-
During my senior year at Stanford, I started looking for a job but was unable to get a full-time offer.
-
I was frustrated because I felt like I was overqualified, but I didn’t even get an interview.
-
I started my own PR business and am now making six figures.
I started applying for jobs the first week of my senior year at Stanford, assuming I would be able to find some work before graduation (if not earlier). I’m surrounded by friends in finance and consulting, where hiring starts early and job opportunities are identified months or even years in advance.
While I’m not part of the traditional corporate pipeline, I spent my college years building businesses in Silicon Valley, managing marketing for hot startups.
For nine months, I tracked every application in a spreadsheet. Over time, I simplified it and removed the “Second Interview” column. I didn’t even make it to the first round. Most of the time, there are no updates at all.
By the time I graduate in 2025, I still don’t have a full-time job opportunity.
I have experience, but it doesn’t seem to count
When I heard back, I found out it wasn’t a full-time position; It’s for internship. One came through an alumni recommendation. The other was in an area that had nothing to do with my experience.
What made the situation even more frustrating was that I felt extremely well qualified—perhaps even overqualified.
I started working in marketing at the age of 15, helping local small businesses. In college, that expanded to positions at tech companies, often requiring 30 to 40 hours a week in classes. By the time I graduated, I had seven years of experience.
During my sophomore year, I switched from engineering to English and linguistics. Mastering language and narrative makes me a better marketer. But as a senior in college, I began to worry that I might become the typical unemployed English major.
I am a scholarship student and I don’t want to burden my parents after graduation. I found myself considering roles that would only prolong the search I was trying to complete.
The job market is different than I expected
At highly competitive universities like Stanford, most students intern every summer in hopes of landing a full-time job opportunity. I just followed that path.
But when I started applying, the path seemed to lead to a cliff instead of the golden gate of adulthood.
In 2025, I won’t just be competing against other graduates. I was dealing with a candidate who had recently been fired. Many of my target industries are slowing down hiring or laying off employees entirely.
I started taking any job I could find
As graduation neared, I started saving as much money as I could.
One of my professors asked me to help with her book promotion campaign. I told her I had never worked in publishing or public relations, but I said yes.
Around the same time, I began assisting a reporter through the school’s alumni network, editing her articles, covering stories and managing her newsletter.
Even in the midst of my own pain, I could see the difference my work was making. It’s exciting, even if it pays less than I’m used to.
I turned this work into my own business
Three weeks before graduation, after being rejected from a minimum wage internship after three rounds of interviews, I created my own role: publicist and founder of Punctuation PR.
While completing my thesis, I submitted the paperwork to start an LLC. I built a website. I told my parents that I didn’t want to lose my job in an uncertain economy and instead started a marketing and publicity agency for writers. The rewards of my efforts will be more within my control.
They were surprisingly supportive. My mom told me she was proud—not just because I had created a job for myself, but because I was building something that could one day create jobs for others.
The day after graduation, I drove from the Bay Area to Los Angeles and started working full-time in a barely tidied apartment.
I turned my side projects into clients and cold email academics and authors. I wrote the contract, set up the billing, and raised the rates.
Recommendations came in. One project led to another.
This became my full-time income
For the first few months, I lived paycheck to paycheck. When I couldn’t pay off my credit cards, I sold my clothes and furniture. I often work more than 12 hours a day.
Within six months, I was making more than the entry-level positions I’d been applying for.
In early 2026, Punctuation PR was hitting six figures in revenue. I’ve worked with over a dozen clients, built relationships with publishers and media outlets, and helped my books reach hundreds of thousands of new readers.
What started as a stopgap turned into my full-time income.
It changed my perspective on work
I used to believe that graduation—and similar milestones—followed an ideal inertia: once success got going, it continued naturally, uninterrupted.
In fact, life is a series of imbalanced forces. You change speed and direction. By 2026, institutions that once felt stable now look less certain to many.
Starting a business remains one of the most dangerous things a person can do. I hope to grow my company from six figures to seven figures in the next few years. There’s no guarantee I will, but there’s no guarantee I won’t either.
It’s up to me to decide.
Read the original article on Business Insider
