I graduated college this past May. Yes, I was nervous, but I was excited to finally get my first “big girl job.” Unfortunately, with a looming recession and huge tech company layoffs, my plans haven’t exactly panned out.
I was lucky enough to secure an internship after graduation. But once the summer came to an end, I found myself applying for unemployment.
I’ve been looking for work for about three months now, and the job hunt is discouraging. Just the other day, I was looking at a job posting on LinkedIn that had been listed for only a few hours, and there were already hundreds of applicants. Clearly, thousands of recent grads like me are struggling to break into the workforce right now.
Sending out a bunch of job applications without hearing anything back can definitely shake my confidence. But at least I know I'm not alone in my struggle to find a job.
For a long time, young people were told that the tech industry is always growing, and that’s where the money is. But with mass layoffs happening left and right, even if you’re lucky enough to get hired – your job isn’t safe. I’m sure we’ve all heard the term “first one in, first one out.” And while I'm not going into the tech industry, the fact that job insecurity is a thing in a supposedly "secure" field, like tech, makes me worry for my own future.
Last year, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t go back to working in retail or customer service. I was tired of working long hours with low pay, dealing with entitled customers and feeling burnt out over a job I had no interest in. But as my job search continues to be unsuccessful, there’s a part of me that worries: soon it might be my only option left.