I still need to catch up with blog posts. Even though this post is no longer relevant because I started with a new job in September 2015, I felt I still had to share my thoughts on career prospects from before that month, around May 2015.
When I started the fourth year of high school, the head teacher gave all students an inspiring speech. He showed a photo of a mountain and told us we were close to making it to the summit. “When you reach the summit, you will see taller mountains to be climbed in the distance”, he said. Those mountains were tough to ascend for me at times. During my first years of higher education, I almost got buried by an avalanche and was close to abandoning the climb. Someone even told me I would not be able to climb the most challenging mountain in sight. With my perseverance I did manage to complete the ascent of that mountain after all in August 2012. I found a postgraduate degree in Public Administration on the summit there.
From the top, I could see Career Mountain, which became my new goal. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but after my past achievements I was confident I could climb it without too much difficulty. While making my way to the mountain’s base, I was surprised to find myself descending towards Crisis Valley instead, where the Lost Generation languishes. Their weeping and gnashing of teeth grows louder as time passes on.
I’m disappointed and angry with my current career development. It’s basically non-existent. During my studies I got a part time job at OGD, an IT company. Since I graduated, I’m still employed by them on a flexible contract to do temporary work in IT. Since 2012 I still work as a service desk agent or assistant system administrator, because opportunities to get a job more suitable to my level of education didn’t work out. I might have gotten an annual contract for the work I currently do if I hadn’t been so optimistic about my chances of finding more interesting work elsewhere. I didn’t negotiate well with Human Resources either. But I want to emphasize that I’m actually very grateful to them. On their education budget, I acquired certifications in ITIL and PRINCE2. Without them, I would have had more difficulty in finding work and wouldn’t have gained valuable experience.
Each time I look at LinkedIn and see how other people I know from university did manage to land good jobs, I turn green with envy. When read in Intermediair, a Dutch magazine dedicated to career-building, how much people with specific jobs make or how quickly they found their job after graduating, I grow very jealous. Both activities are guaranteed to devastate my optimism and state of mind for one day.
I experience a complex, contradictory collection of emotions. I feel inferior and worthless compared to others who do have an annual contract while I have to suffer with the uncertainty of a flexible contract. On the other hand I feel superior to them when I scrutinize their profiles on LinkedIn. When I see spelling errors or notice how they landed great jobs with dubious, unrelated degrees like language studies and such, I content myself with the thought that they must be idiots who do not deserve such jobs.
Fortunately, my rational side never allows the emotional side to take over. Even though it’s hard and confrontational, I continue to read LinkedIn profiles of others to determine how I could learn from their accomplishments. Sometimes I ask them for advice. I use my network and request people I know if they can help me with circulating my resume, which is reasonably successful so far. Reflecting on my performance with job applications, I’ve determined that my application letters are good, but passing assessments with intelligence tests can be a problem. My greatest weakness is that I’m not convincing enough during job interviews. With some trial and error I’ve already gotten better at them, but I want to improve it further with the help of several Human Resources professionals I can count as friends.
However, improving my job hunting skills is harder than it seems. Because I’ve had no alternative other than doing temporary work in IT since I graduated in 2012, I’ve now reached a point where I’m no longer eligible for traineeships. In their desire for blank slates, recruiters demand that you have no more than a few years of work experience and that you are a recent graduate. Neither apply to me anymore, and increasingly my job applications are being rejected based on this argument. I argue that my work experience should not be considered because it’s all temporary work rather than a real job, no different from a part time job for students. The recruiters don’t care about my arguments, and why should they if they can choose from a steady supply of recent graduates? At the same time, my experience gained with temporary work is often not sufficient when I apply for jobs which are not traineeships and do require relevant experience. I’m between a rock and a hard place.
The only viable way to escape from this no-win situation is to forget about landing a traineeship and gain more relevant experience. I’ve made important strides in this regard: I’ve acquired certifications in ITIL and PRINCE2, with the ambition to get a Lean Six Sigma certificate in the future. As the Secretary of the Board for the South Holland branch of Dutch Green party I’ve gained experience with organizing events. I’ve continued to contribute plenty of content to the English Wikipedia. All these activities illustrate my skills, but will it be enough to convince the recruiters?
Some have told me it is best to shut up about my difficulties in the job market. But I’m done with keeping quiet, I want to tell the truth. We’re all human and every person has to deal with adversity in life. If you are a recruiter and conclude I’m unworthy of employment at your company because I still haven’t found a decent job since I graduated in 2012, I don’t want to work for your company in the first place. There are many people like me, maybe even worse off because they chose to study for degrees like Art History, who have a hard time in the job market. Don’t discard them because they were forced to do irrelevant temporary work due to the crisis. They do not need to be treated differently from starters, even if they are approaching their thirties and have more work experience. In fact, all the difficulty they face in the job market has probably made them more resilient than those people who come fresh out of university and manage to find a job within a month or two.
There is only one certainty for me, that I will persevere in my search for a real job. I’ve been telling this myself for almost three years now, but what good will pessimism do? Always keep thinking positively. It’s understandable I’m envious of colleagues with a better job and contract, but one of those is physically handicapped and another lost his girlfriend to cancer. In that perspective I should be content with my life, everything is relative.