The day has come! At last, where I'm finally working. And about damn time.

I'm now a "Systems Integration and Testing Engineer" (wooooo...) for a huge multinational behemoth of a company, and lo, it is good =)

Things learnt while being skint on the dole:
i.) Companies want experience, and are scumbags, so play their game and embellish if you need to.
ii.) Refine your CV like a lunatic until you've got it as good as it's ever going to get, then make a "standardised" mail-merge type accompanying letter where you can slap in the companies names, job position, place and some skills you have relating to the position (This will save you lots of time when you end up sending out a few CVs per week).
iii.) Give the companies a call a week or so later to make sure they've recieved everything (and give the impression that you give a damn).
iv.) Sign up with loads of recruitment agencies and post your C.V. up, so when companies see it and want to talk to you about vacancies, you know you'll have a strong position from which to do your utmost + maybe land something.

and perhaps most importantly,

v.) You've just got to keep at it, hammering your face into the brick wall of not getting replies until it finally works out.

Class dismissed + happy hunting.

It's come to that crunch time in every geeks life, namely getting your first proper job and having to realise your 3133t Quake skills are fine, but they're not exactly 3 years commerical PHP experience. Not that I was expecting anything different, but damn... commercial experience is something I have a serious lack of, and it's causing problems.

Since the standard options are either:
i.) Go to university
or,
ii.) Get a job

and I've chosen the former, it seems like I've garnered a hell of a lot of information broad enough to give me a reasonable amount of clued-up-ness on a lot of computing aspects, but [programming asides] too general to be of any significant use in the field. Which pretty much sucks.

There's usually optional gap-years to help your employment prospects, and I took one. With a project that got cancelled after the first month, and me laid off. Thoroughly disenchanted with all things binary, I spent the rest of the year writing a book and skating. None of which are helping me now, but hey, it wasn't a bad year.

Getting back on track, and asides from the constantly applying for as many positions as possible (which is the current tack), how have any of you out there got past this kind of first-job impasse?