The humbling jobhunt

Well, you might have seen the tweet earlier about the jobhunt.. Its hard to accept, but its true..

Its been an experince of a lifetime(as short as that might be); it all started about a year ago when I set my eyes on the internship start....

I dont want to name companies, but lets just call it company A, which is an FMCG major : I started by looking at internships that were posted in english since I believed that with my amazing profile and international master, a call would be just a few seconds away..

But as the past will roaringly tell you, that didn't happen, neither did some of the offers at companies similar to the ones I already had experience in. I have to accept that I didnt try for profiles that meant I would be doing the same job as earlier, but frankly; I didnt really keep my sight too high which could justify the dearth of calls - Even phone interviews, NO : all I had was a bunch of rejection letters and truck loads of introspection!

Things started looking up when I was invited to a national event for people looking for internships in a certain food company; there I had the same problem : le langue francais (french, the language and my inabilities)..

To be honest, until it was a week or so to go before the start of my internship, I had nothing, NOTHING at all.. No idea about what I was going to be doing next.

However, things started looking up when a kind lady in the college, Ms.Nicole POEDRAS, helped me get an offer from one of her contacts. It was going to be in industrial engineering, but things weren't sure: what is the job, how much will they pay etc etc. And frankly, I didnt imagine continuing in a rather technical domain after all the management education received.

So, I rejected based on a hope of getting an internship : thanks to my sheer cockiness of how well I thought I had performed in the interview. And thankfully, I did get the offer, although with a slight delay..

At that point, I had sent no less than 50 applications in about 30 companies all over Europe!


Now nearing the end of the internship, it seems that time has arrived again. But this time, Its a longer term project, and since I dont have the right to stay in Europe, the odds are slightly worse..

I have sent almost similar number of applications within and outside france, so far to no avail.

But, this whole exercise has been rather HUMBLING!

Why?

Imagine, In India, not too many decently qualified engineers leave college without an offer. And based on the way the market is looking in India, there seems no dearth for offers, and based on how my job search went earlier, I was one cocky bird : as far as my employability was concerned at least.

So, based on what the European companies had to say about my applications, which I spent hours and hours searching, preparing documents, and filling out : I didnt really cut the cake.

That, to my mind begs the question : Whats wrong with me? Why wont they even call me for an interview? This is not possible, maybe I'm just stupid, maybe I made a mistake in filling up the appllication, racists, blah blah and more blah.

But, if you look at it another way : A job or an internship has 2 sides to the coin :
1, What you want and what you offer
2. What the company can offer

Unless these 2 sets dont superpose, there is no chance in hell. Maybe they will offer the job to you, but you wont be happy working there etc etc.

So, for the job that I will eventually take, in Europe, US, India, china or timbuktu : I will analyse these 2 sets very well.

I dont know the answers to question 2h yet, So I will focus on question 1.

Figure it out, but to start with.. Be humble and not take things personally, isnt that what corporations are all about.. Collections of persons with nothing personal about it