How do you find more meaningful work to do AT work?

Doing entry-level work (grunt work) is annoying and unfulfilling for everyone. Coming out of college where being super creative and motivated is rewarded to a job where, well, that's nice but not really that important is soul crushing. I want to reassure you that the experience you're having is the experience basically every recent college grad lucky enough to have work is having. Your job will not require the skills you value for a long time, unless you get very lucky. I am not saying all of this to make you feel hopeless, but it's important to understand that this is a perennial question. Grunt work sucks, and by nature it is going to go to the least senior person. That said. The first thing you can do is get involved with an organization that's just getting off the ground. For example, if there is a group organizing to bring music to the homeless, get in on the ground floor. Take ownership of figuring out where to get the pianos, what permits you'll need from the city, how you're taking care of safety, whatever. Get involved in some shoestring organization that can't pay you and takes up all your free time, but you don't care because it's fulfilling, interesting and you love it. Make it a success. Work your ass off, be reliable and solve problems. Now, you have a success. You have something to tell the next person who hires you when they ask "Why should you do something more than grunt work?" You've got ownership of something. You can tell them about the problems that you solved and the program you helped create. You can say "Where there was nothing, I made something. These are the skills I learned and here's how they can benefit this organization." Because that's the secret they mostly don't let you in on. The workforce has really changed. Being promoted from within is much less a thing these days. Nowadays when people want more responsibility, they mostly change jobs. Which means that for every job you apply to, there are people with five, 10, 20 years of experience that you're competing against. Right now, you really aren't the best candidate for more responsibility. Sure, you're bright and smart and a good problem solver. But that's not unique. You have to know how things work on top of that. Because the truth is, there's a lot you learn from being out in the working world. And it's stuff that businesses need their employees to understand before they can trust them with the bigger stuff. It's stuff that they're not going to teach you, but you can teach yourself. You're such a great problem solver, find a small problem in the city/community around you and create an organization to solve that problem. Do it with a shoestring budget and donated time. But have something to point to. It'll keep your skills sharp, and it will give you something to think about while you're filing.

In a lot of organisations, there is simply no movement between the administration level and the people who do whatever the core mission of the business is. E.g. if you are working for a software company, the company just doesn't consider shifting someone from receptionist/office temp to software designer or programmer, no matter how awesome that person is at their job. If a job becomes available, they advertise and appoint someone from outside. An administrator who pushes for software coding tasks (just to continue with that example) will just be seen as a BAD ADMINISTRATOR because she/he is slacking off the tasks he/she is employed to do, which are actually pretty damn essential. If this is the case in your organisation, you might need to look elsewhere for fulfilling work, and that might mean you have to reevaluate your skills and change your resume dramatically, and/or upskill by doing some sort of internship, volunteer work, or further training in your own time. One possibility, if you can handle it financially, is to cut back your work hours and use the spare time to do more fulfilling volunteer work or a part time job in another industry. Perhaps your boss would be open to you working one day fewer a week? Or even job sharing with someone else?

There is always grunt work. Often, the easiest way for resource managers to deal with this stuff is to hire a temp. Temp roles are meant to fulfil those non-development duties that MUST be done to keep the machine rolling. A high rate of temp turnover is much easier to handle than having salaried workers chafe at you for having to do the grunt work. College rewards you for innovating without risk. There's a lot more at stake in the real world and managers are not professors, they don't exist to help you grow. The best employees are those that create solutions, not problems, and your desire for more meaningful work can be a massive headache to someone who is trying to get their own work done (and yes, we'd all love the time and space to learn new skills - but that's not what work is for in the main part). From now you are responsible for designing and managing your own development opportunities. The posts above have great tips to help you demonstrate potential to current and future employers, but ultimately your time as a temp is a brilliant opportunity to study how the world of work works. Being observant and proactive, developing good professional relationships and doing the work asked of you better than expected without fuss - these are the skills you should be learning now, and demonstrating them consistently will grant you more responsibility, either in this job, or as a springboard to employment elsewhere. Diligence is a hugely underrated virtue these days, develop it now and you'll be golden.

I agree with the comments above. However, one way to fast track your way past the grunt work is to get a job at a small company. Out of necessity, small companies generally need staff to have the ability to do many different types of jobs. In addition, there may also be more room for creative suggestions. I worked for a small company directly out of college. Not only was I quickly promoted, but I was also given opportunities to complete tasks that challenged my skill level and forced me to grow. YMMV, this scenario is not for everyone. But, if you are motivated and like big picture work, this may be something to consider.

Ask everyone around you, consistently and non-annoyingly, if they need help doing anything, anything at all. Look for ways to make things better and proactively just make it happen. Don't draw undue attention to yourself - just get shit done and you will be noticed. Bonus points if you can make your supervisor's job easier.

What elvissa said. You do the time and you pay your dues. A college degree qualifies you for - an entry level job. That's it. It doesn't teach you to remain calm under pressure, or how to get the impossible done, or how to deal with a difficult client. Take every opportunity you can get to learn from others, and do all your grunt work cheerfully, and eventually they'll come a time when they need something done that's not gruntwork, and you're the only one available to do it. This is referred to as an opportunity, and hopefully when it comes along, you'll have enough experience to know what to do with it. And be aware that it could take years for that opportunity to come along. Welcome to the real world.

This is one thing that worked for me early on when 80% of my work was grunt work. Are there other skill sets that you want to learn there? Look around and really watch what everyone else does. Now start interacting that person more about what he or she does and at some point share that you would like to learn more about whatever the task is and volunteer to help if you have down time. I'm going to guess that some pole will read this and not like it as an answer and YMMV, but that approach usually worked for me (I learned those tasks and even got larger projects doing X). Note that it I never approached a boss ...at the level you are describing, at least. Don't know if this will help, but I always used grunt work time to listen to a lot of NPR /BBC, whatever...and it really helped. I also suspect you May have to leave the job if it is as you describe. I would start doing info interviews with former classmates who live in your area ...someone may be doing something a bit more interesting. You may want to check out employment at a college/uni ...those jobs offer benefits like free classes and typically you can get some project towards a publication, whatever.

Look around and try to understand how others in your company have gotten where they are. Because yes, some amount of gruntwork and dues-paying is necessary but it doesn't necessarily lead to anything else. As lollusc just suggested, some organizations do things in such a way that you can't get ahead by simply doing what you're asked to do. I used to work for a company that didn't promote anyone who wasn't either a member of the owner's immediate family or a member of the owner's church. If you had neither advantage then you could do gruntwork there forever. I have one friend who still works there and has done very well, but it's required a great deal of initiative. He got good at doing a sort of work the boss didn't know much about, and cultivated relationships with customers whose needs the boss didn't understand. My friend made his own promotion, because none would ever have been offered.

It's very difficult to get out of admin work within the same organisation, unless the organisation is large. People get pigeon-holed. OTOH you only graduated last year. If it's still like this in 18 months time, then it's a problem. I think you're going to have to find the challenge you need outside work. What us it you want to do or learn? Find ways to do that.