graduated but no jobs
Hi HN,
I just graduated from college and don’t have a job yet. I’m trying to figure out what to focus on next, and I’d love some advice.
A little about me:
– I contribute to open-source projects.
– I’ve done a few internships during college, mainly building full-stack web apps.
– Worked in a few startups, also mainly on full-stack projects.
– Built full-stack apps for clients.
– Ran a fun YouTube channel for a few months.
– Built some AI-powered apps using tools like OpenAI.
– Solved 100+ DSA problems to improve my coding skills.
With AI tools now, I can build full-stack apps by prompting and understand all the code. But I’m not sure what to focus on next: Should I deeply master a stack like MERN, or keep experimenting with AI and building different projects?
I’ve tried a lot of things — side projects, internships, open-source, AI apps — but I don’t feel like I’ve truly mastered anything yet.
Has anyone been in a similar situation? What would you do if you were me?
Thanks in advance.
While applying for jobs, try to build a network that's actually meaningful. Don't just blindly connect with people on LinkedIn, rather, try to develop relationships with people.
You're essentially caught in a bad spot right now and will likely need to resort to some old-school cold calling like what sales people do. Only difference will be that "no" means no here. You're selling yourself, but you don't want people to hate you while in the process of that.
The reason I'm mentioning the above is because cold-applying to random posts on LinkedIn, Indeed, etc, results in about a 5% response rate. So I mean do the cold applications because something is better than nothing, but ultimately, you're going to need to do more.
An additional reason I'm mentioning doing this form of "cold-calling" is because recruiters are overwhelmed, but no one seems to want to admit this. They are inundated with applications that all look identical, but instead of only getting 100-200 applications for a position (which is still a lot), they're getting 500+. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the cold-application response rate has dropped closer to 1%-2%.
> Has anyone been in a similar situation? What would you do if you were me?
The truth is, this downturn is a little more unique than those in the past. AI and people gaming the system is wreaking havoc on the jobs pipeline in addition to the economic aspect of things.
As for anything else you should do: turn off sensational social media and try to block the doom and gloom. It will not help you.
If your financial situation allows it, I'd recommend you take some time off to recharge and reflect on what you'd want to do next. You've likely come off the hamster wheel, so to speak, and now is sorta lost. All the regular structures/incentives you relied on before is gone and there are uncertainties everywhere.
If you're not in a good financial position, stabilizing your finances would be the first priority. I would focus on developing your professional networks and reaching out to past colleagues etc for job leads/referrals. You're at a stage where you've very little to lose and everything to gain from any interaction with reality/real-world problems.
Working on AI/vibe-coding, esp understanding the fundamentals, will be advantageous as everyone is still figuring things out. Your lack of experience won't hurt you as much, since no one really have any. Be careful with using too much AI assistance for learning, as it can actually slow you down and give you a feeling of compentency/productivity without deep understanding.
Good luck!
A lot of people do the same thing, except they have 5 years of experience on top of yours and still don't have jobs.
It sounds like you're already a good enough candidate - most people don't know and don't care about basic things like how a CDN works or what's the difference between TCP and UDP. And all the DSA grinding in the world don't help if you don't know the basics. If you go deep, you could be going deep into something with no value.
There's generally two things interviewers look for - smart and gets things done. You're smart enough, now you have to get the job.
As unexpected as it may sound, I think you should focus on getting a job.
When you get some actual experience of solving business tasks, dealing with colleagues and superiors, spending 8/5 at work and so on, it will be easier to make these decisions, and with a year or two of experience you get more options to choose from.
Work on finding a job. You could spend a lot of time learning a stack, then get a job that is for something completely different. Your future job will dictate what you learn next.
You need to shift from education mode to employment mode.
You’ll never feel like you’ve mastered anything. You’re done with college so now is the time to figure out what sort of career you’d like.
If you're comfortable taking advice from a complete rando, find a job doing something, anything in generative AI. It's hot, will remain hot until the bubble pops, and you should be able to get a foothold in the org if you can demonstrate competency with some code and hitting LLM endpoints. Use that foothold to ensure you can keep the job when the bubble pops, and you can pivot to other engineering work in the org. Failing all of that, you'll at least have some experience and some network you otherwise wouldn't have. Good luck.