What I learned in my year of unemployment

College Confidential Community
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<p>I graduated a liberal arts school called Colgate last year and just wanted to write a post about some of my thoughts on the job market and grad school, hopefully it’ll help 2010 grads understand the reality of the situation a little better.</p>

<p>I’ve been home for a full year come May, living with the parents and unemployed. I had just above a 3.0 and partied (extensively) while at school, no special accomplishments or awards to color my resume. Since last May, I’ve applied to at least 100 different jobs, ranging from secretarial work all the way up to $70K/year consultancy positions that I honestly thought I deserved! The ONLY jobs I ever get called back for are either a) sales positions to sell life insurance, b) $8/hr menial labor jobs, or c) total scams that promise “$500-$2000/week! work at home!” </p>

<p>So I switched my tactics. Sending out resumes won’t work. I decided to go to the companies myself and meet with them face to face. maybe, i thought, the interpersonal aspect of it would give my candidacy a stronger boost? But I was totally shocked to learn that the job market had gotten so tough that there were now unemployed MBAs and JDs with tens of thousands of dollars of student loans to repay working UNPAID internships at these companies! i couldn’t believe it! People in their late 20’s/early 30’s who needed to move out of their parents house and start their lives were giving away free labor and/or supplementing this new lifestyle by working nights at starbucks! Businesses have discovered that there is virtually no difference in terms of skills and results between a brand new liberal arts school grad and an unpaid intern. If they can both do similar work, why choose the one you’d have to pay? entry-level jobs that were typically the learning grounds for new grads to get their feet wet are now going to the unemployed/laid-off workers who have more experience, less entitlement issues, and greater desperation for anything that could one day lead to a fulltime job.</p>

<p>i kept in touch with many of my friends from HS and college to see if they had any better luck, and the replies were really a mixed bag. I think that my friends can fall into 5 or so categories after college. They were either a) working for their dad/mom/a relative, b) traveling if they could afford it, c) going to grad school/applying to grad school, or d) living at home unemployed and looking, or e) were one of the lucky ones to have jobs they earned either through our school’s alumni connections or by studying their butts off in school or maybe both.</p>

<p>i won’t get into aspects of their social lives. but you can probably imagine how much more difficult it has become for grads to try to maintain some semblance of a social life on top of their employment/unemployment stresses.</p>

<p>from what i’ve seen, the smartest kids were the ones who knew exactly what they wanted to do in life and maintained a tunnel-vision focus on achieving it. you know, the kids you kinda feel jealous of if you have no idea what you want to do, but they’ve wanted to be teachers or journalists since they were like 2. they interned at the same place every single summer…or aggressively sought out each alumni connection they could in their desired field…etc. they used their time in college very wisely. the rest of us who didn’t know what we wanted to do but still felt entitled to at least a $40K job after college are now sitting at home and wondering what went wrong. you’re now 22 or 23 and back in that same room you lived in as a hormonally-imbalanced/authority-hating/rebel-without-a-cause high school teenager. it sucks. a lot.</p>

<p>there are, of course, a lot of caveats to what I wrote because this is all just one man’s opinion. from the job postings i’ve seen over the past year, there is plenty of demand for anybody with computer science/programming/web design/accounting skills or majors. Computer literacy is no longer something “preferable” but pretty much required. Being as familiar as possible with microsoft office/html/java/basic/c++/python/keynote/whatever is a strong plus. </p>

<p>But for the rest of you fellow liberal arts majors, the best advice i’d like to give is to first and foremost figure out what you’d like to do. it doesn’t have to be perfectly accurate…but perhaps start with a field you’re interested in. Then apply some tunnel-vision discipline and find every way possible into that field. I would NOT recommend law school if you don’t have any interest in law. I have seen WAY too many unemployed law school students who are working at starbucks and interning for free saddled with $30-100K in debt. not a good way to start your life. go to every alumni connection meeting, meet with a career advisor three times a week, call up alumni who are working in your field, if you still have some time, study hard and bring up your GPA, work on interesting projects so you can develop some kind of “portfolio” to show employers, and start applying as soon as possible. </p>

<p>Sending out your resume is one of the least effective job hunting methods I know. I learned this the hard way. Asking friends/family/alumni for jobs/leads is probably the best way. Don’t feel like you’re above asking a friend’s parents if they can find something for you.</p>

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<p>Actually, the fact that the economy is bad gives people even less incentive to try. So I don’t know why you’re telling anyone to try. The stranger on here who takes your advice and succeeds has his success at the expense of another who would succeed had you not posted this.</p>

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<p>Interesting story. How are you doing now? What did you major in? </p>

<p>At least your parents can still support you. You should be be very grateful for that. Yes, it is a tough economy right now, and you graduated from Colgate, not a bad school by any means, so this is somewhat surprising to me. But with the economy the way it is, I guess anything can happen.</p>

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<p>But at the same time, the Internet makes it much easier to try (and apply to huge numbers of jobs). Especially since Internet applications cut costs.</p>

<p>Anyways, excellent post. I think asking professors for volunteer research is also useful. Lots of professors would appreciate coders, and they can eventually become excellent refs for any job, especially jobs that require programming or electronics.</p>

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<p>interesting!..ill keep this in mind when in college</p>

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<p>I think the people who are originally willing to work for less are in the best position. My half-sister took a job at a hostel that paid only room and board while also taking a minimum wage job at the coffee shop. She has worked at this job for 6 months. The owner of the hostel is about to retire and my half sister is #1 in line to owning the business. She has also become a manager at the chocolate shop (free trade, eco friendly, her kind of thing). My sister spent 6 months biking around town enjoying herself on virtually no money but in six months she could own her own business. Yes, it’s anecdotal, but it applies in a lot of situations.</p>

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<p>I think there needs to be better career counseling services & education from HS and up. </p>

<p>Because unfortunately, you should have been told by someone (I thought it was common sense) that partying throughout college and not interning/showing interest in future careers or having technical program skills (Word/Excel/etc), and not going to the career counselor or even feeling that you “deserve” a job is bad. </p>

<p>I bought the book “You Majored in WHAT?” for myself, and I feel that will be invaluable. It’s a very good book, and suggests things more along the lines of not asking for jobs per se, but telling people what you hope to do. (A case study had a girl mention at church she had studied russian, and was hoping to find a way to get back to Russia. Someone’s wife overheard and she then got hired by a company planning to set up in Russia.) </p>

<p>The same way you package yourself for College by interest and activities, you do the same thing for jobs.</p>

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<p>Hm. I need to clarify. Clearly Colgate doesn’t have a terrible service- other classmates of the OP’s got jobs and did well with the counseling. But schools need to push this service a lot- even perhaps requiring a bare minimum of meetings/lectures. </p>

<p>The OP isn’t having problem because of Colgate’s lack of good name- the OP is having problem because they didn’t utilize the resources/opportunity and the economy sucks.</p>

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<p>sledfish,
Thank you for posting. When choosing college/major/career, it is good to hear various experience/perspective.</p>

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<p>@Whistleblower1:</p>

<p>This assumes that hiring is a zero-sum game. This isn’t always true. For example, if you’re proactive, you might find an employer or client who is so impressed with your background that they actually create a position for you.</p>

<p>Also, even if hiring were a zero-sum game, do you want to be one of the people who is working in your field or one of the people who is working at a coffee shop? Your efforts make the former outcome more likely.</p>

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<p>Parents of friends can be a very good source for jobs. This has always been true… 25 years ago when I graduated from college, my best friend’s fiance was an engineering major at our college. VERY bright, a super nice, responsible, honest guy. But almost pathologically shy, so he was an awful interviewer. I mentioned to my dad that he was struggling with the interview process, but that I thought he would be a great catch for someone who could see through that. My dad told his friend who owned a local manufacturing company (medium sized, not big enough to recruit at our large university). His friend asked me to get a resume, I did, he got hired, and still works there happily 25 years later.</p>

<p>Some people think that networking means joining trade organizations and handing out your business card. I suppose it can, but the most effective networking is people you know through your day to day life – friends of your parents, parents of your friends, through church, clubs, etc. Heck, the person who cuts your hair might have someone come through tomorrow looking for a good person to hire! Let everyone know (without dwelling on it too much) that you are looking. But it IS important to have some kind of focus on the type of job you want.</p>

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<p>So do you think it would be worth choosing a school with a remarkably loyal alumni network vs an equally good but less connected school - even if the latter is a better “fit”?</p>

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<p>Did you try that?</p>

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<p>I agree with every single word the OP has said about the job search…it reflects the situation many of us 09 grads are in (and many of us still in). </p>

<p>I also graduated with a liberal arts degree from Duke, and while many of my fellow graduates had that “tunnel” vision and were set on law school, medical school, or investment banking, I lacked that focus and knowledge of what exactly I wanted to do through much of my undergraduate career. It left me a senior, applying to any opportunity I could find in a failing economy. </p>

<p>I had no shot with investment banking or consulting because many student before me had had their eye on the prize for the past 3 years, so try as I might I couldn’t even score a first round interview. I did get a few first round interviews from other companies, as well as a few second rounds, but the company either hired 1 or 2 applicants, or none at all, out of a pool of 50 interviewees who, so the chances were slim. It was difficult to even hone those alumni connections, as many seemed willing to initiate a conversation but were reluctant to give any hope about internship/employment prospects. They would literally tell you they had a hiring freeze in effect and could do nothing.</p>

<p>Once you’re out of the sphere of alumni connections/friends/family it’s basically a crapshoot. Government jobs were appealing to me for awhile, but thousands of people have also figured “who else is hiring” so you essentially need an “in.” Other than that, like the OP said, resume-dropping seems virtually useless. You have to know someone, and if you don’t know someone, you’re SOL.</p>

<p>Personally, I went back to my high school job. It’s a small business, and my boss has been kind enough to give me a raise and more hours, but it’s not enough to live off of so I’m still living at home with my parents, which I’m very grateful for because I couldn’t afford to be out on my own. I’ll be heading back to graduate school for accounting in the fall, which I’m excited about, and it seems like things are finally starting to fall together, but it’s been tough. I worked very hard as an undergraduate, and it’s tough to get job rejection after job rejection.</p>

<p>Many of my friends are in similar situations, and it seems like if you didn’t net a job during or shortly after undergraduate, you’re still looking. Many people moved home, and a few have scored government jobs. A lot of people opted for Teach for America, and some of my other fellow graduates even applied this year, since they had no other prospects. Most shocking to me is one of my friends who was an Economics/Chinese double major who had a near 4.0 GPA. He had tons of interviews during our senior year, has tons of connections in cities across the US, but has been told over and over again that his credentials are great but they simply cannot hire him.</p>

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<p>This is an EXCELLENT post, thanks a LOT for your insight. I knew it was bad, but not this bad. </p>

<p>And well, partying should be a part of college life too. You’re never going to get those days back again…college life is special part of your life. There needs to be a balance between partying/studying.</p>

<p>Thank God I majored in a CS related area though, because I was seriously considering a liberal arts major in the senior year of my high school.</p>

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<p>I plan on burning my diploma after my graduation in ~ 6 months. It’s going to be a worthless piece of crap. I probably will not even go to graduation, as I hate the university I attend. Maybe I’ll go, burn it during the ceremonies, and possibly get on the news.</p>

<p>Add to that I have no “connections” or friends, no skills (other than writing long papers on arcane subject matter), and I have always done poorly on SAT’s/LSAT’s/GRE’s. That’s the whole reason I went to community college: to avoid taking the SAT. There’s no option like that for graduate school, which really upsets me. </p>

<p>Community college didn’t help much, I still ended up at a fairly poor school. Yet I have a 3.5+ at a University of California campus (not Merced, and not UCLA ). I have never been to party or other social gathering at all, and consider myself as having taken my studies seriously, although perhaps I am somewhat shiftless (leaving out the the fact that every quarter I have taken a maximum load of ~ 17 units in order to ensure I end up leaving this sh-thole as soon as possible). Part of this results from a history of working hard and always ending up with results that are incredibly disappointing (many acquaintances with academic records similar or worse than mine have gotten into much better schools, etc.), and part of it results from no clear goals, as you have mentioned. Why continue to work so hard when there appears to be no purpose, other than to get out of an environment I hate, and continued dismal prospects?</p>

<p>I know what’s going to happen to me after I graduate. It probably would have happened even if the current business climate was great. I am going to be unemployed or working at a large retailer or grocery store as a cashier or cart boy. It’s just the way things are in this era. You have to come from a top 30 school to have any desirable options if you have a deficit in “who you know.”</p>

<p>In conclusion: thanks for nothing UC, and charging me more for it.</p>

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<p>sledfish and ComradeD- Thank for your candor. Too bad your postings can’t automatically pop up when someone asks if it is worth going 100K/200K into debt for their/their kid’s dream college.</p>

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<p>Luckily for me, my college education will only end up costing ~$50K (not borrowed), life expenses included, since I went to community college (and lived at home during that period). I probably could have saved more money by continuing to live at home and commuting an hour each way to school, but I was getting on my parents nerves, so that didn’t happen. Instead I live in a crap apartment surrounded by noisy morons and other slobs, and I get on their nerves.</p>

<p>Also, I did not go to my “dream college.”</p>

<p>Finally, since I went to community college, I saved all you CA taxpayers out there a whole lotta of cash. You are welcome. Too bad so many idiots end up at these costly 4 year schools only to drop out after a year or two. They could have saved everyone some money and dropped out of community college.</p>

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<p>@ComradeD</p>

<p>You seem overwhelmingly bitter…do you have a plan out of your current situation?</p>

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<p>Has anyone actually gotten interviews or job offers from alumni? I’ve emailed a bunch of alumni, maybe 50 or so in the past year, just asking for advice about a career in engineering and what they would do if they were in my position. Most of them replied, and offered helpful advice, but only 2 actually mentioned their departments were looking for interns. For one of the alumni members, it turned out that I missed the intern deadline. For the other one, he got me in contact with the hiring manager and we had a phone interview last week. I would’ve been really glad that I got that 1 phone interview after contacting all the alumni, but I already got an internship offer elsewhere, so it’s unlikely that I can do an internship with them</p>

<p>As for sitting at home living with parents and being unemployed, at least I’m sorta keeping myself busy by auditing classes in preparation for grad school later this year. I don’t really have any friends I can network with or hang out with during these painfully boring times</p>

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<p>Yes, my plan is to get into the most reputable graduate school I can, and probably pursue an M.A. Then I can become an even more educated, but still completely useless, sop. An even more sympathetic dilemma, and I can be righteously bitter.</p>