Applying for Jobs After College

So you spend most of your high school career trying to sound fancy to get into college; writing essays, going on tours, keeping up grades, being the best sport player. When you find the right school you spend the summer before figuring out how you’re going to pay for it, so you get a summer job, committed to get a job during school as well. You study and you work and make friends, have memories to tell your kids, and the next thing you know you’re walking the stage with a diploma with a degree that you’re not even sure you want anymore. You want the degree, just not in the field that you want, probably.

Now whether you have student debt differs from person to person. And the description above is just an average of what you need to do to get to college and stay in it. At the end of the day you got a degree to what? The greater population will say “to get a better job” than you would without one, with the small minority getting the degree to appease relatives, fending off the inevitable of getting a job, to prolong the learning process in a contained setting. Let’s focus on the getting a job aspect.

All through college, I don’t care which one you went to, they will try to teach you the ins and out of getting a job, all with varying degrees of effectiveness and audiences. Maybe you took the opportunity to learn how to fix your resume or maybe you didn’t. Maybe you got a job before college and maybe you got a job during your time as a college going person. It’s easy to say then that you are a student so your employer probably figures you time is temporary and will see you as a student.

After college, you are not a student anymore. You can fight for the fact that you are always learning something and you are a student for life, same, but you are not enrolled in an education system and they will only see that. You are official now. Everything you do will be seen as an adult being an adult and not a student trying to be an adult. It will be easy for an employer to see if your resume is that of a student and that of a non-student. If you are out of college, you want to be seen as a non-student. Jobs you will now be applying for will not be for students, but for adults. From the get-go you need to be seen as a capable adult. There are new words to use when applying and showing off your knowledge. How you present yourself will have a big impact on how you are interviewed, hired and seen on the job.

Before you were a young student that had responsibility of driving the car in the situation, but now you were tasked with the importance of driving but knowing you had ten million dollars in the trunk that, with one wrong turn, will be lost to you.

A major difference with applying for jobs after college is now you have four years of conscious thinking of getting a job. You start thinking about whether you will like the job market for your degree or if you want to apply for those kind of jobs. You start questioning if you studied the right thing. You will apply for many jobs before you get one interview call back. Emotions of fear, jealousy and spite will fester with each second you don’t see mobility in you currant status. All of this becomes your self-doubt. You were so used to progress as you climbed your way through the education system that now that you’re not climbing at the constant that you were, you believe it is your fault and soon you fall into a unemployed rut. You may even stop looking for a job or doing anything at all. I know I did. Sometimes the only way to get out of rut is to sprint head first into actively applying (what I did) and ride on the momentum.

You are going to apply and apply and search and search for a job or a career that you want. The fact that you are looking for something for you that you like and you will love continuously has to be what drives you. Unless you want to be stuck in a position that you do not want and possibly hate. Believe that you are capable enough. You got a degree, so you know you’re smart and at the very least you know how to handle various subject of work under immense pressure. You may need to get a job that won't be your career and that’s okay. Save money, grow your resume, and find your career. Find what makes your life meaningful. Find what you believe in so that you can do whatever it is at 100 percent. You aren’t in school anymore, which means you can finally start your life the way you want to.