Applying to summer jobs can be a torturous experience. You have your parents breathing down your neck, "get a job or you're gonna start paying rent!" You have your friends getting accepted to sick internships left and right, and you have a huge empty space on your resume where your "experience" should go. Luckily, most of us poor college students are in the same boat and can relate to each other in the struggle of desperately needing to find a source of summer income and repeatedly failing.
1. Finding a Job You Don't Hate.
When you're sitting on your ass all of spring break and your parents are harassing you to "go on Indeed and apply to everything," they make it seem as though there are a million jobs out there for you to apply to and potentially get. What they forgot to mention, however, is that most of the jobs you are eligible to apply to suck.
2. Making a Resumé.
If this is your first job application, you probably have never made a resume or at least never updated the one you used to apply to college. This is the hardest part because apparently being able to cross your eyes doesn't count as a special skill or talent and selling the most girl scout cookies in your troop is not a significant achievement.
3. Ridiculously Long Applications.
We all know those job apps that have a million questions that range from "why do you think you are fit for this position" to "what is your favorite element on the periodic table and why?" These are the types of job applications that you take one look at and think "do I really need this job?"
4. "Looking for Two Years of Experience."
How exactly am I supposed to gain experience working in this field when no one in this field will hire me?!
5. Awkward/ Nerve-racking Interviews.
Getting an interview is exciting because it means you have made it to the next step in the process. That is until you actually have to do the interview and you realize you have absolutely no idea what to say, how to answer their questions, or how you're even supposed to answer the phone.
6. Never Hearing Back.
What ever happened to at least getting rejected from a job? Now you take all this time to update your resume, write a cover letter, and no one even takes the time to send you an email to tell you you're not good enough.
7. Pretending to Be Happy for Your Friends Who Get Internships.
Deep down, you really are happy for your friend who just landed the internship of their dreams, making $15 an hour plus travel compensation, in the greatest city in the world. It's just a little hard to show that when you can't even manage to hear back from the pet store you've been applying to for the past three summers in a row.
8. Continuing To Apply
Accepting defeat is one thing, but getting back on the horse after dozens of rejections, that takes perseverance.
9. Getting Offers From Only Non-Paid Internships
Here's the real hard part. You finally get a job offer to a pretty cool internship in the city. It's in the field you want to pursue and it's five days a week in Manhattan. Except given the fact that it's unpaid and you have to commute five days a week, you will actually be losing money if you accept this job. What do you do now?
10. Accepting Defeat
After a long, tiring journey of sending out your resume to pretty much every company in the tri-state area, you have finally accepted your ultimate doom and decided to return to your painful, eight dollars an hour sales associate position at the retail store you have grown to hate so much the past two years.
Landing a sick internship takes a lot more than having an impressive resume, eloquent cover letter, and reliable references. Unfortunately, it is often a game of luck and a game of who you know so if Summer 2016 isn't the year you start your dream job, don't sweat it. There's always next summer.
