Application Anarchy: What is happening with the job market?

Are you a stu­dent apply­ing to intern­ships or jobs? How has the process been? The job mar­ket has hit a low point that is affect­ing thou­sands of under­grad­u­ates and grad­u­ates. In this episode your host, Delaney Wilkins, will explore top­ics regard­ing the cur­rent job mar­ket, such as AI usage and LinkedIn tips. You will hear from two grad­u­at­ing stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut that have expe­ri­ence with the appli­ca­tion process and may pro­vide com­fort to any­one struggling.

Tran­script:

Delaney: As most col­lege stu­dents have pro­claimed, the job mar­ket is rough. Hun­dreds of com­pa­nies are look­ing for interns, yet rarely any­one seems to be get­ting offers. Why is this? We are liv­ing in an ever chang­ing world and that trans­lates into the job mar­ket. Whether it is jobs using AI to sort through appli­cants, or the record num­ber of appli­cants, it is unde­ni­ably an issue every unem­ployed per­son has noticed. Wel­come to Appli­ca­tion Anar­chy, where we dis­cuss every aspect of the appli­ca­tion process. Today I will be joined by two Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut stu­dents, Mia Keaz­er and Maken­na Rozzi. Mia is a stu­dent work­er in the UConn Cen­ter for Career Readi­ness and life skills. Maken­na is a senior who will be grad­u­at­ing in two weeks who has been through the process. These two per­spec­tives should pro­vide hope and com­fort to all those who are going through the appli­ca­tion process or will be in the future. Even with resources through the school, it can be hard to get your foot in the door. Many com­pa­nies have got­ten rid of their intern­ship pro­grams or are in hir­ing freezes. This cre­ates less oppor­tu­ni­ties for col­lege stu­dents and grad­u­at­ing stu­dents. How­ev­er, it also becomes an issue for com­pa­nies. They are typ­i­cal­ly unable to offer these oppor­tu­ni­ties as it is either not in their bud­get or they can’t offer as much work for interns to make it worth their while.

Mia Keaz­er: I was kind of spear­head­ing this mar­ket­ing plan for the alum­ni res­i­dence pro­gram which basi­cal­ly con­nects cur­rent under­grads with alum­ni for men­tor­ship oppor­tu­ni­ties. So super cool. With­in that I did a bunch of like, like every­thing you can think of for mar­ket­ing, like adver­tise­ments, email cam­paigns. If you’ve ever got­ten an email say­ing check out this alum­ni res­i­dence pro­gram it’s prob­a­bly me. basi­cal­ly a mix of every­thing. So I’ve been work­ing on that most of the year. And I also like scout alum­ni for dif­fer­ent alum­ni fac­ing activ­i­ties at UConn, so like class­room vis­its or you know, like vir­tu­al pan­els or in per­son pan­els, stuff like that.

Delaney: How do we shape our­selves to fit com­pa­nies? With the state of tech­nol­o­gy, every­one and every­thing is look­ing for the next best thing out there. As some­one who is in a cre­ative major field, there is always a port­fo­lio aspect. There are a num­ber of peo­ple on Tik­Tok and LinkedIn who have shared their port­fo­lios that have land­ed them jobs. Let’s just say they are not your stan­dard port­fo­lio. One girl applied for an intern­ship with Vic­to­rias Secret. This port­fo­lio and appli­ca­tion was com­plete­ly tai­lored towards the com­pa­ny, using graph­ics to mim­ic the style of the com­pa­ny. This is a stan­dard that a lot of com­pa­nies have begun to uphold, but it is not specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed. The com­pa­ny want to see how you can mold to fit them. Every appli­ca­tion must be tai­lored to the com­pa­ny, which cre­ates a lengthy process.

Mia Keaz­er: My super­vi­sor Mary actu­al­ly told me, so I kind of got into that rhythm of like, Easy apply­ing on LinkedIn to like, so many jobs. And, she used to be some sort of like, like recruiter or like, she helped peo­ple get jobs, some­thing like that. Sor­ry, Mary. I for­get. But she said that, like, she would see a lot of suc­cess when peo­ple real­ly just like, honed in on their goals and like, what they actu­al­ly want and then just applied to jobs that they were gen­uine­ly inter­est­ed in. And I was like, ugh like, it’s sounds like, I’m like, oh, that’s not gonna get me any­where. But sure, Mary, like alright but I actu­al­ly start­ed doing that and like, we were able to sit down and just have a con­ver­sa­tion about, like, what I’m actu­al­ly look­ing for. And through that con­ver­sa­tion, I real­ized that I was so all over the place. Like, I was just look­ing at any ran­dom job. Like, I’ve always been like, oh, I want to work. Like, I don’t want to go back to New Hamp­shire where I’m from. I want to like, I want to move into a city or like, have some sort of like, like a remote job where I can like, com­mute to a city, like, or hybrid, what­ev­er. But I was, you know, I was apply­ing their jobs, like, ran­dom ones, like com­mu­ni­ca­tions coor­di­na­tor for the state of Maine. And I’m like, I don’t want to do that. Like, just I was putting my name on any appli­ca­tion that I saw. And so once we kind of nar­rowed down what I want­ed, I was like, wow, like, this actu­al­ly makes me feel a lot bet­ter. Like, even if I was­n’t see­ing, like, I would­n’t say it opened up more pos­si­bil­i­ties for me, but I just felt more secure and I felt bet­ter. So that was great. And then I real­ly do, you know, once I start­ed putting effort into, like, cov­er let­ters and like, tai­lor­ing my resume to each indi­vid­ual job, I did start see­ing more results.

Delaney: A dig­i­tal age has cre­at­ed a new lev­el of dif­fi­cul­ty with the process. Cold call­ing used to be a nor­mal part of the process. Now it is seen as dis­re­spect­ful to the process. Every­thing is meant to be done online, often through sec­ond or third par­ty web­sites like LinkedIn or Hand­shake. These web­sites make the process feel less per­son­able. To add to that feel­ing, many appli­ca­tions ask, are you okay with the use of AI to review your appli­ca­tion? This cre­ates a whole new lay­er of dig­i­tal imper­son­abil­i­ty. That aspect has raised a few ques­tions from me and oth­ers. How are we sure that the appli­ca­tions are being looked at by hir­ing man­agers. How are we sure all appli­ca­tions are giv­ing a fair chance?

Mia Keaz­er: I know that com­pa­nies use it to, you know, like look at resumes real­ly quick­ly. And it does def­i­nite­ly make me won­der like how many times AI has got­ten my resume like wrong or like mis­in­ter­pret­ed it some­how and I’ve lost out on a job oppor­tu­ni­ty because of it.

Delaney: What sets an appli­cant apart? Is it your expe­ri­ences or how you manip­u­late your expe­ri­ences? Not every­one is able to gain expe­ri­ences through intern­ships or past jobs. How­ev­er, there are ways to describe the expe­ri­ences. You do have to tai­lor your­self to your pur­sued career. That is some­thing you can do through a cov­er let­ter or your resume. Let’s say that you have nev­er had a job or intern­ship, but you are look­ing to apply. A com­mon tac­tic is to put focus on your course­work. It’s like­ly your major and class­es have to do with your ide­al career. This is a per­fect chance to dis­cuss the work you have been able to do in your col­lege career.

Mia Keaz­er: Only orga­ni­za­tion that I’m like real­ly part of is Her Cam­pus I mean first of all, being like tech­ni­cal­ly a pub­lished writer looks so good. Like you know how to write, you know how to com­mu­ni­cate. Obvi­ous­ly being on Eboard and being the Insta­gram man­ag­er has its like sec­ondary perks. Like prob­a­bly bet­ter than just being like in Her Cam­pus But I think like even the net­work that you make, I mean like you can take soft skills out of every­thing. I feel like, like you could, I don’t know, like you can just do some­thing ran­dom and be like, I learned how to com­mu­ni­cate, I learned how to prob­lem solve. Like it’s so valuable.

Delaney: The biggest piece of advice that seems to be cir­cling is net­work­ing. Col­leges are con­stant­ly hold­ing net­work­ing events and stu­dents are encour­aged to con­nect with their pro­fes­sors. LinkedIn is anoth­er large out­let for net­work­ing. How­ev­er, this comes with its pros and cons. Many peo­ple believe this is a per­fect out­let for net­work­ing. The use of mes­sages to peo­ple and careers alike. To learn a lit­tle more in gain con­nec­tions. This is com­mon advice that is giv­en to stu­dents. Oth­er peo­ple go against this nar­ra­tive and say that it isn’t always the best look, you’re encour­aged to gain as many con­nec­tions as you can, but this is also has been giv­en a bad rep­u­ta­tion. Almost as if you are will­ing to con­nect with any­one and have lit­tle sense of exclusivity.

Maken­na Rozzi: I don’t use it much but I know it’s a great place to like get fire­place chats or just like what I’ve seen peo­ple do is look at peo­ple like in a posi­tion that you want to be in and then you see where they start­ed because their whole list of all their jobs where they’ve been will be acces­si­ble. So it’s kind of a great way to see like where you can start.

Mia Keaz­er: One of my favorite things to do on LinkedIn now it was a lot eas­i­er when I had LinkedIn Pre­mi­um because I could mes­sage peo­ple more eas­i­ly. But just reach­ing out to peo­ple like the hir­ing man­ag­er or hr, any­one like the per­son post­ing a job some­times like job post­ings will have like, here’s who you can reach out to. Just mes­sag­ing them gets you real­ly far. Just to con­nect with some­one I think helps you feel clos­er to the job.

Delaney: At this time, it seems that most appli­cants are look­ing for any oppor­tu­ni­ty they can get. Those that are more than qual­i­fied are apply­ing for entry lev­el jobs or even min­i­mum wage jobs. A num­ber of peo­ple have shared their sto­ries for being turned down for wait­ress jobs when they are want­i­ng an office job and are high­ly qual­i­fied for more. This has shown the com­pet­i­tive­ness of the mar­ket. Most posi­tions have become hard­er to achieve which can become dis­cour­ag­ing. Oth­er peo­ple may have an eas­i­er time get­ting their oppor­tu­ni­ties, but is it luck?

Maken­na Rozzi: I know most peo­ple apply like to a wide amount of com­pa­nies. I only apply to one. Oh dear. But it’s main­ly because like that was what I was set on doing. My sis­ter was part of the pro­gram. It’s like this non­prof­it thing. So I kind of had a shoe in.

Delaney: Over­all, there’s a lot of uproar from stu­dents against the job mar­ket. Some have had an eas­i­er time than oth­ers. How­ev­er, this does­nt mean there is an inher­ent issue. When will this prob­lem be resolved? Or do we have to build our­selves to lessen the prob­lem at hand?

Research Links: Port­fo­lio Exam­ple, Hir­ing Freeze, It’s Impact, AI Screen­ing, UConn Career Center