After job hunting for a while, I am yet to be successful in acquiring a job; I decided to chronicle my job-hunting process and share my experiences with you. I hope that this post and the subsequent ones in my job-hunting blog series will inspire and help someone during their job-hunting process.
My Story
I am a hardcore planner, and like most planners, I have already planned my entire life. From the nitty-gritty of graduating university with honours to the day that I start my career. I graduated from university with honours; thinking that my plan was all set-in-stone, and I would be able to start my career according to my plans. However, reality sometimes has its way of sucker punching you in the face.
The world was plunged into chaos by the corona-virus pandemic: an uncalculated phenomenon, that was not a part of my plans. Because of the sudden nature of the corona-virus pandemic, the country and businesses were not prepared, and thus, the economic impact the virus had on the country’s economy and businesses were astronomical. Some businesses had to shut their doors and others had to lay off employees and cut costs to keep their business afloat.
As a result of this unforeseen event, starting my career had gotten ten times harder. Over the last year and two months, I have submitted countless resumes to countless organisations. I have gotten a few calls here and there, however, none turned out to be promising. It was either they will call me back or the companies become unresponsive when I try to reach out to them.
The job-hunting process has been feeling like a storm lately, leaving me emotionally exhausted. I am sure I am not the only one who has been feeling that way this year. I started pondering on what I was doing wrong. I was slowly, slipping into depression without even realizing it. One day I found myself crying in bed and staring at the ceiling trying to find something that will motivate me to get back up and keep moving forward.
My Current Job
I started interning at an organization when I was in my junior year in university. Subsequently, after I graduated, I was offered a position within the organization as an Executive Assistant and Social Media Coordinator. However, this job position was far from what I envisioned my career would be like. I was also being overworked and underpaid and micromanaged with no room for improvement or to gain experience as a journalist and writer.
The job-hunting process is hard and sometimes very tedious and stressful. I used to believe that I was the only one going through this phase, and I shut down myself until I heard my friends complaining about similar experiences. At that moment I realized that I was not alone. Most of the students from my graduating year (2020) are either unemployed or stuck in a dead-end job that they do not like because they are being overworked and underpaid. Knowing this, I decided to do some research and I was surprised about what I discovered. According to a recent Jamaica Statistical Institution report, over 116, 100 persons have been unemployed as of January 2021. This is 15, 000 more than a year earlier and brings Jamaica’s unemployment rate to almost 9%.
With the upward spiral of the unemployment rate since 2021, the job market has become more competitive. It is paramount that we start searching for job opportunities before we graduate. This will give us a head start in the job-hunting process. We should all educate ourselves on the various nuances that might prevent us from attaining the job that we want. Nuances such as how to adequately prepare our resumes for a job, how we can make ourselves more marketable, the alternatives to finding a job, how to start a business or earn from a talent, etc.
Throughout this blog series, we have several things that we planned to use to help you with your job-hunting process.
- We will be doing weekly posts that will aim to provide advice to you on how to turn rejection into opportunities, how to prepare for job interviews, and job exams.
- We will also share tips with you about the best career path to choosing during the changing world.
- We will be having interviews with career professionals and HR Managers of various organisations.
- We will be having interviews with persons who share similar experiences during the job-hunting process.
- We will be assisting you with the preparation of your resumes for the next job opportunity.
- We will also be doing monthly giveaways (to enter you must subscribe to this blog, our YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter).
I am very excited about this project as it means that we will be helping others to overcome the harsh reality of the job-hunting process.
