Job Search

Last night I applied to businesses online for a summer job. I know that being home for two months without a job was a waste of time, but now, I feel ready to enter the working world. I have never had a real job before; I have tutored, delivered papers, babysat, etc. However nothing is sufficient enough for a good resume. And although creating a resume is hard enough, how do you know who exactly is going to read it? Or actually accept you? Or perhaps even just care enough to glance at it? And even then, with virtually no experience, is it possible to find a job today?

The fact is, is that this is a problem that seems to be EVERYWHERE. I am not the only university student facing this trouble; in fact, a vast majority of people my age are finding this search quite exhausting. Some of us have more experience than others, but it may not be the exact experience that employers are looking for. I for one, like many of my friends, could not have a job in high school. I was both too involved in extracurricular activities, and lived away from home during the academic year, making it hard to find someone to even consider someone young that spent only a short period of time at home. And for my friends that didn't live away at home, of course many of them didn't work; they wanted to spend as much time as they could on school so that they could have the best options for their future.

And yet now we are stuck. Not only us who are under the age of 20, but those above as well. Many graduates these days aren't finding jobs. It's not because they aren't searching, because they definitely are searching, in every place possible; and they are pretty much guaranteed to be leaving home. And it's not even necessarily because of the world-wide recession either. In my eyes, the problem is that employers are expecting too much of future employees straight away. How do you expect a graduate who slaved away at school to graduate with as many honours as possible (to even just qualify them for a decent job) to have multiple years of experience in that field?! It's ridiculous I think. Yes, I don’t blame employers for wanting someone who is well-experienced, well-involved, mature, and has a high understand of the task at hand…but where are you going to find such an individual?

My true question is how are any of us going to get experience for your employment opportunity if no one else gives us the opportunity to begin? Are we given cash handling experience, customer service experience, etc. when we are born? I don't think it is right for everyone to assume that somewhere out there that there are opportunities in their field and that everyone has found it. Have the graduates not paid enough for their education, and worked hard enough to be even glanced at? Honestly, our nations are being placed into more and more debt it seems each year, and education is explained as an answer to get rid of this. Well is student debt really going to aid our economy?

If we all need a higher education, and we all need experience to actually get a job, why not lower tuition so that we can actually afford to go to school and live afterwards without thousands of dollars floating on our shoulders? We are too young to be placed into debt for the rest of our lives. Or better yet, why don't we get offered a chance to have an interview with you and show you our true colours? There are many of us who may pleasantly surprise you with our life experience, morals, determination, enthusiasm, and work ethic. We may have hid in libraries, and been unsuccessful with finding even the simplest of jobs, but we learn; and we learn quickly. And we are tired of sitting…we want to go out and do something with our lives.

Will you give us a try?