I remember the stories I heard in the news a few years ago. Young graduates couldn’t find a job, their degree was worth very little and employers didn’t have funds to invest in new workforce. It seemed problematic but justified to me. Surely, those graduates didn’t research the employability of the field they were getting into. Surely, they lacked crucial experience that can be nurtured through internships during the summer. Surely, they were responsible as well. Yet today I am one of them, a freshly unemployed graduate, who begins to feel the invisible hand dragging him down, on the concrete floor.

Being prepared

Life is about small choices, a ridiculously large amount of those. Deciding to invest the extra time in some activities when they do not appear like the most exciting choices is often a wise and beneficial long term strategy. Just like many others, I paid particular attention to how this carved itself out for me. I decided to study something I enjoyed, communication science, yet I cared about the quality of my education and I chose to go for universities that ranked highly on an international level. So far, the presupposed fame due to the rankings did not trigger any specific acclaim from any employer, even though the career center hinted at this effect when they tried to convince/recruit me at the beginning. Another important thing I invested time into was developing extra curricular skills. I quickly understood that too many communication scientists were not prepared for the market demands in the sense that we were not taught programming. Statistics without some basic programming is like playing tennis with a badminton racket. Yes, it can work, but you will never reach a level of efficiency that is demanded in high standard industries. I started with Codecademy to get an initiation to HTML, then Javascript, Jquery and Python and continued to develop such skills through internships. I took a specific course to learn NLP with Python and data wrangling with R, the industry standard, and gave my farewell to SPSS.

Facing rejection

But here is comes the most difficult part to accept, the rejections. While it is evident that one must face rejections on their way up, it is difficult to envision that such failed applications will be so numerous. I have become accustomed to digest those pre-formatted rejection emails that do not contain any personalized reason for the big “NO”. The problem is straightforward, if employers do not bother to explain why a candidate is rejected, the candidate does not know which aspect of their application went wrong and they will be likely to repeat the same mistakes all over again. I always try to send a personal email right after a rejection to know more about the reason that drove their decision. Was it my tone? Should I have been more or less formal? Is my CV too long? Does it focus too much on things they don’t value? Was my motivation letter boring? Those details make a big impression on employers and their feedback is needed.

Keeping your head high

But just like sailing on a stormy sea, one must keep looking forward, behind the clouds, and anticipate the next moves that will eventually lead to the soothing shore that is awaiting in the distance. This is the narrative that every single friend and family member will give the rejected applicant. Don’t take it personally, don’t waste time on reflecting upon it, just move on. Yes, I will move on, I will look up, in the distance. Yes, I will try to disregard the fact that it’s the 40th storm I’m going through, the fact that the wind doesn’t power through my sails with the same intensity. Because all in all, I have gained the precious experience that will guide me towards the shore.