One To World

Over the past summer, as I was showing my friends around the greatest city in the world, I had made a casual remark about how walking through Manhattan was essentially walking past every single company that has ever rejected a job application from me. Having applied for a million and one jobs and having gone through an infinite number of one night stand equivalents - a moment of bliss when I get the call for an interview, the awkward waiting period afterwards, and then ultimately, rejection –  I realize that I’ve learned a lot (aka developed a long list of complaints) from my job-hunting expeditions.

The first lesson being that rejection letters have a lot of room for improvement. The “Dear X, while you are a highly qualified candidate, you aren’t good enough” letter is anything but consolatory. How about something nicer? I bet you would feel good about yourself if a company wrote to you: “Dear X, You are an amazing candidate and we would hire you on the spot if not for the fact that we require employees to jump in front of a moving train while gathering radioactive sludge and fighting off mutant geese that like to breathe fire. We just value your life too much to put you through that. So we hired a chump instead.”

The second lesson was that career fairs are mechanisms of torture. Who likes to stand in line for half an hour to talk to a recruiter for 15 seconds? Not to mention the fact that recruiters then use up those precious 15 seconds to tell you to apply online. You mean I could have been stuffing my face with ice cream and clicking away at my computer in a zen-like coma instead of standing  in line for hours in shoes that hurt while suffocating from the heat generated by hundreds of people crammed into one tiny room? You should have said something sooner.

Cute but clueless. 

And the third lesson was that it helps to know what you’re applying for. Back in the day - when I was a naïve college freshman - I had applied for an internship and did not quite know how to prepare for the interview. When my interviewer asked me a question about the industry, I stared at her - and did the goldfish. Let’s just say it’s not very attractive to open and close your mouth like a fish gasping for its’ last breath as it flops around on the floor right before it drops dead when you're trying to come up with an appropriate response.

Needless to say, I didn’t get the job. Forever afterwards, however, I have been very diligent about doing my homework before going to any interview. And externships, where you interact with someone in your chosen industry or shadow them for a day, are a great way to prepare for interviews. It's a chance to learn about the industry that you want to work in and the types of positions that you want to apply for because you’re getting facts straight from the source.

Last weekend, for example, I met with a lady who worked in a field that I want to establish a career in. Although it was just an informational interview, I learned a lot more from the hour that I spent talking to her than I would ever have learned from googling. The best part was that I was able to directly ask her what employers look for when hiring and what I can do to make myself stand out.

So do yourself a favor. Don’t do the awkward goldfish: take advantage of the job shadowing opportunity that One To World offers to students. It's a worthwhile investment.