10 Ways to Navigate the Job Market after Graduation
By: Pauli Raivio
Tags: Job Search, Postgraduate, Career Advice, Work, Meaningful Work

10 Ways to Navigate the Job Market after Graduation

Photo by Sora Shimazaki on Pexels

So, you have just graduated, and all the possibilities are open to you. There’s nothing to stop you, and the only clouds on the horizon are the piling loans you eventually must pay.

Soon you’ll find out that landing your dream job isn’t as easy as you thought. Good jobs are scarce, and the competition is brutal. Advancing your career is slow and requires a lot of entry-level brainless work.

The situation isn’t going to change, but you can. By reframing your thinking-patterns and reactions, you can thrive where most will burn themselves out.

These guidelines are not any case-sensitive quick fixes but merely suggestions to think in a new way and maybe find some perspective if you feel like you’re stuck.

1. Find out what’s truly meaningful in life

If you think that money is a super important part of life, you might be misguided. Money can hardly even buy meaningful things. However, most of us serve money as an end as if it were some accurate measuring device of our general success in life.

In addition to money, many other things seem important but are not. For example, it feels that it’s important to keep up with fashion and trends. Being completely honest to ourselves, we realize how vain that also is.

You can reveal these illusions by contemplating humanity in a slightly broader context. Most people in the world don’t even have the potential access to the riches we happen to be privileged to have. It is rather short-sighted to see them as somehow necessary to the human experience.

Some thinkers say that such a generalization cannot be made, as individuals have the right to decide what they consider important.

Nonsense. Don’t let this kind of thinking fool you. Most credible ethicists and information theorists reject relativism as wasteful and problem-oriented. If everyone can feel and say anything about anything, we no longer have any reference points to build our moral thinking from.

This is also why individualists have a hard time finding meaningfulness in their lives. By taking a broader look at humanity across cultural contexts, we can discover universal values ​​and things related to society.

These include love, health, helping others, flow experiences, and harmony with the world. In this context, money and thriving in your work-life are ultimately secondary objectives.

Try this:

Write down ten things or values ​​that are important to you. Don’t spend too much time figuring out their mutual order. Then go through your list step by step, asking yourself what you would feel and what you would do if you lost the thing in the list.

If you experience deep sadness and confusion, it is likely to be profoundly important and irreplaceable. If, on the other hand, you felt mostly anger or bitterness and wondered how to deal with the loss, then it probably isn’t that important after all.

Be honest.

Then, go through the list again and make a rough estimate of how much you invest in these things weekly. You may be surprised by the results.

2. Own your story and meanings

Social comparison is always present when there are two or more people around. However, you might want to consider whether the comparisons are worth the effort.

If we compare ourselves to others to get a more accurate picture of ourselves, we often fall prey to self-centered delusions and wrong conclusions because our point of view might be too narrow.

If, on the other hand, we make comparisons to raise self-esteem, we expose both ourselves and the other into a zero-sum game of self-esteem where one’s victory is always the other’s loss.

Also, be aware of the temptations to victimize yourself, blaming the world around you for all your miseries. In this game, your piece of the cake always feels smaller than you think you deserve.

Ultimately, it’s entirely up to you how you see the world and yourself. It’s not easy, but you are free to choose and write your own story no matter how miserable the beginning it had or how dark it may seem at the moment.

Nothing in this world is permanent, nor should your identity be. There is no point in labeling yourself as this or that in your working life. Keep your eyes open and widen your horizon. Opportunities will present themselves as never before.

Try this:

Write down a short story about yourself. Describe who you are, where you came from, and especially where you are heading.

After this, ask your friend or relative to describe you similarly. Compare the two stories and seek out where the differences and similarities are.

The point is to try to find if you truly see yourself as you are acting out. Read your description frequently and rewrite it from time to time. Be aware of your choices and always seek to live as your ideal self would.

3. Accept the facts and use them to your advantage

Working life will not become more favorable, and your dream job will not be found by complaining about the circumstances. Accepting the prevailing conditions frees up many resources that you would otherwise spend on shouting against storms.

Remember that the rules of the game are the same for everyone. Learn them, build your strategy, and start playing.

Try this:

Try to catch yourself every time you complain about the circumstances you cannot control or change. Try to come up with a sanction each time you find yourself complaining. This can be anything from push-ups to putting money aside like in a swear-jar system.

It’s even more useful to play with a friend.

4. Develop your willpower and self-control

The ability to control yourself and make educated choices amid temptation is one of the single biggest factors predicting, whether one can accomplish her goals or thrive in a given context.

People with strong willpower are generally capable of squeezing a little more out of themselves and thus gradually getting ahead.

The good news is that you can develop your willpower by practice, and you can charge your self-control systems by merely providing the brain with the necessary energy and sufficient rest.

It’s hard to maintain high willpower in every aspect of life, and it probably wouldn’t be worth it even if you could. Too much self-control can make you a robot.

If you are currently planning your next move on the job market, aim your efforts mostly on that project. Imagine it as a game you have committed yourself to win. You can take it easier with the other stuff for a while.

Try this:

Make a list of the five most important stuff you need to do next with your career situation. It might include updating your LinkedIn-profile or rewriting your resume.

Prioritize these things above all else and give them your best effort. You can reward yourself using your spare time doing something you don’t need lots of self-control to do.

5. Don’t try to predict the future, but instead make good choices right now

People are generally poor at predicting the future. You might have heard of the dart-throwing monkeys that beat the brokers at choosing the winning stocks. While it, of course, isn’t that black and white, it still reminds us how random the world around us is.

We like to think that we’re in control and can see where our choices are taking us when ultimately there are just too many moving factors to consider.

Don’t lose your determination or goals in your personal life but avoid picturing your future life situation in a fixed way.

In addition to our low predictive ability, we are optimistic about our capabilities and the amount of time we spend on our goals. It’s more of a rule than an exception that we have to alter our plans on the way.

It’s much more efficient to be aware of the current situation and not overthink about what will happen in the future. Don’t worry; your mind will always find plausible arguments to justify your situation, no matter where you land.

Try this:

Think about your life at this moment. Then contemplate honestly, would you have been able to predict it two or five years ago. What were your dreams and goals back then, and were you able to accomplish them? Are you still on your chosen path?

Great if you are, but also great if you are not. Just enjoy the ride and keep doing the right and good things. You reap what you sow.

6. Don’t give others a head-start on the obvious stuff

To survive in the current job market, you have to think of it as a competition. You wouldn’t give your opponents a head-start in a running race, so why would you in the race to land your dream job.

Things like writing a solid application, updating your resume and LinkedIn-profile, finding new opportunities, networking, and managing interviews are all skills that you can learn. Sure, they are hard to master and come easier to some, but you have to be willing to work for your goals as always.

If you managed through your degrees with them dusty set books, you indeed could manage to master the job-seeking skills.

Note that the most important of these are your interaction skills. Train yourself to speak and stay relaxed with strangers, and you have nothing to worry about. Opportunities arise for those willing to speak their mind.

Try this:

Open your browser and type “how to land your dream job” or something similar. Internet is full of advice to help with the basic stuff.

Concentrate on the things you are at your weakest at the moment. There is no point honing your resume further if you struggle to voice yourself out in a group interview.

7. By serving others, you serve yourself

A lot of people feel entitled to greatness and think that the world should resonate with their ambitions. It’s tempting to consider your own story more important than someone else’s by the same principles.

It’s common to feel that you have somehow found deeper meanings and gone through more struggles than the rest, but occasionally it’s healthy to remember that everyone feels pretty much the same way.

Happiness is usually not found by concentrating on yourself, your story, or your self-esteem. Psychologist Roy Baumeister points out that the more individual-oriented the community is, the more they are drawn to unhealthy forms of escapism such as drugs, alcohol, masochism, eating disorders, and ultimately suicides.

You can find true happiness in the community and the people around you, not by comparing but by connecting and serving.

People who put their careers and projects ahead of their families soon find that the family is just a project among others, and besides, a failing one. The relationship starts to feel a burden, and the kids learn and carry the uncertainty and poisonous atmosphere to adulthood.

Our loved ones are our greatest resource, and the more you give, the more you get. Don’t prioritize work or job search over them, no matter how important your individual story might feel.

You get the most out of your work life by forgetting your spotlight and using your time to help others. It’s is not a sacrifice but an investment.

Try this:

Name five people that are important to you. Reflect on how much you have spent time with them during the last month or year. Only count the time you have spent doing something meaningful together.

How could you be more proactive in communicating and connecting with them? How can you help your loved ones more and make them feel better?

Invest in the people around you. The returns are enormous and certain.

8. Stop seeing risks and threats everywhere

Our minds are programmed to be always alert against potential threats. Modern-day threats are more symbolic than real. Who wouldn’t have rejected an opportunity to participate in something enjoyable, just because they feel it might be embarrassing or look weird?

We also imagine risks and disappointments where they do not exist. In the context of job-seeking, you might reject great opportunities by shutting down and feeling that you are not qualified to do the job or even apply.

What is there to lose? Not more than the time you have to spend with applying.

Be brave and dive open-minded to new opportunities. Your fear is the only thing holding you back. I recommend Mel Robbins’ audiobook Take Control of Your Life if you struggle with the anxiety that constrains you. Most of us are.

Try this:

Name all the possible things and scenarios that can go wrong when seeking a job or planning your next career move. If it’s hard to come up with the things you have gotten the point of the exercise.

Also, try to name the things and fears that are holding you back. Are they something that you can work on, or are they mostly just imagined things?

9. Never accept unfairness

As mentioned before, accepting your current situation will free up your mental resources to operate optimally. However, this doesn’t mean that we should accept unfairness or oppression.

For example, women’s status in the job market is still not the same as men’s, even though improvements have been made.

It’s hard for an individual to change the world, but she might start massive avalanches or be part of them. If you feel that you are in a disadvantageous position, act systematically so that the situation will improve.

Remember not to fall into a continuous loop of complaining without any action. Be solution-centered and always try to act proactively with a solution in mind instead of the problem. To change the world, we need more than just a loud opposition.

Try this:

Consider whether you are in a fair and equal position in the job market. If not, write down five things that would change the situation.

Are you regularly acting so that the situation would change over time? How can you positively affect your peers to make them work the same way?

10. You live only once. Don’t waste this opportunity

Spiritual teachers, gurus, prophets, happiness-psychologists, and new-age hippies seem to all agree on one thing: happiness and peace come from within, and the external context plays only a small part in the path to happiness.

Living in the moment, being able to experience your life fully, and accepting the chaos around you are the ways to slowly but steadily find a more peaceful and harmonious existence.

Strangely, we have to invent the wheel again and again with a little bit of a new design. Ultimately, human problems are pretty much the same, no matter how much the world seems to have altered since our ancestors’ days.

If you want to live your life more fully, start with the paths already explored and documented by the past’s great teachers. There are no shortcuts; you still need to walk the path yourself. Keep in mind that the journey precisely is the point, not the result.

Anyone can find happiness and meaning in life, but she needs to be willing to sweat a little. Win the yesterday-you today and live fully, no matter how desperate things might seem just now.

All the things listed above are not any universal truths and maybe lousy advice for your unique situation. As always, add them to your current knowledge, compare them, and decide if you want to add something to your bag of useful tools and thinking models.

Stay critical and never believe if someone insists that things are this or that without nuances.

Thank you for reading!