'm over reacting.

I can always try getting a job at the theater at the mall. I'd prefer a job where I don't really have to deal with people. I'm not what you would call a people person. I'm the kind of person that would tell some one to "go ahead and put your finger in the socket, HAHA, yeah you wont do that again now will you" kind of person.

What we need is for people like us to get together and start our own company with some sort of .org site and we can make our own test to test people instead of the way it is now. And we can help hire more people like us. Might even start a new revolution headed by Linux experts and what not. We'd be the "goodwill" for computer people. After a while we can open stores all over the country selling only Open Source compatible products. Instead of a CEO it would have a council and the profits would we divided equally and the rest would go back into the company or what ever you want to call it. The stores would be like Best Buy but only selling products that use Open Standards and Open Source. I've had many ideas like this for a long time. If only enough us in the open source comunity could get together and make it happen.

I have a hell of lot more ideas for this type organization than I can put in this post. The stores that would belong to this organization would do things completely differant that what goes on now in the market. For example there would be no 99 this 99 that crap in prices. Every thing would be rounded off to the nearest dollar. People would get there money back, none of this instore credit crap. And none of this rebate crap Best Buy does. I would take the prices and lower them as if you where using a rebate.

Every person that works for the organization would be the ones who own it and they would vote on council members. It would be basically a democratic based organization run by the open source comunity. There would be a chain of stores around the world owned by this organization. All the profits would go back into this organization and sure some of it will goto people working for it, we do need money for food and rent after all. What would make us the difference over a regular company is there would be no CEO'S or super rich people while the little person works there ass off just to put money in the CEO'S pocket.

Yeah I'm a dreamer, what can I say.

I also had ideas for creating a device that would take the place of a xbox, satelite box, cable box, surround sound system and computer all in one. And it would all be based on open standard computer parts and open source software. But that's for a whole other topic. What's funny is that this new device could make huge amounts of profits and put a lot back into the open source community at the same time. For every project or open source software put into this device some money of these profits would be donated back to these project groups.

I have more ideas than this if any one is actually interested in starting a organization like this to make these ideas a reality.

until you find employment I would freelance. When I was laid off I used my time to study and to make business cards. I drove around neighborhoods at 2am putting my card in mailboxes and putting up flyers at Grocery stores > PC Housecalls...repairs, networking, spyware/virus removal, etc at your home on your time.

I thought it was a shot in the dark but I ended up getting an average of 10-20 calls a week pulling in about 300-600 dollars a week. I did that until I found a job doing tech support. It got to a point were I had to turn people down because I was getting so many calls and I was back working.

I'm not a U.S. citizen and have therefore not much of an idea of the rules of your job market, anyway:
1. Get one or more manuals on how to apply properly
2. 75+ years experience required, 27 foreign languages, at least 7 academic degrees? Nevermind, apply anyway. Others may be just as scared from such job ads as you, and you may well be the only one applying. The only one thing that really matters is not age, or experience, or academic degrees. The only thing that matters is: can *you* do the job? You need to plausibly explain to your prospective employer why it's you.
That's how I got my job, and formally I'm not qualified for it. But I was a computer nerd once (and still am), and with that I beat the competition.
3. As to the 1 to 4 years or prior experience: you can always negotiate. For example, offer to earn less for a certain period of training on the job.
4. Don't forget: There is a good deal of luck involved in getting a job. Don't give up until it comes your way.

HTH

Ah and by the way, you're looking for a job in the IT sector, you're approximately 25 years old, and been spending your time with computers ever since you were 15? That makes around 10 years of experience in the matter, right?

A+ is required to become a PC Tech at CompUSA. I'm sure there are a couple of those in Austin. Technician positions don't pay what they used to -- at peak of dot-com bubble A+ = 50K/year job -- but beggers can't be choosy.