EDIT: Look for seasonal work in retail, especially the mall. They will hire starting around $11/12, which is what starting assistant managers make but they start you that high or a little higher to draw you in. And they can handle it because it's only seasonal and the time of the year that they make the most money and will be in the black most days.
Apply for unemployment immediately. Your employer shouldn't contest it, but if they do then you need to appeal immediately. In a situation like this you should qualify for unemployment benefits, and you are entitled to them. Employers have to pay into that system so that when this happens the employees they downsize/fire/terminate/pink slip/lay off will have a form of support during the transition of being "in between jobs."
************************************************
If you haven't already the first thing you need to do is update your resume. Modern resumes will be streamlined and clean looking and focus on skills and talents rather than job duties. There shouldn't be any lines or decorations on the paper. They take up too much room and are distracting.
Name
Address I Contact Info I E-mail
Skills Profile
Here you actually use brief partial sentences describing your skill set. Start like this: Goal oriented individual interested in a _______ position. Adept at ______, _____, and _____. You want to describe in this section tasks that would be typical for the kind of job you're looking for and that you've done and excel at. Keep it to three or four sentences. It should be a short/medium paragraph. Avoid words like "comfortable with." Include things like: Office skills include facsimile, electronic mail, Word, Excel, excellent telephone and organizational skills, 65 WPM. Able to self-direct and work in a team environment.
Okay. Then you move on to listing ONLY relevant jobs in the past ten years unless you can go back further with relevant jobs. If you have "too many" then keep it to ten years back. So it should look like this:
Smith Relations, Inc Saint Louis, MO
Service Specialist April 2008 - January 2010
You can use bullets and then list what your most important job functions were. So here you would put something like;
Responsible for ____ and _____.
Duties include ______, ______, and _____.
Then do that with each job. Try to keep the job duties to only three or four lines total.
After the job listings, list any special certifications and where you received them from and when.
After special certifications list your continuing education information including graduation dates.
No need to include high school information if you attended college. It will be assumed that you attended high school if you graduated from college and it will save you space.
DO NOT put anywhere on the resume that you can provide a list of references upon request. Simply have the list printed out professionally already with those people's permission and ALL of their contact information and have it ready to give when they ask for it.
A resume CAN be longer than one or even two pages as long as all of the information on it is relevant AND the information is succinct and easy to read. Have your resume be proofread for grammar and repetition. Absolutely NO abbreviations. Don't assume that someone knows what a business abbreviation means. Spell out facsimile rather than using fax. Spell out electronic mail rather than e-mail. The only thing that's all right to abbreviate on a resume is "words per minute" to WPM. Time yourself several times typing and average those times together to get your WPM. Once you choose a tense ie. current tense or past tense, stick with it. Try to use current tense. No "was responsible for" in job list descriptions or "produced" even if it feels wrong. Reword the whole thing if you have to, but keep it as if you 're performing those job tasks now.
