I’d been putting off a moment for a long time — the moment when I start applying for jobs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While I was working on my last degree, I was told frequently and confidently that I would have no trouble finding a job — physics can be used anywhere, and people with the degree are in high demand… so I was told. Well, it turns out that physics, without experience in anything else, is only useful for graduate school, which I had no interest in. It took me half a year after graduating to give up my efforts and take a job unrelated to anything I was interested in, until I could figure out what to do next (spoiler alert, OSU was my next step). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Because I was assured time and time again that I could easily get a job, and then proceeded to find it impossible <\/em>to even get an interview, I’d been feeling some deja vu lately. “Software engineers are in high demand right now! You’ll have no problem finding a job!” Sound familiar? <\/p>\n\n\n\n But, things are looking different this time around. For one, I’m applying to a lot more jobs than I did a few years ago. I’m 23 years old — I don’t need the job to be perfect, I need experience and then <\/em>can focus on the perfect job. This was not something I understood the first time around. I have a spreadsheet full of the jobs I’ve applied to, jobs I’ve heard of, companies I want to look into, and the spreadsheet is vast. <\/em>I have to color code it to navigate it! This isn’t to say I’ll take any<\/em> job, just that my standards are much more realistic, and it’s opening a lot of opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The second thing I’ve learned is how to network. I always thought networking was sending messages to random people on LinkedIn that I liked their company and wanted a job, or going to career\/networking fairs. It turns out the best networking strategy was just to talk to the people I know about what I’m pursuing. Telling people you’re graduating soon and that you’re really excited about your future in computer science is a great segway into the fact that their cousin works at such-and-such company and would be happy to talk sometime. Who knew networking was that <\/em>easy? <\/p>\n\n\n\n This is all to say that I had an interview today, have an interview tomorrow, and have another scheduled in a couple of weeks. While my spreadsheet is long, I’ve only been applying for a couple of weeks, so I’m feeling hopeful that I’ll get more interview requests soon! This course of events is so contrary to the crickets I was expecting, and it’s extremely uplifting! <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d been putting off a moment for a long time — the moment when I start applying for jobs. While I was working on my last degree, I was told frequently and confidently that I would have no trouble finding a job — physics can be used anywhere, and people with the degree are in… Continue reading Interviews!<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11948,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11948"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bartonme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}