Reddit reviews Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 3.0: How to Stand Out from the Crowd and Tap Into the Hidden Job Market using Social Media and 999 other Tactics Today

Work on your resume. I highly recommend Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters.

It will talk about it in the book, but network any way you can. LinkedIn!

Apply like crazy. Be open to relocation (however, Chicago is a good job market from what I hear).

Senior-level mechanical engineer here, and I recently had an experience sort of like this. Just like you, I got tired of wasting time on processes that were not in line with my career expectations. I got into mechanical engineering to DESIGN AND GET THINGS DONE, not waste all of my waking hours on emails.

Ultimately, you need to determine whether the problematic job aspects can be either corrected or somehow cut out of your day-to-day experience. At my prior job this simply wasn't possible, but you may find otherwise. I ultimately quit just a few months in without anything lined up, but I at least had a few other prior engineering jobs on my resume, which helped build a case for my continued employ-ability. I applied to about 130 jobs in the span of 6 weeks -- ironically the first job I applied to extended me the offer for my current position.

It sounds like this is your first job since graduation, and I wouldn't recommend quitting outright like I did. As long as you are employed, you have a significant bargaining advantage.

Before you start applying to any jobs, I highly recommend reading David Perry's book "Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters" . Pay close attention to the resume format he suggests -- it's extremely effective at grabbing the attention of any viewer. And NEVER submit the resume as an editable Word document...external recruiters have been known to change the content of Word documents, which risks dishonesty to a potential employer. PDF format only.

Identify the marketable skills and activities that give you the greatest sense of fulfillment, and highlight those with your accomplishments on your resume. If there are particular software applications that you enjoy using, definitely search on Indeed.com and other job boards for companies that use that software. This is a far better screening practice than simply searching for "mechanical engineering" jobs... it pays to be picky with where you will work in the future. Build a basic resume website and portfolio, and get active on LinkedIn...97% of recruiters these days actively use LinkedIn to find candidates.

Try to get in a habit of applying to jobs in the early morning during weekdays - I realize this may be tricky since you work 2nd shift, but the payoff is huge in terms of job application response rate. A recent job board study actually showed that response rate drops to less than 1% for applications submitted in the afternoon, evening, and weekends. I personally got a 23% response rate by habitually applying in the 9AM-to-10AM EST time-frame. Higher response rates give you more opportunities to be picky with potential employers, which again helps your bargaining position.

Hope these tips help!