A survival guide for the newly unemployed
Take it from a 2015 graduate who is still trying to find his place in employment sector, getting a job is no joke. You may have all the qualifications you think you need but there are many other forces at work that if are not on your side, you are going to struggle finding anything you may deem worthy of your education and the hustle you’ve encountered along the way.
While you are still in the streets or you have a job that is taking you nowhere, here are few survival tips just to say sane: –
Be resilient.
With the current job market and economy that seems to have nothing in mind rather than screw us up, one of the few things that may help you weather the storm is resilience. Life has a terrible sense of humor, when she decides that things will go wrong; trust me; everything will seem to bow to the order. Prepare yourself for anything and be sure to keep calm when your life seems like nothing but a big heap of trash.
Anticipate bad things happening .
Sounds crazy but hear me out; when we are caught off guard it’s very difficult to deal with whatever misfortune is in front of us. Anticipating and creating scenarios for bad things in your life sounds stupid especially in the optimism age where we are supposed to allow only positive thoughts only; I’d like to differ. No matter how optimistic you are, life sucks; big time. At any given moment things can turn in the way you never thought they would and there are two things that will help; one of them being your ability to anticipate these terrible things before they happen.
This is exactly like reading for a surprise test, you don’t know when but you are sure you will eventually face the exam; be prepared.
New skills? YES PLEASE
In most cases, degrees earned rarely have application outside of the fields we’ve studied which narrows down things graduates can do/ are good at to one or two specific things. Specialization is not a bad thing but you may starve to death while waiting for an opportunity to open up for you so do the next best thing; learn new skills. Websites like Allison, Udemy offers wide range of different courses at a cheap price or sometimes free. Instead of using YouTube to watch pranks and football highlights how about you widen up that range by searching for tutorials on some of your hobbies?
If you can afford it, volunteer .
What you know matters but more importantly who knows you plays a great deal in making sure that you get that dream job of yours; in most cases. The least you can do is looking for volunteer opportunities, you will build network, people will notice you, and your talents will be out there. Putting yourself out there is important, you will start to experience corporate culture, have hands on experience on your field which will definitely increase your marketability.
Keep an open mind.
We’ve all had a perfect picture of how our lives will turn out, we’ve mapped everything. We chose our career paths, we decide our salaries even before getting out of university, this is the worst jail you need to break out of. If you are fixated on the dream castle you built as a student, the chances are you will take almost forever to get exactly that. By keeping an open mind, you will be able to see opportunities that may be way far from what you envisioned but still will take you one step closer. It may be a long road but in time you will get to the top. Improvise and adapt.
Written by- George P. Owino
Twitter- @IamOwino
