and I already feel like finding a big kid job is IMPOSSIBLE. Discouraged is my favorite verb right now, because I have only had ONE interview in the past month and a half and have not heard back from anyone else. Maybe this feels impossible for me because I'm trying to move to a different city? Do employers see that you live 3 hours away from somewhere and automatically put your resume in the "no" pile because they don't want to have to deal with relocating you?
These are the questions we as new college grads have to ask ourselves when applying for jobs. The only thing that I think might help me is the fact that I got my undergrad at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP). It's about an hour outside of Pittsburgh, so I know the area well. I have lots of friends out that way and I love the city.. so why not move to a big city for my first job? My home town is pretty big itself, but for a twenty-two year old, Pittsburgh is the best place for an opportunity right now. The city is a great place for young adults, whereas my hometown is crawling with jobs for 40-50 year olds.
During my undergrad, my professors preached about how many job opportunities there would be for someone within my major. What is my major you ask? English Writing & Literature. They would tell us "all companies want to hire English majors because of their writing and communication skills." If this is the case, why does it seem to be so difficult to even get people to consider us?
Four weeks ago I thought the trick was this: Find networking opportunities. I applied to two places in which I had connections to the President & CEO. The first place I applied was perfect, or so I thought. I sent my resume and cover letter to Prez & CEO and he set me up with an interview, which I went to two weeks after sending my things in. The interview went great, but I was told at the end of it that they wouldn't know whether there would be an opening in the department I would potentially be working in for a month or two. Is this an easy way of basically telling me no? Or is there potential here? It has been a month and a half since the interview, and I am still trying to figure out how to e-mail the company to tell them that I am still interested in the job. Does anyone have any advice on this? Would I just simply e-mail them and say "hope all is well. I am still very interested in obtaining a position within your company," or do I e-mail her to ask her a random question about the company? These are things that I am not sure of. Does anyone out there have any advice on this matter? All input would be incredibly helpful.
I still think networking is the way to go within our current economy. All jobs I have found in the past were ones I basically fell into, and I wish it was this easy for me still. Even though knowing people who own companies isn't entirely working for me right now, everyone should give it a go. When you don't have any networking opportunities available, job boards are the next best thing. My favorite is indeed.com - this website pulls from all of the the other job board websites. Another piece of advice when applying for jobs online: apply for the most recent ones. Anything more than a week old means that hundreds of people have seen it already and probably applied. You want to be at the top of the resume pile, so make it happen.
Do any of you have a piece of advice or a story you want to share about finding/applying for jobs? Leave me a comment and I'll feature it on my next post! My goal is to share one of your stories each week. New college grads need to stick together. We will get jobs eventually, so let's get together and start erasing the discouragement from our lives.
I have the same issue; all my professors saying there's jobs but in reality there isn't jobs. Ok I take that back there are jobs but jobs we [as college grads] don't have experience for or the pay is so low that it wouldn't cover our college loans payments. I am stealing the word discourage cause it works extremely well for recent college grads with no jobs.
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