Career & Education

A Year Of Fruitless Job Hunting Destroyed My Hopes As A Fresh Graduate

It has been almost a year since I graduated, but I am still unable to find a job. I have sent countless emails and resumes to over 450 companies, but all I got was rejection after rejection. Most roles required a certain amount of experience, which I didn’t have, or they offered wages far below my fresh graduate salary threshold. After months of trying without success, I even started looking for other roles that were not related to my field to boost my chances of getting hired. I had such high hopes going into the workforce, and now I can only feel them shattering bit by bit after each rejection. I feel like a failure because I still have to depend on my parents for my livelihood at the age of 24. Every meal they buy for me reminds me that I’m a freeloader and a disappointment. My parents and friends say that this is just a bad market phase, but I believe I just graduated at the worst possible time. The only thing that brings me some comfort is knowing that I am not alone in this. My friends are also having a difficult time finding jobs. The current job market is just not serving our generation well, so we have to work even harder to support ourselves. Not to mention, global economies have been shaken by constant political changes and uncertainties due to conflicts. We all feel the toll these uncertainties take on our daily lives, and on our job-searching efforts. Sometimes I wonder: is this why so many of us are struggling to find jobs, or am I just looking for excuses? To stay sane, I keep myself busy jogging, signing up for free online courses, or trying out gig work here and there. It’s not much, but they motivate me to keep trying. At the end of the day, all I want now is to find a job that matches my skills so I can stop mooching off my parents and finally contribute. This article is part of TSS Confessions, a weekly column where we delve into personal finance topics that are unscripted and genuine real accounts from people.