Halima: guest blogger

After leaving uni, Halima Ali sampled workless experience.

Where are the jobs?

I always knew getting my first real job after graduation was going to be difficult. We have all heard friends, magazines, and college tutors tell us getting your first job is probably the hardest acquisition of your entire career, but…I had no idea it would be THIS hard! Because no matter how much you hear about the difficulties of being a graduate, no one tells you that it will be an anxiety-ridden, paranoia-filled time, which can leave others either pitying you or resenting you.

Having spent a year doing an intense MA in journalism and missing what there was of summer locked in a library slaving away over my dissertation, my first hurdle was getting over my laziness. The day I handed in my dissertation I fell into a deep slumber and seemingly slept away the rest of the month.

I think everyone has their own timescale for getting over that early sluggishness. Though I needed that break, I began to get rather antsy about finding a job soon after that and started scouring the job ads.

Firstly, there just didn’t seem to be the juicy sounding jobs around that I used to notice while I was studying and unable to apply to anything. Then when I managed to find a few jobs that sounded suitable I made a note of the deadlines and put off actually applying until the night before because I dreaded the thought of actually having to type again. Clearly some of the laziness took longer to shake off.

Still waiting

With my batch of applications sent off came the wait, that awful seemingly never-ending wait to hear whether you have been successful or not. Quite honestly, I don’t know what is worse, the wait or the rejection itself. The rejection always hurts though sometimes slightly less than at other times depending on the job itself. If it is a job you weren’t too keen on anyway you can brush it off, the ones you really want however are rather more painful.

So rejection always hurts and the wait is a long twitchy period which has you checking your email constantly and at all hours of the day. I mean which employer is going to email you at 2 am? But still I check. I suppose with the wait at least you have hope to cling on to, hope that you might just get an interview, never mind an actual job - that is too far off at this stage.

At one point as the wait went on I became paranoid that there was something wrong with my email. ‘Are you getting my emails?’ I wrote to a friend, ‘Do you have any problems replying to them?’ ‘Awww, I used to think the exact same thing when I was job hunting,’ she replied. Her answer embarrassed me into getting a grip. There was no problem with my email, I just had to be patient.

Then the replies rolled in. The same replies I am still receiving. They all follow a similar pattern, ‘Thank you for your recent application, unfortunately…’ and that is where I stop reading.

Conversation stopper

The closest rival to the awful feeling of rejection is when you hear the horribly depressing question: ‘How is the job-hunting going?’ Now of course I know it’s only a conversation filler and that for the last few years it has been ‘How’s college going?’ So it is only natural that people ask about the job hunt. But now, almost six months into my search, I have found myself doing anything to avoid that question.

What is the right answer in any case? You can either say ‘awful’ and be subject to pity, or give my standard answer, ‘Ok’. An explanation of how ‘I haven’t really got anything that looks promising at the moment’ follows before I quickly change the subject or leave the room altogether.

I have found that on the whole there are usually two responses to my lack of a job. Either I get a terribly pitying look which suggests ‘Ahhh poor thing, she must be really thick if she still hasn’t secured a job by now’ or it’s a look of resentment and a few snide remarks about how I ‘don’t do anything all day while most people are slaving away at work’.

I have never quite understood the latter, do these people think I am in this position through my own choice? Yes I admit that while I was working my fingers to the bone during my MA I would daydream about having a couple of months off and doing nothing except lounging around but believe me, those days are long gone.

How much longer?

So now the only thing I have to figure out is how long am I going to keep sticking at it and attempt to break into a notoriously tough industry. How long do you wait before giving up on your dream? Well, the same friends who encouraged me through my MA were apparently very quick to give up on my dream. Mere weeks after finishing my course I was told I should look for jobs in other fields because frankly journalism is too competitive.

Where was this pragmatic advice when I first told them I would be pursuing journalism and instead was met with a chorus of ‘Go for it!’ Where was it when I was working all hours god sent for a pittance at a magazine during my gap year when all I was told was ‘It is great experience, it will all pay off in the end’.

So why after two years of hard work are people so quick to say ‘Maybe you should try something else?’ Something else? What else? For me there is nothing else. I simply don’t want to do anything else so why should I settle? At least why so soon? I always knew journalism was going to be competitive; I did not walk into this with my eyes closed. I am well aware of the competition, I am well aware of just how difficult this is but I am not ready to settle for any less just yet.

I will succeed, maybe not at the highest level and maybe not right now, but I will. I truly believe that, even if no one else does. At college I was always told perseverance is a quality you need to make it in journalism, well I am certainly persistent and quite frankly downright stubborn, and I am not ready to give up.

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