To All the Job Seekers During the Pandemic

To all the job seekers right now,?

In the morning of 12/25/2020, I woke up and sat on my bed scrolling on Facebook and LinkedIn and thinking to spend the rest of my day like this until I saw a post on LinkedIn from a Harvard student. He shared his current job hunting progress with rejections he received. He said that LinkedIn (along with other social media) serve as a trophy case for him to only share his proudest moments in life and he is guilty of disclosing the struggles only when they are hidden behind accomplishments to generate a more pleasant narrative. I think this post is the greatest Christmas gift I received this year. His post really touched me and gave me courage to face the job market during the pandemic. Stories like this are way more powerful than simply saying “ Good luck, you got this!” - kind of cheering statements. Thus, I decided to share my story, too. Because you’ll never know if this story will help someone behind the screen, doubting self-worthiness or successfulness like me.??

For people who know me, I’ve been passionate about helping ESL students, giving them advice and trying to help them reach academic success because I once suffered with the language barrier. But I realized when I shared my past experiences, I always focused on how I succeed, and what works for me instead of how I failed and what doesn’t work. I am also guilty of utilizing these social media as my trophy case to share my proudest and most successful moments and unintentionally trying to conceal my failures along the way. I’m not saying that people should stop posting their successful stories. They should, and in fact I am still waiting for the day for me to post something like that. But while we are doing that, stop and think for a moment what doesn’t go well in the journey or just simply share more about the current challenge you face to add a more diverse perspective on social media.?

I am a recent graduate from a UC and have been on the job hunting process since July. I’ve applied to many many jobs and got 100% rejections, which is why I am still unemployed right now. During this period, I seek many help to revise my resume, taking online classes to gain additional skills, talking to career counselors and networking virtually to seek areas of improvement. While doing all these, all I got is still rejections or no response. But I want to take some time to really really tell myself, I am grateful and successful. In 2020, I graduated from a 4 year university, I got to go back home in Taiwan to visit my families, expand my network and meet new friends from a GRE tutoring program, and found my new career goal and area of interests. I am still slowly learning to eliminate the negativities as new rejections roll into my mailbox and stop comparing myself to people I’ve seen on LinkedIn or other social media who had their dream job or dream life at similar age. I appreciate this period as it allows me to have time for self-reflection and taking actions to improve myself.?

At the end, I appreciate you, who read through the passage, and I appreciate your time. I hope my story will comfort you in this hard time and give you some courage to keep trying in the job market and make you believe that you are good enough and qualify for all the jobs you applied for. Merry Christmas and happy new year.