100 interviews. The journey to my dream career.

In May 2022, I was lost. As a senior in undergrad, post-studying abroad at #ucl , my plans for a master's degree were no longer as appealing, and I was already an entire year behind on finding a career for post-grad. I saw friends starting to get offers - endless posts of “I am thrilled to announce…” on LinkedIn. I remember feeling like I was falling behind, but also not really knowing what the solution was. I felt like I was never going to become an actual working adult.

I think one of the reasons why job-seeking can be so daunting is because most of us, even after four years of college, often don’t know what we want to do. Some of us are aware of our “dream jobs” at a young age, but I didn’t. How do I even find a job? LinkedIn? Agent? The recruiting posts would say things like “See if this job is a good fit!” but while the company seemed like knew what it wanted, I had no clue what I wanted. I remember reading the descriptions and thinking “Oh, I COULD do that” for almost everything, but I would feel nothing worth the motivation to even apply. Titles like “project manager” and “business analyst” had the allure of prestige, but meant nothing to me, since I didn’t know what those jobs actually meant.?

Basically, I was going around in unproductive circles, where I’d look for jobs, panic, hear that someone else had gotten a job, panic even more, and start over again, all while NOT knowing what kind of adult I actually wanted to be.?

In June 2022, I started to reach out to people to ask the honest questions on my mind, “What do you do every day?” “What’s your company like?” “Do you have lunch with your colleagues?” “What would you change about your job?” “How do you choose your career paths?” “Do you wear heels every day?” all while trying to get a better grasp of what/who/where I wanted to be.?

Over six months, what started as a little curiosity project led to hundreds of interviews, and a Google Docs of over 100 interview notes labeled “Interviews with Adults”. It’s kind of been just sitting in my drive until now. (with the gentle push by Cheryl Lau ) I’ve realized that maybe some of you might also want to hear more about what it’s like to work in a company/position/location, so I’ve decided to share the interviews in mini-posts! So stay tuned, and feel free to share it with others, and I hope it will help people as it has helped me. I will keep the sources anonymous bc of privacy!

Thank you to everyone who took the time to chat with me, and listen to my qualms about career-seeking. I promise to pass these acts of kindness and mentorship along!

Yay!

(side note: I still haven’t found my dream vision of myself as an adult, but these chats have helped me find my north star's general direction! Also was gifted A LOT of career wisdom. I can’t get the actual years of experience under my belt but I've realized that I can learn it from others;) )