I'm a millennial who graduated in 2010 into the post-recession mess of a job market.

After a couple of interviews my senior year of college that didn't turn into job offers, I moved back in with my parents and spent the summer after graduating working at the day camp I'd worked at since high school. 

Eventually, I moved to NYC with 2 friends in a 5th-floor walkup apartment just large enough for our fridge with fewer windows than bedrooms. 

I had one job that paid $10/hour doing fundraising prospecting for a small nonprofit where I was discouraged from collaborating with anyone else on the team and eventually fired myself for a small typo in an email to a potential donor, admonishing myself for the lack of professionalism to an absurd extent until my boss caved and agreed that perhaps I should wrap up.

I had one nannying gig for about $15/hour where a couple of days each week, I picked up a 10-year old from school, walked her home and helped with homework.

I took on another nannying job during the day for a few hundred dollars each week under the table as a co-nanny for a family which I eventually quit after one-too-many miserable experiences.

I taught guitar to a kid in the Upper East Side who was really into Lady Gaga and electronic pop music so we switched to playing in Garage Band for an hour each week.

Meanwhile over many months, I applied to hundreds of unpaid internships for nonprofits and NGOs, begging my entry to do unpaid labor with zero interviews.

I had forgotten just how competitive it was for these unpaid internships were until I re-watched the first episode of the show Girls, which depicted this all-too-well when Hannah, Lena Dunham's character, finally gets up the courage to assert to her boss that her circumstances have changed and she would like to be paid for her work, only for her boss to wish her well, and let her know that he gets 50 emails every day asking for an unpaid internship which he "practically routes to spam." (You can watch the clip here starting at :45)

Cool. 

Things changed when a friend and I had a casual chat about wanting to grow our entrepreneurial skills. It didn't matter the project really, it just had to be fun and challenging and give us a creative safe space to build stuff and be messy and learn along the way. That experience broke through into an internship with a nonprofit in a related field which helped me land a full time paid role in public health which unlocked doors to each next opportunity.

I share this not to say, "you think it's hard now?!" but to affirm that a shitty job market is always shitty and those of us who have been through it, some on multiple occasions, see how much it sucks and want to remind you that it's not your fault. 

Here are some words of wisdom, advice, and encouragement from others who have been through it:

Tara Johnson, Coach - https://www.radicalredefinition.com/

"While I was thankfully employed at the time, I was a university career advisor to undergraduate students who WERE navigating the tough market. Considering I was only 4 years out of undergrad myself at the time, the advice I’d give now is waaaay different than what I gave at the time knowing what I know now." - Here's what she would advise now:

1. Make relationship-building (NOT "networking") - an ongoing practice from an authentic, mutual beneficial place

2. Stay productive, inspired, and connected via professional development (free if you need it to be!)

3. Be careful not to attach your self-worth and sense of identity to your job search outcomes…it usually doesn’t mean anything about YOU

4. People ARE getting jobs right now - change your mental and actual algorithm!

Archana, Coach

"I had a job but couldn’t get a new one. So I was stuck in a role and not able to move up or out because of the state of the economy. I went back to school to navigate it like most of my friends. Instead of going back to school, it may have been better for me to start a ‘side hustle’ as the cool kids call it today and grow that into something substantial. Social media’s reign had just begun - LinkedIn, Twitter - and seeing how long that trend has lasted it would have made sense to bet on myself in a more direct way."

Katie Latham, Coach - https://www.changemakercareers.com/

"I was in school during that time so I was shielded from the worst of it. But even years after graduating, I couldn’t get a job in social impact. I spent about four years doing unpaid internships in the morning and then going to my insurance job at night. I would never advise a jobseeker to do unpaid labor for that long, it was a path to burnout (and it’s unethical). I will say, that while I hated being a claims adjuster with a firey passion, I learned people/communication skills there that have set me up for success for the rest of my life. By far it’s the job that gave me the most valuable set of skills because working with people is so essential (and impact orgs rarely offer training on this). My unrelated hot take is instead of required military service, I think as a country we should require everyone to work two years in customer service. I think as a result there would be less assholes and more empathy."

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Here's what I would say if I could speak directly to me in 2010 juggling a mess of part-time jobs and struggling to make inroads into my field - how might you stop asking for permission and start creating the solution you wish existed?  

It might not be big and it might not be full-time, but can you find small ways to raise funds for an issue you care about, bring people together to fight back against injustices, volunteer some small amount of time with an organization (check out Idealist.org for opportunities), or create your own Project-Based Networking approach that builds skills you want to develop and gives you the excuse to reach out to people in your desired field? 

So weirdly, I want to ask you to find more creativity, curiosity, and play along the way - even in the hardest, most uncertain, most foul of job markets, even if it's just 10 minutes of your week allowing yourself to daydream in a small in-between moment. 

Stay tuned for a one-day upcoming event on June 6th in NYC when you can do exactly this!