Hello people reading my blog on Blogger ! My name is Sarah and today I am going to tell you that you are not alone in your struggle to land an internship or a job. Nope, you are not alone. Actually, it might be one of the reasons you are struggling to land the internship/job of your dreams.
I have been really stressed out lately. I am currently working at an amusement park. My summer job contract will be over at the end of August. In September I am supposed to start an internship, the first one of my gap year. It is important that I start in September, otherwise I won't be able to do two internships of six months each, the end goal of this year. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to answer too many offers because of my work schedule which does not leave me time to write proper cover letters, the most important part of any application in my opinion. This "lack" of applications is what is stressing me out, because a lot of people have told me that the more I apply, the more chances I have to get picked for the holy grail: the interview during which I can finally sell myself, prostitute myself if I may say, in order to leave every other candidate stuck on the starting blocks. What people say seems logical at first sight. But I have come to believe that a resume and a cover letter I really worked on might bring me more than a hundred empty applications.
And it paid off at first ! I got an interview at IKEA. It didn't work out in the end because apparently they went for someone with more experience in the field of PR (don't get me started on the experience topic, it is an endless loop that pisses me off). My point is, I worked really hard on my cover letter, did a lot of research and didn't put too much "bullshit" (the expression "brown-nosing" comes to mind here) in it, and it succeeded ! So now that I have told you my miracle recipe for success at not getting an internship, we can go back to the actual subject of this post. Don't get me wrong, the hard work on the cover letter is required, necessary, essential. But the thing to keep in mind here, is that someone who applied to the same offer got picked over me because of their experience. But what if I didn't apply to an offer? What if I just made a spontaneous application ? Being the only one applying to a position of my own choosing ?
I found the idea even more appealing after reading articles on a website for professional women. They were giving advice and detailing how to be sure to reach the person who is the most likely to take a look at your resume and cover letter: the hiring manager. So from now on, I will answer offers, but I will surely try the spontaneous application method. In these hard times, I do not need any competition, especially when I am barely starting to build up the experience section on my short resume.
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