Gettin' lucky

All of us have one friend who’s incredibly smart, and worked his ass off all through college. He got straight A’s in all his classes, and got hired straight out of school by that one company he always dreamed of working for. Now he’s happily settled in a new apartment, working 40 hours a week at a nice cushy desk, and making tons of money.

Well, fuck him. For the vast majority of us, the world doesn’t work like that. For better or for worse, the sad truth is that we’re dependent on luck more than anything else to get us hired. Graduated with a degree in electrical engineering? Great, good for you. But that means nothing if there’s no one out there looking for a new, unproven electrical engineer to slowly ease into a job. You, just like the rest of us, are largely dependent on being in the right place at the right time.

In this economy, the luck factor even applies to those menial, hourly wage jobs that we all swore back in college that we’d never take. I’m currently employed at Best Buy; last summer I was an intern at a law firm, where I made literally double my current hourly wage. But of course, neither that law firm nor any others in Boston are now interested in hiring some kid fresh out of college with very little experience. Believe me, by now I’ve probably applied to 25 or 30 of them. And none of them so much as sent me an email back telling me how much I suck.

I was even lucky to get hired by Best Buy. After the fruitless quest to get a “real” job, I figured I’d go ahead and just work as a cashier or something to earn some money in the mean time. But once again, no matter where I applied, I never even got called back. I was starting to seriously doubt my own existence. Finally, one day, a manager from Best Buy called and offered me an interview. As we sat there and talked, he mentioned that the company had instituted a hiring freeze for the past several months, due to the economy, but had just decided to lift it and expand their workforce. So, I was simply in the right place at the right time.

The point of all this? Here’s the CliffsNotes version: no matter how many rejection letters (or just plain stony silence) you get from potential employers, just keep at it, and don’t get discouraged. It’s extremely frustrating to see no return on your efforts for a long time, but stay focused and hopeful and sooner or later your luck will turn around.

~Erik