No work experience

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The only work experience I have is a week of working at Micheals arts and crafts store when I was 17 (I'm 25 now).

Who is gonna wanna hire me??

I bomb interviews and it's very frustrating trying to find a job...I don't drive either due to trauma and agoraphobia.

I thought about learning code...anyone have experience with that?

2 years working as cashier, i drive and have a car. still not enough experience for them

I just don't understand how they want experience! how can you have experience if you've never worked there?

I'd strongly suggest you learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript before moving onto more complex languages. This serves 2 purposes: 1. they're easier to pick up than say C++ and 2. since the advent of the internet web languages are in demand and will be for the foreseeable future.

I didn't have work experience until I was almost 23, I'm 28 now and have a very impressive resume. It can be done.

If you know someone who can help get you into a job, that'll be a good start for you [you have to know somebody who would be willing to help].

As for interviews? That's actually much easier than you realize. It's all a big game and I mean that in the most literal definition. If you learn the rules of the game you can win the game.... it's actually quite easy. The way to win this "game" is to learn the most common questions employers ask, and figure out how to answer them. Employers are pretty consistent with the types of questions they ask. Find out what those questions are, learn the right answers [and yes there are right and wrong answers, it's a game remember], and you won't have a problem.

1) How come you spent only one week working at Michael's Arts and Crafts store? Did you not like the work you had to do there? Or did you have trouble getting along with co-workers and boss?

2) Have you thought about volunteering somewhere? This might strengthen your resume a bit and thus, help you get a job.

The reason I quit was because of my panic attacks got so bad I was on the verge of crying at work:/

I've volunteered at a few pet stores. I have most volunteer work with pets.

Volunteer work is in a lot of ways just as much of an asset as actual work experience. Put that on your resume and that will help fill the employment gaps

How did you get first job and build your resume from 23 to 28, if you don't mind sharing more details?
What kind of jobs did you do, what field are you in now?
I am not looking for job, but I am interested in people's stories of getting jobs and finding career path.

I've been looking into coding, too. I found this site which lets you play with a lot of the big coding programs and it has a lot of tutorials. http://www.codecademy.com

I'd also recommend staying away from customer service related jobs ... like Michael's. I'd find something you like to do (doesn't have to be a paying job) and do that. Examples play music in band, write/blog on a website, etc. etc. Look for some volunteer work would be another idea.

yeah I don't get that either. like how everyone wants experienced/expert plumbers. but they are getting old and going retire but the younger ones can't get experience.

you have to start with connections. What most people fear is actually true, people won't hire somebody without experience. There are 2 ways around this little speed bump.

1. Show an alternative way that you've been productive in your life [AKA: school or volunteer work ect]
2. You know somebody that is working in a good company that can give you a referral [the power of referrals is huge, companies trust people if they know somebody internally trusts them]

For me I did a little of both. I had a tiny bit of college, but there was a huge 5 year gap after college. During this time I volunteered at a few places. It wasn't much and there was a significant gap, but it was better than "5 years of doing nothing". I also had my father-in-law help me get into the company he worked for. In no time at all I went from 5 years without working, to making a more than decent living.

After that it went from impossible to "just hard", it's never been easy. I left that position after a year and had a year's of experience in a good company. I than spent that trying to build my resume. It hasn't been easy, I've had 4 jobs in the past year and I'm currently unemployed [my last job screwed me over, welcome to the working world]. But I still have an upper hand considering my work experience and what I've achieved.

The system isn't fair and rarely gives people the benefit of the doubt [AKA: "if you don't have work experience you must be a lazy person" vs. "if you don't have work experience, there must've been circumstances out of your control that prevented you from working"] but if you learn the rules of the twisted system and learn the little shallow and ridiculous things employers value, than you can make it in the world. [and yes I'm cynical, even though I've had success, it hasn't come easy and I am just as frustrated with the whole system as anyone else would be]

looking for positions that are seasonal (meaning they will end) might be good be good idea because you are not locked into anything. That way if you can get through a couple months they will lay you off unless you ask to come back or apply for a full time job there. that could give you some job experience to take somewhere else. It worked for me.

I would say temp assignments are the way to go. They give you experience, there is no long term commitment to them and your resume will look fine with temp jobs because if they are short term, there won't be any red flags about why you were only at the jobs for a short time. Even with a full-time job that I have today, I still temp sometimes during the slower months to gain even more worker experience and to find something to do during the boring winter months.

OP, everyone with work experience had to have a first job, no matter how many jobs they've had since. All of them must have once gotten hired when they had no work experience.

In the meantime you might like to consider volunteering, I did a few volunteering gigs in the past. I don't know if whether or not they took that into consideration when they gave me the interview in which I landed my current job but they may have. In my experience with volunteering, they'll be glad to have you and not be worried about your past work history. Remember, volunteering will look very good on your resume and you may even get some good references from it.

Really? For some reason the local community college put me on C# instead. I changed from web development to softare development at the last minute and then a few months later I find that one of the departments at my company wants to expand their dev-team. The manager seemed interested in recruiting me but then I found out it's a web dev team. Maybe I should have stayed in web development. Can anything learned in C# be applied to developing Java or mobile apps?

You can have experience but not the "specific" experience they are looking for...

I've worked 4 jobs, three of which were summer internships.
I also have an associates degree, double bachelors, a just got my masters last summer in IT management.
I have numerous projects under my belt and software skills too.

Yet very little of it "counts" towards "industry" experience, which is needed for most jobs now (According to interviews i've been on)
Most internships now require 2+ years of industry experience, even for unpaid internships plus many require industry certifications (you need to be working in the industry in order to acquire them).
Most entry level jobs require 3-5+ years of industry experience and degrees, while also sometimes requires certifications.
Each company wants you to know their software and how to work there without the need for training and adjustment.

I know this because I am still looking for my first post graduation job (I graduated in July)

The U.S. government survey says it takes college graduates at least 1-2 years post graduation to land an industry job.
Their data also shows, which many people including myself have found out from others, that non industry jobs such as working retail, food services, barista at a coffee shop etc... makes you look incompetent and shows you really don't care about your career to industry employers.

Lastly most decent jobs require a college degree of some sort.

As for myself and many other people I graduate with), We are stuck in the over qualified/under qualified spot in life.
This means we are too overqualified for retail, food service etc...
While being too under qualified for internships and industry entry level jobs.

Also every industrial country has a high unemployment for 16 - 35 years olds, largely in part due to the financial crisis/recession and baby boomer generation (first generation born after WWII)
Even China and India have the same issues.

Though beware many U.S companies have found a loophole in the visa laws, which allow them to import cheap educated labor from India and the Philippines to replace Americans working industry jobs, especially in IT, Marketing etc...

Southern California Edison just recently laid off their whole IT departments and replaced them with Indian IT workers from Infosys and Tata. They made the outgoing American employees train these new Indians employees on how to do the jobs.
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-e ... story.html