You're a Fresh Graduate, But There's No Work in Your Field

What happens when the above statement becomes a reality? First, you worked hard on your degree and focused on your studies to achieve a relevant level of success. Then you realize that your degree and speciality have too high of a supply and not enough of a demand. There are no callbacks for interviews, and there seem to be fewer job postings related to someone with your experience and proficiency. 

What to do if this happens

First of all, it's important to note you're at the start of your career in general, which means don't panic. You have plenty of years ahead of you to work, whether in your field right away or not. What you want to do is gain some type of experience. While this may slightly deter you from the path that you're thinking of going on, it also may open up opportunities faster because you'll need to build up your years of experience regardless.  

Look at a position that will get you in the door. For example, if you see that there are a lot of operational positions open up, such as administrative work or transactional processing work, but you yourself have a degree in marketing, you don't have to wait for a marketing position to open up. 

Instead, you can end up with an in-demand position, and two things will happen. Either you will love your newfound career much better than anything you studied, and with just a few years of working, you want to switch out the original path you took. Or, at the very least, you worked for a company for a few years understanding how their operational engine worked. With those years, you can switch smoothly into a new position within that company to something more desirable for you in the marketing division. 

Either way, you build out a more well-rounded and satisfying career because you get to start off with a different perspective than originally sought out, and that can help you long-term in your career, whichever route you take. 

What not to do

Don’t just wait for something to open up. Some might say if you're dedicated in your field, stick with it from day one, but that day one start date could be a long way out. You're basically using your most valuable resource, which is time, instead of using it to gain some type of experience. You want to see exactly what works and doesn't work for your career. That all comes from trial and error. Trying out and experimenting as much as possible with your job, expectations and careers. 

See this as an opportunity, at the least, to try something different than the original so-called career plan, and you'll be able to have a much more open mindset moving forward. You'll look back at those earlier days and notice that it shouldn't have been as difficult a decision as it first appeared to be all those years ago. 

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