The Shawshank Moment
5 months, countless resumes mailed. This was my first encounter with unemployment. A struggle worth struggling. Having lots of free time and no purpose was an alienating experience.
Everyone was placed, or rather, had settled for what came their way. Some in MNCs, some in the sheep hiring firm TCS and some in Start-ups. The convention of getting a job irrespective whether you like it and you can always find a better one, with time and experience has now become a belief. Although it’s a logical and sane thing to do when you are a fresher with no job experience, the idea never impressed me, thus restricting me to only interview in companies I liked during campus interviews and therein lied my plight.
From getting rejected in aptitude itself to getting rejected in HR interview in a company, I got a taste of every bitter dish the job hunt phase serves.
This journey, though it was tiring and frustrating, was never really saddening. Except for the moments when I had no answers for the people around me. Some were concerned, some just curious. Everywhere I went, everyone I met, had only one question to ask, “Job mili?”(Did you get a job?) followed by “Tereko kaise nai mili abtak?”(Why didn’t you managed to secure a job?) when I said no. It was horrible not because I wasn’t doing anything but because these questions deliberately started to remind me of every wrong decision that I had ever taken. All of them had solutions like “Idar udar apply kar ho jaega”(Apply here and there). It’s very convenient to do that because it’s easy to be brave from a safe distance. I never saw empathy, just opinions. So many instructions that they can publish a proper ‘ways to find the perfect job’ manual! But too many instructions become noise and therefore after a point none of their words mattered or had an effect on me.
Every morning I woke up to nothingness. It was literally ‘Eat. Apply. Hope to get a callback. Sleep. Repeat.’ Time flew. Days turned into weeks, weeks into months, which was proportionate to everyone’s confidence in me turning into doubts. While my friends settled in to their chosen professions, rejections came flooding back to me, one after another shattering my confidence. Each rejection came with a stab at my ego, my hope, and my self-worth. Everything seemed out of place. It was the first time that I felt very lonely even in the company of friends and family. It was the first time I started doubting my abilities. It was the first time I started asking myself questions like “Am I being too stubborn? Am I not good enough? Did I screw up somewhere? Don’t I have what it takes?” Three to four times in these months I bumped into companies which I really liked. I had my own set of parameters to like an organization, some rational some not at all. A month into unemployment I finally scored an interview at one of these companies but was rejected from my dream job that could have had a huge impact on my growth both as an individual and as a professional. Despite this rejection, I have never let my passion for programming take a toll. My passion for developing software has always driven me to be the best I can be. It has motivated me to work harder than I ever thought imaginable. But as fate would have it after a very long recruiting process I got hired by the same company that had rejected me a month in unemployment. It was a Shawshank Redemption moment. Finally the baggage was off my back.
It all seems so easy now, but I really was at crisis point at times. In hindsight, the prolonged stint of unemployment did me a whole lot of good. Had I jumped straight into a white collar 9–5 I’d be pulling my hair out.
There were many learning in this unwanted trip to the crowded land of job seekers, the land of stagnation and patience. And this is the most important part:
- The first thing is that having a quarter life crisis can be good. It’s the creative destruction that sets you up for a better time of it when you eventually set yourself down on the tracks.
- Don’t be discouraged if things are not in your favor today. It’s just not supposed to work out that way because something better is waiting for you.
- I’ve also learned that you can’t wait for the jobs to come to you; there’s a whole world out there and you have make the most of it.
- Today may not be a good day in the job hunting process, but it’s okay. Don’t let the negativity take over this grueling process. Remember where your passions root from. Smile and encourage yourself. After all, you are your biggest supporter.
- The voices around you doesn’t matter, it’s the one within you that count’s.
- No matter what the world around you says, no matter how sane their idiosyncrasies sound, don’t let your insanity fade.
- Magic happens when you don’t give up even though you want to. The universe falls in love with people with stubborn heart.
- It’s better to follow your own plan and fail at it rather than not trying and regretting it later wondering about the “What if?”.
- When one door closes another one opens, that’s what I kept telling myself to keep moments of self-doubt only moments.
- Grief when you don’t find a job is a natural reaction. However, you cannot stay in that head-space. Remember that your destiny is greater than your circumstance.
- Failures are important. It tells you that you are not invincible. It tells you that you are human. It’s okay to fail. Harder you fail, harder you work and sweeter the success is.
- Never ever give up on yourself because if you don’t believe in yourself then nobody will.
- In the times of melancholy, a little bit of humour helps.
- Waiting is the most optimistic deed performed by a man.
- The morning you expect nothing, sun shines the brightest.
- It’s never as easy as “so just get a job”.
- And yes, the world is not at Sharda University, it’s at Andheri.