I graduated with my bba in marketing in 2002.  Since then I have
applied to literally HUNDREDS of online postings both on job websites
and corporate/nonprofit websites without a SINGLE response.  I have
ventured around the city of Houston and hit dozens of HR departments
to hand out my resume.  I just need my foot in the door! How can this
marketing graduate with no marketing experience get a break!?

How about:
1. Temp to hire.
2. Free internships.
3. Take a non-marketing job in a desirable business and then watch for
internal openings and transition over.
4. Offer free marketing advice to a small business.  Select one, meet
with them, help them develop a marketing plan, write up some ad copy
for them and help them develop their creative, and then help them
implement.

You may complain about working for free.  Well, you have no income
from a marketing job right now anyway, do you?

hi ttuco02,

three years is a very long time and it could be that you're not
getting any responses not because of lack of experience but for
reasons you are not aware of.

it might be that some minor incident from your past is haunting you or
that someone has stolen and used your identity and their actions are
to blame.

while this is a long shot its worth looking into.

i would start with reading the following articales: 

When Old Convictions Won't Die:
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,63364,00.html

Bad Data Fouls Background Checks:
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,66856,00.html

good luck!

amok69

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I wouldn't hire you, either.
Why not? For the same reason I wouldn't hire a journalism school grad
with misspellings in his/her resume, or a real estate agent who didn't
know the difference between appreciation and depreciation. In other
words, use what you presumably learned in marketing in order to market
your first product--yourself.

First, do market research. Find out who's hiring, and for what type of
positions. Don't just throw your resume on the wall and hope it
sticks.

Second, develop multiple resumes. Maybe you've done this already. If
not, develop separate ones for each targeted market you're
considering. On my last job search, I had about 12 different resumes.
I'm in public relations and editing, so I had one for public
relations, one for editing, one for writing, and so on. And because I
had more than 10 years of experience and was concerned about age
discrimination, I had a set of resumes that cut off after showing 10
years of experience, and another that cut off at about 20. In other
words, customize your message.

Also, have someone else (or several people) take a critical look at
your resume(s). Maybe you're inadvertently sending out the wrong
message.

Third, understand the purpose of HR departments. They're there to
screen out applicants, not to find them. (Honest HR people will tell
you the same thing.) Find openings within a company, find out who
actually does the hiring (the director, the manager, whatever), and go
through him/her. Sure, your application and resume probably will have
to go back down to HR, but it'll get there with a referral from the
hiring person to take a look at you. And if the company doesn't have
an opening, ask the person who'd be your boss if he/she is aware of
any other companies hiring. Network!

Fourth, try harder. Do the calculations. You graduated in 2002. That's
more than 3 years ago. (May 2002?) In roughly 1,150 days, you've
applied to "literally hundreds" (let's say 300, to be generous) online
postings and hit "dozens" (let's say 50, again to be generous) of HR
departments. So you've made maybe 350 attempts in 1,150 days. That's
less than 1/3 (0.3) applications per day...or 2 a week. You ought to
be making 8-10 attempts per day. After you refine your message and
your technique, it's a numbers game, and you're not playing it hard
enough.

And now you've got another problem: 3 years out of school and you're
still unemployed. That doesn't look very good on a resume. So, I'd go
along with ipfan's advice as well: get a job, even a temp or
non-paying one. Get something to add to the resume, hopefully
something that will enhance it. Then market yourself like heck.

A poorly-prepared résumé can cause a lot of problems. A friend of mine
was bemoaning his long stretch of unemployment. Despite a lengthy work
history and good references, he wasn't getting any offers. When I
looked at his résumé, I was stunned to see that it contained numerous
grammatical errors. It looked as if it had been put together by a
12-year-old. I pointed this out, and my friend stubbornly insisted
that the only things that mattered were the facts on the résumé, not
the presentation. He's still looking for work.