Gen Z Guide to FI

I feel a bit pretentious writing this post because three weeks ago, I was in the trenches. I was emotionally exhausted from reading about the job market, lay offs and seeing LinkedIn updates from my classmates starting jobs.

It is definitely hard to watch other people progressing and feeling stuck. I want to acknowledge that I felt that way A LOT. I was very happy for my friends and classmates who had jobs lined up after school but I did feel very alone in my search for a job. Fortunately, I’ve mostly always had an irrational belief in myself & have a lot of people who irrationally believe in me as well. So… I had hope that I’d eventually get a job but my faith was definitely shaking.

Anyway, let’s get down to business! I got a job offer in the entertainment industry after I applied to 200+ jobs in 5 months, which is honestly less than I thought I’d apply to by the end of the journey.

Job & interviews breakdown

233 job applications 

132 rejections

50 ghostings (>= 3 months with no response)

44 recent applications (within 6 weeks with no response yet)

Interviews

12 applications I heard back from (9 rejected, 3 still in the running by the time I got the offer)

12 recruiter interviews

9 first round interviews

6 second round interviews

1 third round interview 

4 case study assessments/presentations

3 final round interview invites

1 JOB OFFER (which I accepted)

Some key takeaways beyond just “tailoring your resume”

1. Cold applications still work: I really thought that referrals were the only way to go. Of the 12 jobs I heard back from, I believe only 3 were referrals. The remaining were cold which gave me a lot of confidence that I was at least an attractive-ish candidate. Ultimately the full time offer I got was through a cold application. So I say if something is attractive, hit apply.
2. LinkedIn Job Search Hacks
   • Set up job alerts for each type of role you’re interested in: I found myself constantly looking through job alerts especially if they had been posted within 24 hours.
   • Apply immediately if the job has less than 50 applicants. Honestly, once I stopped caring about referrals, it helped me move quickly.
   • If LinkedIn says your job match is high or medium, apply. There were a lot of jobs that asked for more years of experience than I had. Or specific experience in that field that I didn’t have. For context, I used my MBA to pivot out of a supply chain job at Pepsi into the entertainment/tech industry (I’ll write more about the role once I actually start because of paranoia reasons). But for some of those jobs, LinkedIn said I was matched high or medium and I still applied. The job I got wanted someone with 5 years of experience in finance or investment banking. I have none of those things but I still got the job because I guess I’m that girl (+ all the tips I’m writing here haha).
3. Apply to jobs you will not take, for interview practice: I applied to several jobs that I was overqualified for or that were severely lowball salaries because I was feeling sad or desperate haha. But, I actually got 2 or 3 interviews through that which I considered practice. It was hard to get someone to actually practice interviewing with after I graduated. There’s nothing like fucking up an interview or MANY interviews to build up your interviewing skills.
4. Claude & ChatGPT are your best friends for job searching: Especially for jobs with multiple rounds, I asked Claude to give me anywhere from 20-30 potential interview questions for the role. That includes behavioral and technical questions (if those apply). After doing more than 30 interviews, the questions started to sound the same and I sounded very confident without being rehearsed towards the end of my interviewing phase.
5. Treat your job search as a part time job: I can acknowledge from a point of privilege that for most of the job search I still had some part time job savings I was living off of. I wasn’t desperate financially until towards the end AKA right when I actually got the job (divine timing, i think yes). So I was able to have free or cheap fun while applying to jobs/doing job related things for max 4 hours a day. This might not be reasonable for everyone but it definitely kept me sane to limit myself to 4 hours a day so it didn’t take over my life.

I’m excited to be back blogging consistently because I’ve missed my fire babies. Also, looking forward to having more than $0 in my bank account. If any of this was useful, share with a friend who is job hunting or going through a lay off.

XOXO Gen Z Fire Baby