Reddit mentions of What Color Is Your Parachute? 2011: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers

Positive thinking. Yes, your worst case scenario may come true (someone yells at you, whatever), but a positive person would think, "wow, that person must have had a much terrible day than me."

Usually people ask me how I stay so calm during presentations. I say, "think about all the presentations you've seen in your life. Now think about how many of them were just straight up bad. Probably less than 1%, right? So based on that, you've got 99% chance of being good to fair, and only 1% chance of crashing and burning. The odds are in your favor!"

This also applies to you asking questions. How many times have people come to you asking a question? Isn't your first response usually, "okay, let me help you?" Most people are good and want to help you, so just trust that asking a question won't be met with scorn or intolerance.

Resume writing: The odds of you not getting the job are 100% if you don't send the resume in.

If you need more specific help with job hunting, I highly encourage you to read What Color is Your Parachute? It's a classic resource for job hunters for a reason: it works.

I would recommend checking out this book:

"What Color Is Your Parachute"

It helped me incredibly, good luck!!

If you want to answer this one seriously, this book has several exercises for finding your purpose in life, which may just work out for you. At $11, I think it's worth the risk.

Look at networking as a learning mechanism, not a way to meet people who will hire you (although that does happen).

It doesn't matter that you know junior level people and it doesn't matter that the company isn't hiring. This is actually the best time to ask your friends if they can introduce you to their superiors, or peers with more experience. You will look more like a driven, curious person vs. a desperate job hunter.

Your friend: "Hey, my friend jmn357 has a law background but wants to get into this field. He has a lot of questions, but I know you might have some insights that I don't, as I'm a n00b. Do you mind meeting him for coffee or something?"

If it goes well, ask if you can meet them for lunch or take them to coffee or have a quick 15-20 min block of their time for an informational interview. Ask them things like:

• What do you do? What is a typical day like? (you may find the work to be shitty and decide not to pursue this field)
  
• How did you get into the field?
  
• What type of educational background do you have?
  
• What kind of jobs did you work in the past?
  
• What other jobs would someone with your background hold?
  
• Can you tell me about your colleagues and how they got into the industry?
  
• What are some of the big companies in your industry?
  
• What steps would you recommend someone like me take in order to get into an editorial/creative job? (hopefully they already know a little about your background)
  
• Do you know of anyone else/other organizations I could speak to about breaking into the industry?
  
  People love talking about themselves, so you probably won't need to have too many questions prepared. They are telling you the exact steps they took to get a job so pay attention and take notes.
  
  Like a "job interview," be professional and send them a thank you note. They didn't have to take the time to talk to you, so show some gratitude.
  
  Also, get your mitts on this book ASAP.

To clarify, he no longer works in Chicago, but he may be able to give you some tips on how to break into the industry there.

Definitely read up on Informational Interviewing. It'll help your job hunt tremendously. I highly recommend this book.

Two suggestions:

What Color is my Parachute by Richard Bolles

http://www.amazon.com/What-Color-Your-Parachute-2011/dp/158008270X

The Whole Earth Catalog edition from the early 1980s (can be found in many public libraries)

The first book is about figuring out what sort of career you'd find most interesting and engaging. The second is a sampler of the best books on almost every subject under the sun, circa the early 1980s, and is sort of like the parachute book but for life itself.