It’s graduation season again, and that means thousands of graduates will be entering the job market over the summer. The nerves, anxiety, and stressors of realizing that after graduating I am entering into a realm with no more school is something that I have begun to process. After 16 years of living with a schedule surrounding school, I will have to adapt to a schedule that will revolve solely for work, for the foreseeable future, until retirement.
I am currently looking for a post-grad job and there are so many things I have learned through the process of trying to get a job in the market. There are so many things to learn from the whole circle process of applying, interviewing, networking, communicating, and emailing. It can be exhausting, at least for me it has been, thought there is comfort knowing that there are plenty of students on social media describing their feelings of post grad job hunting. As I am in this process, there are things that many do not know or aren’t brought up.
- Excess documents and “fill in boxes”
Something that has been frustrating for me is the amount of documents that are requested from job applications, many don’t require just a “resume” but a cover letter, a statement of excellence, portfolios, sample writings, profile links. And while for me it is fine for job companies to request it, when you are applying for 10+ jobs a week it becomes extremely repetitive. I began to lose track of the documents, what to say, how to say it, the format changes, and the additional requests within the documents. For example, “list this in your cover letter” or “include this in your portfolio” and when I fill in so many it starts to lose meaning over time. Not only are there various documents to include, but many jobs use the same website to apply for them. Though, even if it is the same website you are still required to fill in every box even though you have already filled it out previously for another job. There is a lot of repetitiveness to filling out job applications, especially internships as they require a lot of the same documents.
2. Responses
Out of the sixty plus applications that I have filled out and keep continuing to fill out, I have only gotten 5 responses from companies. Though, these responses are not after 2 weeks from completion of the application. Many responded a month or two later from the time I applied. I have realized that you will not hear back from many, and you wont get much feedback on the application you submitted. Which is a bit counterintuitive knowing that I submitted more than just a resume, and won’t get an explanation or feedback towards their reasoning. There are hundreds of applications that companies go through, and so feedback is not something that will be given normally.
3. Time
Unfortunately, my post grad job hunting only began at the end of February and at this point in time many jobs for the summer have closed their applications. Time is something really important when applying, and I have realized that I take any time I have to apply and refine my documents. It takes months for a company response, and it takes days for many to apply to a job that require additional documents. I have learned that you have to have patience throughout the entire process, and learn from every rejection.
So, what can work? How do you make the process easier?
Organization has been my best friend, I have been using Google Sheets to track every single job application, date, location, time, documents, and progress. While I sometimes use LinkedIn to apply for jobs and look at what is offered, I use LinkedIn mainly to get advice and tools from other recruiters and higher-ups. Apply directly from the companies’ website. They have so much to offer with resume tips, cover letter writings, and other document details. Because of the repetitive information you have to put in for these applications, save the information in a document so that you can just copy and paste. For cover letters, use AI to refine them, format them, and figure out what the best way to approach the verbiage based on the companies’ mission statement and job information. Lastly, talk to people, email recruiters directly, and use the career resource opportunities to network and to get information useful to the application process.
I have been avoiding many questions about “what I would like to do after I graduate” and really it isn’t about your response but the mindset that you have over it. Post grad job hunting is exhausting, but for me it isn’t a wasted effort but a learning process.
A decline is a redirection.
