1000 Opera Singers Working at Starbucks
Picture this. You have just completed your university degree. You were one of the lucky ones in knowing what you wanted to do from an early age and so you chose the right degree for you. You did all those essays, all that research, worked on all those projects. You know the textbook better than the guy who wrote it. No one in your bloodline has ever got this far in education. There were 50 members of your family across the world watching your graduation online. They had a party that night to celebrate your success. You are everything that your parents hoped for when you were born. This is meant to be the start to the story of the guy who revolutionised the game, but one thing stands in your way, getting a job.
You’re smart. You know the internet is a powerful tool and you use it to aid you in your search. You search up entry level jobs and find the website listing roles that you know you would be perfect for, the role you studied for. You click apply now and are taken to a different site which asks you to put in your details, you do it. Then it asks for your CV and cover letter, you upload them including a bespoke cover letter for the company and the job. Then you are asked to break down the CV you just uploaded into each role on the CV, you think what was the point in uploading the CV in the first place, but you do it anyway. Then you are asked to do the same for your education, you do it. Then you are asked to do the same for your skills, you do it. Then you are asked to give your salary expectations, you think its best to go with the salary advertised so you do it. Then you answer questions on your demographics and eligibility to work and finally reach a page saying your application has been submitted. You check your email to see if you got a notification email for completing the application and you did. You looked at advice about how long it takes to get a response, and it says two weeks, so you wait.
Two weeks pass. You check your email and find nothing but marketing emails from that website you bought that top off 4 years ago. You search the name of the company in your inbox just to make sure, no results found. You check you junk and spam, no results found. You check your focused and other, no results found. You think, let me give them another week. Another week is given, still nothing in the email. You think, they’re a big company, got loads of applications for this role probably, I’ll give it another week. A month has passed by now, still no results found, not an acceptance email, not a rejection email, just silence. You think forget this one let me apply for another job. The cycle starts again until you realise, life is coming at you fast, you’ve got less time than you thought and the price of living is increasing by the minute. You apply for to work behind a bar to keep the income incoming while continuing to application cycle elsewhere and that’s how you end up with 1000 Opera Singers Working at Starbucks.
This isn’t my story, but the experience of many young people today. They are branded as lazy, workshy, criticised for adding nothing to traditional services and only flooding the internet with the 1000000th podcast debating matcha and bubble tea, but they face the highest barriers to entry in the job market at the same time as diminishing jobs. What do you expect them to do when they try and try and try and get nothing but emails starting with the word ‘Unfortunately’ or total silence? Might as well follow your dreams init.