⏳ ~ 6 min read

As a post-grad stuck in a personality-altering job search purgatory for over a year and recently made it out 🥳, I believe some of that trauma has translated into valuable lessons. In this read, I want to share some of that, for two reasons: to retrospect on the year myself, and to offer some of my thoughts, not (just) as advice (which is pretty much all one can get in this phase), but something that makes you, the reader, feel a little less alone.

Unemployment helps you discover new things about yourself and grow in ways you never imagined. Nobody warns you about it, partly because the generation at large is going through something like this for the first time, and survivorship bias tends to bury failures. Social media highlights only the success stories.

Changes within you

• Falling out of the loop
  Towards the latter end of my job search journey, I joined a coding community in pursuit of networking and volunteer opportunities (more on how this was one of the best things I did, later). It was astonishing how I hadn’t clocked that I missed being part of something.
  
  I initially introduced myself, briefly interacted with other members on the community Slack channel, and attended one virtual tech talk – none of which was out of the ordinary. But even those interactions with others in my field helped drift back closer to the professional world. I soon began craving conversations and I reassessed my situation. I felt stale and hadn’t realized how quickly all of that could turn unfamiliar.

“The feeling of participating in a conversation about your field and learning something new felt refreshing. I didn’t know I’d lost that until I got a small piece of it back.”

• The Moving Target
  I’m in tech, and right now, the field is moving fast. There are new frameworks, AI models and systems, dropping weeks apart from each other. The developments felt so meteoric that I was paralyzed, unable to decide where to go next. It wasn’t just that my existing knowledge felt outdated; it started to feel irrelevant, almost useless. I couldn’t pick what to actually spend my time upskilling in.

“The longer I waited, the wider that knowledge gap grew. Worse still, I started forgetting things I already knew.”

• Identity Crisis
  As a career-driven girl who’d invested practically her entire life into becoming an established professional, my primary identity was “software developer.” Now that I had no designation, I was genuinely at a loss for words introducing myself. Who am I, if I’m not working with a label?
  
  My biggest realization through all of this was that I shouldn’t tie my identity to my profession or designation. That’s probably the single most personality-altering realization I took from this whole year.

“I was still and will always be a successful and complete person, even without a title.”

While these reflections may feel relatable, here are some more afterthoughts that might double as advice.

What Actually Helped

• Self-Kindness Is More Important Than You Think
  In a process, where failure is delivered in batches of rejection emails of jobs I applied to the previous day, it’s easy to start blaming yourself and questioning your efforts. The job market is inherently indefinite and uncertain, which is why it’s very important to recognize the effort you’re putting in. Self-kindness helps you recover, and steady enough to keep going. Being easy on yourself may feel unproductive, but it’s the opposite. Genuine self-reflection is the most practical way to move ahead and prepare for new challenges.
  
  Once I started setting practical milestones, doing things outside the job search such as hobbies, socializing, working out, good rest and cooking wholesome food, I felt better and began thinking clearly.

“Treat yourself like you would treat a loved one when they fail: honest, but comforting.”

• Job search is a full-time job
  Without a boss, no one clocking you in, and no finish line in sight, the days blur together with no fixed routine. This kind of drift is the fastest way to burnout. It is very important to supervise yourself and make sure you structure your days and weeks like how you would when you work.
  
  A fixed schedule with set hours and days to apply, prepare for interviews, upskill, and unwind kept me going consistently. I ended these days with content, and had the energy for the next.

“Unemployment taught me how to be my own parent. As much as the freedom felt great, it was just as hard to build discipline on my own.”

• Closing the Gap
  Eventually, I stopped treating the knowledge gap as something to panic about, and started treating it as something to chip away at. To decide what to learn, I looked for patterns in open roles, noting which skills kept coming up that I didn’t already have. Once I got over the resistance, I expanded my tech stack. It boosted my confidence going into interviews, strengthened my resume, and brought me closer to the field I’d started to feel so astray from.

“Investing in what the industry is really looking for increased my chances of getting noticed.”

• Leverage your network
  If there’s one piece of advice I’d push hardest, it’s to be shameless about asking for referrals. I advocate this so strongly because out of the hundreds of applications I put in, most of my callbacks (including the job I got!) were from those which were backed by referrals. It makes sense, since every opening receives thousands of applications and it always helps to stand out. It took me a good while to get past the hesitation, to stop feeling desperate or needy about asking.
  
  Another thing that helped, alongside using my existing network, was building a new one. Joining a women-in-tech community connected me with like-minded people in the field. It helped me draw inspiration on what to learn and what skills to build, and made me feel less alone along the way.

“Over time, I realized people understand the situation, and they’re willing to help when they can.”

With this unplanned chapter behind me, I’m taking the best of what I found with me. I’m proud of some of the real opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise, and grateful for a new strength in handling failure, something I once thought I’d never be able to face.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m genuinely excited for what’s next.

I hope you found this useful. Thanks for reading!
— Karishma