I graduated in May 2024 and I can't find a job. What am I doing wrong?

[pinkerbelle]

I graduated in May from a Big 10 university with three majors from the business school and a minor in the art school. I finished with a 3.79 GPA and graduated with the honors college notation. Overall, I would say I was a decent student, and my stats weren’t awful. As for my internship experience, I had one internship at a major CPG company and two at a major non-profit healthcare organization. Both of these companies are names most Americans would recognize.

During the summer of 2023, I knew my internship at the CPG company wasn’t going to offer me a return offer. I spoke with former interns at the company, some of whom interned for over a year, and they mentioned that they were never offered full-time positions. Although I made an effort to demonstrate my potential as a returning candidate, I did not receive a return offer like most of my intern class (only one intern received a full-time offer).

So my job search began in June 2023. It has officially been over a year, and I have not received an offer. Below are some of details of the job search:

• As of today, I’ve completed 750+ applications since June 2023
• I was a final candidate for 12 positions
• I often tailor my resume/skill set and write a cover letter
• I often went to career services and they would say that my resume, stats, and networking strategies are strong
• After graduating, I was no longer eligible for undergrad career services, so I sought guidance from alumni career coaching. They recommended changing my resume format to make it appear less like a college student’s, and I have since made those adjustments.

I’ve even purchased LinkedIn Premium, and this has been my experience:

• I reach out to the hiring team, talent acquisition, or people within the department after applying to the role
• I send a message with every connection request on LinkedIn
• I try to connect with alums if they work at the company
• A lot of my connection requests are ignored, but I can see they look at my profile
• The ones who do accept my requests don’t respond to my messages, and I’m constantly following up with no success
• I’ve managed to set up a few meetings and some alum have given/offered referrals if I find something interesting
• I send a lot of emails to recruiters

Many of the positions I have been applying to are in consulting, financial services (banking, private equity, investment research , etc), merchandise planning, and corporate finance.

I’m just confused what’s going on right now. My junior year, I was literally getting so many interviews and I had to choose between offers. Now I can barely even get an interview. Is anyone else experiencing the same thing? What advice do yall have?

[tgl2023]

I know one college graduate who had a job lined up at a major NYC consulting firm to start in June 2023, was told not to come, but had recently been called to work, albeit more than a year after the initial start date. This lone data point suggests that you are caught in a downward business cycle, which seems to be swinging up. I think more hiring is to come and to you.

[AustenNut]

I’m sorry to hear about all of the difficulties you’ve been having in finding a job. It sounds like you’re doing so many of the right things.

Did you do any practice interviews with the undergrad career services? Or are you eligible for that from the alumni career coaching? Perhaps they can provide a few tips that can help you seal the deal in your interviews.

Are you restricting your job search in any way (i.e. restricting to certain locations, certain companies etc)? If so, broadening your search could be useful.

Have you reached out to the nonprofit healthcare organization for which you had two internships to see if anything is available there?

Hopefully you’ll have more success in the near future, but don’t forget that you just graduated in May. Many companies aren’t interested in hiring during the school year for someone who won’t start for many months. Thus, although you’ve already applied to 750 positions since June 2023, if most of them were before May, then that may have contributed to your lack of success.

Keep your chin up and believe in yourself. Good luck!

[ali-ice]

If you can’t get work in your field right away -can you get a job to see you through for a while?
Are you look specifically at entry level jobs? This is PROBABLY not you -but I’ve seen a lot of fresh college grads think they can walk into higher level jobs that pay well right away. Entry level jobs aren’t always that great -but they can often lead to promotions into jobs you want.
I think the job market is hard – so back to ‘get any job’ right now and keep trying. You seem to be wanting to get into fairly competitive fields…so that might take longer.

[pinkerbelle]

I hope this graduate is doing well, and I’m glad the firm called him/her back! Thank you so much for the motivation! I wasn’t sure if the market was actually bad or if I’m just unlucky.

[Hippobirdy]

I am thankful to learn of your experiences.
It sounds like bad luck or timing.

Keep up your efforts and hard work.

Consider adjacent industries.

Do you have accounting or IT coursework?

[pinkerbelle]

Thank you so much for the motivation! The nonprofit organization is going through a lot of department restructuring right now, so positions are limited. However, I could easily get a job there if I wanted to, it just probably wouldn’t be relevant to the career path I want to take.

I’ve done a few practice interviews with career coaching for a grade in my classes and I do well on them. A lot of my interviews involve case studies, so I do study a week in advance for them. I often ask for feedback after final round rejections, and some of the feedback is legit and I take it into account. However, most of it is literally “this was a competitive pool and we just had to choose someone” or “this person has more relevant accounting experience from their internships” or “culture fit.”

I’m not restricting myself on locations, but maybe certain industries perhaps. I tend to stick to financial services, CPG/retail, and consulting. At the start of May, I was at 300 applications, but many of them were designed for 2024 graduates since finance and consulting recruiting have earlier deadlines.

[momofboiler1]

Are you looking beyond the big name companies? All kinds of companies in various industries hire students with business and finance degrees.

Does the alumni office of your school offer any mentoring for new grads?

What have you been doing for this past year?

I just saw your post - IMO, a job, even if it isn’t your direct career path, is better than no job.

[pinkerbelle]

I would say 95% of the roles I apply to are entry-level roles designed for 2024/2025 grads. The others are roles that ask for 1-2 years of experience.

[somethings]

In May through October 2023, I know at least five consulting firms (bains, deloitte, accenture, etc.) postponed the start dates for most (if not all) campus recruits by 3-10 months. Some of these class of 2023 graduates looked elsewhere, and some waited. By now those I know of have all started working at the firms they signed contracts with in 2022. College graduates of 2024 are taking the hit now.

[pinkerbelle]

I’ve been applying to big name companies, mid-size, and small firms with 10-100 people. My alumni office offers 4 free career sessions and then you pay per session. No mentoring services, you would have to find your own mentor. This summer after graduation, I spent a lot of time applying to jobs + studying for my CFA.

Something that worries me about taking a job not on my career path is that other organizations would see this as irrelevant experience. How would you suggest overcoming this?

[pinkerbelle]

Yes! I know about this consulting issue! My friends at BCG are starting in Jan 2025, and one of my friends who interned at PwC in summer 2023 is starting in winter 2025! My PwC friend often reminds me that the market truly is that bad.

[pinkerbelle]

Thank you for the kind words I do have accounting and IT coursework! The IT coursework is required by everyone in the business school, so it’s basic Excel, Access, Power Query, and Power BI. I have more accounting coursework because of my finance major but my accounting classes are actually the worst grades on my transcript

[momofboiler1]

I think having some kind of paying job on your resume is going to be better than being unemployed, especially if it’s an organization already on your resume from internship. At very least that shows other companies that they thought highly enough of you to have you back.

My not for profit experience is that agencies are usual short on staff and money and it’s easy to cross train and “help out” other areas that you are more interested in.

Have you considered applying for financial analyst or auditor type of positions at manufacturing companies? They all have those types of roles too.

[pinkerbelle]

Thank you for your insight! I apply to a LOT of financial analyst roles, and my last two internships were in corporate finance. I’m not super familiar with audit positions, but I might look into that!

[blossom]

Pinkerbelle, hugs to you. This is a challenging environment for new grads.

I work in corporate recruiting, and the current crop of graduates have hit a perfect storm-- uncertain business climate, high interest rates (but coming down) plus inflation (but coming down), some industries fully recovered from Covid and others not. Until the election is over (and until there is a winner, certified by Congress) companies are sitting on their hands just waiting for the dust to settle.

Here are a couple of suggestions- reject the ones that don’t apply to you.

1- Expand your search. Hospitality- most companies in that sector have recovered from Covid; the ones that have not seem to have restructured enough so that they are back to hiring. And the Work from Home trend which has hit commercial real estate very hard, actually favors the hotel industry- companies which have let go some of their office space still need to bring people together at times, which means employees in hotel rooms and conferences in their meeting rooms. So look at the large chains in hotel, rental car, restaurant, theme park/attractions, cruise. The job may not be exactly what you want, but these companies are household names, are at least consumer products adjacent, and promote aggressively from within. If you’ve looked at Retail/Merchandising, have you looked at the entire food chain-- Wegmans, Walmart, Wawa (to pick on the W’s), or just the prestige names? Unless your long term goal is to open a couture fashion house, the industry considers all retail experience to be relevant and somewhat fungible. If you can sell polar fleece to moms, you can sell tires and washer fluid to dads (at least conceptually from a marketing standpoint.)

2-Recast your CFA for roles that are not finance related. Did you pass all three sections? Hurray, it’s a very long and hard process. But recruiters in the cruise line business who focus on hiring in marketing, pricing analysis and onboard amenities planning won’t care. So a quick blurb that describes your analytic skills (not just financial analysis, but taking data and drawing conclusions) will help for non-finance roles.

3-Figure out which in-person networking opportunities are near where you live. Most big cities have chapters of FENG (Financial Executives Networking Group), sales or marketing oriented clubs and groups, etc. I know young grads who have talked themselves into these convenings/symposia, and then you just impress the heck out of everyone you meet. Be candid- you are a recent grad, you love X (whatever the topic of the day is) and can you follow up with a phone interview to learn more about their fascinating job at XYZ company?

4-Reconsider that non-profit opportunity-- even if you don’t think it’s on brand for you. If you can describe some of the roles you know you could get hired for, many of us can describe the fungible skills (and the language you’ll need to use) that a year or two in that job can get you. Many of the large software packages used by universities, museums, private schools, advocacy organizations, etc. sound very specialized but are actually sold (and developed) by the big players in IT. So if the American Cancer Society trains you on their payroll or donor tracking software, you may be learning a valuable skill in the commercial sphere- just with a different name. And it would take you three days hunkered down at home to teach yourself the commercial version once you’ve mastered the one sold to non-profits.

You can do this…

[pinkerbelle]

Wow! Thank you so much for the beautifully written response! It means a lot to have thoughtful suggestions from someone who actually works in recruiting. I actually LOVE the hospitality industry and I have applied to a good amount of roles in this area, but I will continue to search.

I have a concern that I might be blacklisted from a major hotel chain because I contacted the recruiter’s boss after she ignored my emails about moving to the second round of interviews (which she had promised on the day of my first interview). Since then, I have been rejected from every role at this chain.

I take the first section of the CFA in May! And goodness there’s SOOO much to study!

You make a good point about the non-profit role and I might be more serious about considering it now.

I truly appreciate your advice!

[blossom]

I have no idea whether you’ve been “blacklisted” by a major company (you never know- it’s quite rare, but it does happen) but my suggestion is to move on. The universe doesn’t want you fretting about something you have no control over.

Glad to hear you are reconsidering the non-profit space. Even the most sophisticated nonprofit is “under-resourced”-- so let’s say you get a job in payroll and tax-- if you step up to tell your manager that you are studying for the CFA and therefore would be happy to help prepare the documentation for the 990’s (which will have very detailed tables and exhibits about the endowment, investment income, etc. which may be more relevant for your future interests) they aren’t likely to tell you “no, we have all the staff we need in that department”. Nobody EVER has all the staff they need in ANY department!

I’ve seen people move from jobs planning the annual gala right into cool communications roles or something in the policy arena. Once you’re there- and are a valued colleague- you don’t know who you’ll end up chatting with!

Happy to help- as is everyone here!!!

[ali-ice]

You didn’t sound like you were turning down entry level work --but I wanted to toss that out there in case. I think the field is just really competitive.

ETA: I see you got actual really great advice above — Just sending you lots of luck and hope the tide turns for you soon!

[pinkerbelle]

Definitely was not turning down entry level work! I even interviewed for a Trading position that only paid $40k/year, which is more than 30k below the average of my business school! Never thought I would get to this point as a triple major with decent internship experience!

I appreciate your kind words and thank you for sending me positive vibes!