Hello!

I haven’t posted in a while again.. but since I last posted so much has happened in my life for the better, especially career-wise.

I want to preface this post with a message to all new graduates coming out of college and looking for the first full time job. Do not worry if you cannot find a job right away! Yes, it can be depressing to wait months between interviews only to get rejected in the end, but it’ll be more worth it to stay calm and work on yourself.

So yeah, I got a job! I am now a Software Engineer on the Product Development department at Transcend Insights (subsidiary of the health insurance giant, Humana) in San Diego,  California! Some of you might not know what Transcend Insights is or what they do as they have a close to non-existent social media presence compared to well-known companies (judged by Glassdoor, LinkedIn, Twitter), but I can say (and hope) that what we will be doing at Transcend Insights will impact the world in a healthy way. This post mainly pertains to the process of getting the first full-time job out of college.

Now a little about myself and my life from the past few months. I graduated in December 2016 with a B.S. in Computer Science (technically I ended all my classes at the end of Summer 2016, so I’ve been out for MONTHS), so I had a lot of time to prepare and do whatever I wanted. I had just gotten out of an internship at Verint Systems in San Diego, saving up most of what I earned there knowing that I will be unemployed for a while. In my time off, I was able to travel to places like the Philippines, Australia, Canada and even Japan. All with friends or family or both and it was a great experience that I wouldn’t have been able to get if I had started working right away.

I’d call my time off a sort of gap year, something similar to what medical students usually do before they set off to medical school.

I was able to learn so much more about myself and how I interact with other people. I was able to discover where I wanted to be and what my goals were. And most important of all, I was able to work on just myself. Whether that was constantly fixing my sleep schedule, or eating a healthy diet or even taking time off and just playing videogames – I was able to just relax, especially after 4 years of school and summers of internships.

Now of course, this could all be just hindsight bias because I do have a job now, and I do remember how terrible I felt in the months where I had no interviews lined up and I felt like I was doomed. Really, at that point, if you feel like that, you need to find ways to make yourself happy. For me, it was to constantly improve myself. I like to cook, so I learned better ways of cooking. I like to eat, so I went to restaurants I love. I like to run and exercise, so I built an exercise regimen with friends and downloaded apps like Strava to track my workouts. And I like to be with friends and family, so I went out and interacted with friends and family. Really, it’s about finding ways to make yourself happy and executing. The job will come and you will know your priorities.

Anyways, this is a little bit of what helped me in my mindset of pursuing a job. Of course, there are hours of studying algorithms and the most popular frameworks, so be prepared for that. You got a lot of weeks ahead of you, but just keep your head up and keep on running. Good luck!