Tag: job search

Long shadows following me

Mia2 Comments
selfie shadow
©Mia Salminen 2021

I just can’t catch a break, can I? It’s nothing bad or anything like that. It only feels long shadows are following me whatever I do. Especially when it comes to education and job search. They say you should study, but what is the point when you’re not giving a change in the working world. You need job experience, but then internships are not one of them. Maybe that’s the problem, I only have them and that one part-time job. I can never find any jobs to apply to because they need people with experience. I haven’t had the time to do any job search since my dad still needs certain help. I have tried to look at jobs ads, but I haven’t found anything to apply to. Writing cover letters is not my favourite thing. LinkedIn is a weird place to look for a job. I get quite silly suggested from job alerts too. Jobs that I don’t even have training for. I wouldn’t search for a job there anyway. I did apply for one, but it was a bit strange. I didn’t even know if it was real.

I wrote about this in this post. It’s about Helsinki Design School, where I studied both photography and graphic design. They asked former students about what they have done after school. So far, none of my schoolmates has come up in the student’s stories. Most of the stories so far has been about interior designers and visual designers. There have been some photographers and graphic designers too. They write about, e.g. networking and about the pros who teach there. Well, I haven’t had any of that. Especially in the photography course in 2014-2015. Maybe it has become better after I went there. It was new at the time. There were a few students who were disappointed. They didn’t get what they were looking for. I didn’t either, but I didn’t expect anything special. I’ve probably forgotten all about what was taught there by now. The same probably goes with the graphic design one in 2018-2019. Former students who have studied in school have found their strengths during their education, but I haven’t. I’m still looking. So in that way, I am disappointed at the education. But also I got something out of it. It doesn’t get me a job, but still, I didn’t want to study something for 4 years when I already had for 2. Graphic design is not science, after all. I am a bit envy of the former students who have had the courage to become entrepreneurs. If you have clients already, it’s much easier to start.

I think I want to be my own president because then I can be my own boss. I wish I was brave enough to start something on my own because I wish I didn’t have to stress about the job search. I’m not an actor so I can’t be something the employers expect me to be. This month is ending soon but the year is long, so we’ll see what will happen.

From school assignments to the real world

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Made in Canva

When you study something, you might think the real world is as easy. But in school, you get assignments made up by someone else. In real life, you have to make them up yourself. That’s the hard part. Especially when you only starting out you don’t have much to show. Only an assignment you had in school. I doubt you can get hired by only having those. If it was, I would probably have something already. Or maybe not. Who knows really.

Soon it’s been 2 years since I studied graphic design and 4 since web design. Not very impressive since I haven’t done much since then. Especially web design. When you see job adverts for web design jobs, it’s always something technical which is something we didn’t have that much of. It’s quite wrong to be called web designer when it’s actually called web developer. That’s something they didn’t teach in school. Even in school, I didn’t like coding. It’s like Math which is my weakest subject. It just requires too much difficult kind of thinking. I can do things with free themes, but I can’t do a whole website from scratch. I tried in school, but it was too stressful. I’ve thought about only having graphic design and photography in my services. It would mostly be about digital content. At first, I thought I would also have web design with WordPress but apparently making sites from finished themes are not recommended. It’s understandable because themes are updated, and then the job has gone to waste. It’s also a turn-off when employers only search for experienced designers, and they should know a lot about coding. And then it’s web developers and not web designers.

They should teach kids in school that the real world is different. You don’t know what you want to be when you grow up at 16. You can change your mind later. Maybe the profession you chose in your youth is not the right one for you, but you only realize it when you’re getting older. You can change careers any time you want. Today there are no jobs where you are for 30 years and then retire. When I was younger, I thought you needed to educate yourself to one profession and stick with it. But it wasn’t so at all. I don’t want to be one of those who stay in one profession and then, later on, discover you didn’t want to do it after all. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I have studied so many different things. Some might have had jobs during their education, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to concentrate on my studies and have some free time too. So now I only have internships on my resume, and that’s apparently not good enough. At least I have something and too bad it’s not appreciated among others. Luckily there are other ways to get a job. It’s just a matter of courage to get things started. That is an assignment to do next.

Connection lost at first sight

Mia3 Comments
connection lost
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Ever felt that no matter what you do, you don’t find the connection with something or someone? You think you do all the right things but they still don’t work. You think it’s because of you. You might take it personally even if it isn’t. Some things don’t have an explanation. They just are. I feel or have felt like I’ve lost connection at first sight. When I meet new people I might talk to them but there is no other connection than friendliness. They say you should make connections so in the future you might need their help. But I have never met such people. They don’t even ask to keep in touch. Maybe I’m just not interesting enough. I don’t want to force people to keep in touch with me if they don’t want to. Making connections in job search seems to be important too. But since I never get any, I haven’t found anything. LinkedIn is a joke too. What a bunch of lies that is. No employer search for employees there. At least not in Finland. Here having relatives is very important or be very lucky.

I don’t get many connections on social media either. I really hate making up tags. Especially on Instagram. That spoils everything. It’s full of fake photos anyway. No one wants to be different. I don’t know why I even bothered starting to using it again. Sometimes I don’t even get any likes at all. It doesn’t matter how many tags I use or what kind of photos I have, they will never get more than 1 or 2. More if I’m lucky but never over 12. Using social media for job search are all lies too. You must be really an attention seeker or something special to rock someone’s world. It doesn’t boost your morale, it takes it out of you. I don’t how some get many likes. Are these people following them so they see the post or what? I just don’t get it. Never compare your followers to how many others have because it only brings you down. It’s all shallow about how to get people to notice/follow you. You should do this and you should do that. It takes forever and in the end, it’s all a waste of time. I just don’t want to bother with it anymore. I’m not gonna force out the tags. I just put what comes to mind and leave it at that. I get likes or I don’t, I’m only gonna post for my own entertainment. I’m tired of trying to impress people.

If someone wants to make a connection, it’s probably spam. You don’t see the difference between the truth and the lies because you haven’t had any real connections. Bad experiences make you doubt things. Especially when it comes to the Internet. You shouldn’t even believe what you see in there anyway. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t trust these platforms like LinkedIn in a job search because you never know if the connection might be an imposter. I rather use something else than use it. It only brings me down. So lies and connection do come together. Both of them are bad news in the end.