And I've been crazy busy! What with the graduating and moving in with le boyfriend and finding a "real job" and what not. Sorry peeps. So I have now returned to the blog-o-sphere, and I had a mental list of a variety of topics that I had wanted to write about...and now I seem to have forgotten them all...
(Let me try to think for a minute)
Yeah, I've got nothing. So I guess we'll go with whats on the top of my head, and many other recent graduates like myself. Job hunting. Finding a "real, grown-up job". I quote and italicize that point because it is a dumb concept. Any job is a real job if they pay you money for it. Even prostitution. Maybe not legal, but a real job nonetheless, and I'm sure prostitution is more adult that flipping burgers down at McDonalds or making minimum wage sorting papers in the mail room in a shitty entry-level position.
But I digress...(for clarification: no, I did not resort to prostitution post-graduation....I never got quite that desperate....but pretty damn close.)
Job hunting is a full-time job in itself, except you don't get pay, thus making it not a "real" job. Also, I keep using the word job, and I'm sure I am supposed to be using the term "career" at this point. Have you tried to get a job post graduation lately?
It fucking sucks. That market is shit-housed with crap.
So yeah, here's how life is going for naive young adults eager to put our theoretical knowledge into practical use at some fancy company in whatever field we just spent three-to-four years (hey maybe longer) pulling all nighters studying for...only to realize, NOBODY WANTS US AND IT IS NOTHING LIKE WHAT WE EXPECT OR THE MOVIES SHOW US.
Maybe it's just me, maybe it is because I happen to be in a province where I only speak 1 of the 2 official languages...and unfortunately it's not the one that everyone wants you to speak....even if they never ever speak it in the office ever.
In school, they teach us about the field we intend on going into, they teach us knowledge about those fields, useful information on how to apply that knowledge. If you got to a good school, they also teach you how to pinpoint what kind of job you want post-grad, what aspect of your industry, how to get into that particular sector and all of the necessary post-grad items (read: resume/curriculum-vitae, cover letter, portfolio if necessary, online social media clean-up).
But I've found what they don't teach is quite honestly the most important parts. What it is actually like to have a "career". the banal 9-5, Monday to friday routine, what to expect a company to look like on the inside, the general understanding of how they are run, the things most companies are ACTUALLY looking for. (Which to my dismay, was not being an honours student and having 50 billion extra curriculars and scholarships.) They want you to have experience....and not reading-in-a-text-book experience, but actual, real, live hands-on experience...which is impossible to get when you are, y'know, a student 5 days a week for 3-4 years and working summer jobs to pay for your ungodly tuition costs, and oh yeah, no one will hire you because you need a degree in that field first.
Well now you have that degree, and they want experience. So of course, the only solution would be INTERNSHIPS. Has anyone out there ever done an internship?
Thos ALSO suck fucking hard. I did one for three weeks at a company in my field but I was placed in a department completely unrelated as to what I wanted to do. Regardless it was worth the experience and was worth it if only for the fact that I actually got what a "career" would be like in my field, a very affirmative decision as to what department I definitely do NOT want to go into, and as an experience that will look good on my resume.
I really do think they need to prepare you better for how to actually find a job, and what to expect once you get there. Finding these jobs are difficult when you are used to walking down to the local mall and handing out your resume at every store that sells stuff you like (or conversely, at a hot restaurant where you know you'll get good tips.) Sure, you can check out craigslist, kijiji, put your resume up on websites (like monster and jobshop and whatever american equivalents there are to those) and stake out the corporate websites of the companies on your target I-want-to-work-there list. Doesn't mean anyone of them will hire you, or that you'll even get an interview.
I applied to roughly 40-ish companies in the month after I had graduated, from the start of my internship to 2 weeks after it ended I was applying EVERYWHERE. And only 2 places called me back...1 of which was for a position that had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with what I studied or would take me in a direction for my career to blossom. Guess which one I'm working at now?
So yes, 40 applications, 2 interviews, 1 hire. And I'm one of those lucky ones that even got a call back. I was so hard up for cash (again, 3 years of being a poor student racking up debt in student loans and not having a job and then doing a 3 week internship for free) that I took on odd jobs in the mean time until I found something more permanent. I worked at a jewelery store for a bit...that was painfully boring and slow and mind-numbing. I also sat in an office and filed a years worth of paperwork for an old man while his father came into his office and sat next to me on a chair and fell asleep for a good two weeks....it's a toss-up as to which job was worse.
Even the job I am in now, which I suprisinly love (It's a sales position btw) is not considered my "career" or a job that will help further my career in the direction that I would like it to go towards...it's not even in the right industry.
So I guess the point of this rant is to sympathize with all the other recent graduates out there, and if any big head honchos see it...give us newbies a break, we need to crack into the world somehow..and afterall, someday we'll be running a company of our own (okay, that's a lie, only like 5% of us will, the rest will end up at starbucks after their mid-life crisis) or even the company you happen to be currently running...so instead of refusing to call us and refusing to hire us on the basis of not enough education or experience...take us under your wing, mentor us, mold us - make us into the kind of employees you want us to be and want in your company. We are young and our minds are agile, so teach us, and we will be far less likely to run your fortune 500 company down into the ground after you retire at the ripe old age of finally-dead.
Peace yo.
Interns + mail room entry-level employees? If you don't think your boss got my memo, print it out and slip it into an anonymous envelope...and as you control the mail room, toss it on into their box...maybe they'll get the hint.
Ps: if you actually do what I wrote above, it would be wise to delete the "peace yo" and everything below it.
No comments:
Post a Comment