When I started college, my goal was to obtain a full-time job offer before graduation. Throughout college, I revised my resume constantly, sent out at least 100 applications, and stood in line for hours at career fairs to talk to a recruiter for a few minutes. Usually, my application disappeared into the void. Sometimes I was lucky and got a rejection email. The first few rejections discouraged me, but I kept applying because I had to get something eventually, right? Over four years, I got four interviews (includes phone and in-person). Of these two, I obtained a part-time internship and a full-time job offer, which is my current job.
Getting a job is a combination of good timing, a bit of luck, and most importantly, working actively and consistently towards the end goal. These are some of the the things I did that helped me:
- Pursued a variety of extracurricular activities. Throughout college, I was a resident advisor for a freshman residence hall and founder/president of my student organization, the Non-music Major Orchestra. I worked in two academic research labs over three years as a recipient of two research fellowships. I also volunteered with the Citizens’ Environmental Coalition and the Natural Science Museum. I did all of these activities because I wanted to. I learned a variety of skills and gained different perspectives for problem solving. I accumulated multiple examples for interview questions. And I had a lot of fun! The point is to pursue things that you’re interested in, not just things to add to a resume.
- Reflected on my experiences. This goes with Point #1. I took time to reflect on what I’ve learned by writing personal statements, updating my resume often, and drafting answers to interview questions.
- Personal statements. I applied to research opportunities which required personal statements. These personal statements gave me the chance to write and reflect in-depth about my motivations, experiences, and accomplishments. I saved my drafts and applications on Google Drive for easy access. Now I can look back and see how my motivations have changed and use it as a springboard for future applications. Keeping record of my accomplishments as I progress is much easier than remembering everything I’ve done and learned years from now.
- Resume. Usually I ended up redesigning the layout than the content, which is actually more of productive procrastination than actual work. In all seriousness, I’m proud of my resume because every accomplishment is true. During a phone interview with my current company, I walked the interviewers through my resume and answered their questions using different examples from my resume. When they asked me about a specific point, I explained clearly in detail. At the in-person interview, they told me that it stood out to them that I could effectively communicate what I contributed and gained from each work experience. This was a huge advantage for me, considering I had only academic experience and almost no industrial experience. While it may seem tempting to pad a resume, it will be exposed sooner or later. Better to avoid it entirely.
- Interview questions. To prepare for interviews, I searched for common interview questions and typed out my answers in a Google Doc. As I completed more interviews, I gradually updated it to reflect new things that I learned. I added unique questions from interviewers for future reference. The more I did this, I noticed that most interview questions fall under the same few categories. I realized that it’s not about having the perfect answer for every single question, but having a good example that can showcase multiple traits or qualities which can be molded to answer the interview question.
- Used university services, such as University Career Services (UCS). UCS offers free career development services for students (and for UH alumni, up to 6 months after your graduation date). When I switched to chemistry, I met with the STEM career counselor, because I felt lost being in a different field after 3 years of engineering. I asked what kind of opportunities I should pursue with the limited time I had left. I told her I didn’t want to “waste my time” doing something that wouldn’t be helpful to my career. She told me that even if I did something that I didn’t like, it was not a waste of time because I learned that I didn’t like it and could gain skills that could be used in future opportunity. Her advice stuck with me and changed my perspective towards job seeking.
- Attended university-sponsored career fairs. For every career fair I’ve attended, I targeted 5-7 companies that I wanted to talk to and printed 10 copies of my resume. Career fairs always have long lines, so I prioritized visiting the companies on my list first. If the line was long, I visited other companies on my list. I also visited some booths that were not on my list. While standing in line, I googled info about the companies that I didn’t prepare for. When I ran out of resumes, I left the career fair. By limiting the number of resumes I had, I didn’t feel the need to stay all day and tire myself out. Although I have not gotten a job or internship from a career fair, it was good practice for me to overcome my fear of speaking to recruiters about my qualifications.
Job hunting is hard, so it’s easy to get discouraged. I’ve been there. In my last semester, I still did not have a job offer. Sometimes while studying, I felt a panic set in and I started applying to jobs to ease it. Luckily, one of these instances led me to the application for my current job. It took all those rejections for this one moment in time to line up.
I encourage you to stay proactive, do things you like, and do them well. Write about it, talk about it, and write about it some more. Gaining clarity about what you like to do and what you are good at will help you find a job that is a good fit.