Nina Roehl: Entering the Workforce

With the news of major tech companies facing mass layoffs, Y-R Media’s Nina Roehl feels more anxious than ever as a recent grad currently job hunting.

I graduated college this past May. Yes, I was nervous, but I was excited to finally get my first “big girl job.” Unfortunately, with a looming recession and huge tech company layoffs, my plans haven’t exactly panned out.

I was lucky enough to secure an internship after graduation. But once the summer came to an end, I found myself applying for unemployment.

I’ve been looking for work for about three months now, and the job hunt is discouraging. Just the other day, I was looking at a job posting on LinkedIn that had been listed for only a few hours, and there were already hundreds of applicants. Clearly, thousands of recent grads like me are struggling to break into the workforce right now.

Sending out a bunch of job applications without hearing anything back can definitely shake my confidence. But at least I know I'm not alone in my struggle to find a job.

And while I'm not going into the tech industry, the fact that job insecurity is a thing in a supposedly "secure" field, like tech, makes me worry for my own future.

Last year, I made a promise to myself I wouldn’t go back to working in retail or customer service. I was tired of working long hours with low pay, dealing with entitled customers, and feeling burnt out over a job I had no interest in. But as my job search continues to be unsuccessful, there’s a part of me that worries: soon it might be my only option left.

With a Perspective, I’m Nina Roehl.

Nina Roehl is 22 years old and lives in San Francisco. Her Perspective was produced by Y-R Media.