Graduated 6 months ago and still nothing

[u/argrillo529]

I graduated with my BS in May and have been looking since last November, and so far I’ve gotten 4 interviews and tons of rejections. I’m ideally looking for anything R&D in cosmetics, personal care, or food industries, and my previous internship experience was assisting a local brewmaster with brewing, measurements, formula keeping, so it’s not as though the skills aren’t transferrable. Also, I applied to a job last November at a large North American consumer products company and didn’t get an interview. Last week, I decided to check their website again for anything else that happened to open up, and I see the same job (title and description identical) saying it was posted 2 weeks ago, and when I go to apply, the system says I cannot because I “have already applied to this job” from when I did in November.

Just saying I’m a little frustrated at: 1) colleges making it seem like a guarantee that you’ll have a job lined up immediately after graduation 2) companies seeming like they’re accepting applications but not seeming to fill them and making you waste time tweaking a resumé just for an AI to read it before a human does

[u/solitat4222]

4 interviews is actually not bad. The problem might be due to your interviewing skill rather than your resume.

Also depends on the distribution of when you are getting the interviews. If you got most of your interviews last year in november, then the problem is not your resume.

And if you arent getting interviews this season post graduation, heres why: you essentially leave the university recruiting pool. The problem you face now is for all the entry level roles for university grads, they generally only look at seniors and filter out the rest. You may think oh i just graduated recently so it shouldn’t be a problem. Nope, HR recruiters are shortsighted and use heuristics to filter out the hordes of resumes they receive. So essentially now, since youre out of the univ recruiting pool, your conpeting with experienced hires, every other engineer looking for a job. Not only that, despite being recently graduated, you still wont qualify for some of the rotational programs geared for univ grads. One of the hr recruiter at Marathon told me the single best advice: its best to stay in school and not graduate until you land a job.

So what should you do?

Keep applying to jobs. But you need a backup plan. What do you do in the meantime? The longer you wait while applying, the longer the gap period becomes which is really bad. Start applying to masters program. Go back to school. You can go back to the university recruiting pool where you stand a greater chance and also prevent a gap period as well.

[u/argrillo529 → u/solitat4222]

Actually most were in June/July after I graduated. Going back to school really isn’t an option for me. I just don’t want to and I already have loans from undergrad that I don’t want to add onto

[u/solitat4222 → u/argrillo529]

If financials is an issue, you only really have one option which is keep applying. There isnt really a silver bullet but make sure you apply broadly- dont limit yourself to just cosmetics.

If you got most your interviews in june this year, the problem is not your resume really (cant say for certain since never reviewed it) but has to do with your interview skills. 4 interviews is a lot. Thats 4 chances to landing a full time job. I would consider identifying what issues you might be aware of and get feedback from your previous interviews to improve