Graduating senior feeling hopeless

jhoonla
Thu, 14 Mar 2013 19:49:31 +0000

Hello everyone!

I’m a senior graduating in about 2 months. I’m getting pretty down about the job search and my lack of offers and could use some advice.

I’m a Finance major. I’m ranked in the top 10 of percent of my class. Solid 3.4 GPA and 3.7 in major. I have tons of leadership and extracurricular experiences at my school and have been able to do work with high levels of administration (Board, Vice Presidents, Provost, and met once with the President). My accomplishments and references are all great and I have a very unique resume.

For this past summer, 2012, I interviewed for several internship positions but didn’t get any offers until late Spring. I ended up interning at a nonprofit organization that dealt with voting and the elections. I primarily worked on budgeting, operations, and data/research. Not really in my field, but I got a really different experience and did a lot of networking. They don’t extend full time offers to interns (it was a small stipend internship anyway, so it made sense to me that they don’t give offers).

I have been applying to jobs since the start of my senior year - consulting, financial planning, operations analysts, etc. Almost anything business related. I’ve gotten interviews with plenty of well known firms and companies and have made it to the final round of interviews for 6 companies. I even interviewed for retail management/leadership development programs that recruit at my school. But NO OFFERS.

I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Even talking to recruiters about my interview after being turned down, it seems that there’s always someone more qualified. I’m stuck and don’t know what else to do. I can’t change my past experience and my interview skills seem fine (according to companies I’ve talked to). I’ve lowered my standards and am fine with anything remotely related to my field.

If I don’t get a job, I really don’t know what to do. I’ve been on full scholarship for school for the past 4 years and my parents have already expressed severe disappointment in not having secured a job. My only alternative is to take the next year and take any kind of work I can (hopefully something slightly related), then reapply to jobs next year. However, I’ve been warned that my chances will be even slimmer since there will be another class of seniors to compete against.

Any advice or tips? I’m really at a loss for what to do.

Thank you!