It’s a tough year for young graduates looking for work.
Hiring is at one of its slowest rates in the last decade, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and job cuts are up 47% year over year, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Entry-level worker confidence is also at an all-time low, according to Glassdoor.
Katherine Diep, 21, is not letting that get her down, even as she’s spent nearly a year on her own job search. Diep graduated from the University of California, Irvine, in June with a degree in business economics and has “applied to over 200 to 300 jobs” since fall, she says.
Despite getting interviewed for five jobs in that time, she says, she has yet to be hired. Here’s what her job-seeking journey has been like, and how she’s been able to keep her head up even through those disappointments.
‘In-person events, AI can’t really achieve that’
Diep is currently seeking events marketing jobs in the San Francisco Bay Area. She’s also been looking for remote events marketing jobs for companies based in the Midwest.
“I’ve been getting a little more luck on those,” she says.
Competition has weighed on her. She’s heard from recruiters that the labor market is flooded by both recent undergrads and masters’ students looking for work. And what’s been equally top of mind is the possibility of workers getting replaced by AI.
Early on in her application process “I was trying to do brand and maybe more of back-end marketing,” she says. But “AI was kind of creeping up in my mind, and I pivoted to events because I feel like in-person events, AI can’t really achieve that.”
‘Is my character wrong?’
Even as Diep has homed in on what she wants to do, it’s been an emotional journey.
At the beginning of the process, her confidence was high. “I can kill it, and they can hire me on the spot,” she says she felt. But as she began to rack up rejections, she felt less sure of her ability to land a job. That was especially true as she started getting rejections after interviews.
At that point, “they’ve seen how I am as a person, as a character,” she says. She would ask herself, “is my character wrong?”
Among the hardest parts, too, is the constant exposure to everyone else’s success. “When you’re scrolling on LinkedIn, because that is where you’re applying,” she says, “it’s kind of inevitable to see other people” discussing their success and new jobs. And it reminds her of where she still is in the process.
‘I probably get, like, one rejection each day’
Diep has remained optimistic, in part because she’s gotten used to the grind. “Even till today, I probably get, like, one rejection each day,” she says. They simply don’t bother her as much as they used to. “It’s just normal.”
She recently had a second round interview for a marketing role and is hoping they move forward with her. Meanwhile, “I’m going to try to keep myself busy and work on my skills,” she says.
Diep currently volunteers at Emboldly, a nonprofit focused on empowering women to step into leadership roles. She’s also doing marketing for a startup she co-founded, Lynne, which offers an app that helps maintain women’s birth control schedules.
She’s ready to keep cranking out applications “until a company can see my worth,” she says.
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