{"id":48957,"date":"2026-04-11T11:11:38","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:11:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ive-applied-to-1000-jobs-since-earning-my-masters-and-am-still-unemployed-im-frustrated-because-i-thought-i-did-everything-right\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:11:38","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:11:38","slug":"ive-applied-to-1000-jobs-since-earning-my-masters-and-am-still-unemployed-im-frustrated-because-i-thought-i-did-everything-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/ive-applied-to-1000-jobs-since-earning-my-masters-and-am-still-unemployed-im-frustrated-because-i-thought-i-did-everything-right\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;ve applied to 1,000 jobs since earning my master&#8217;s and am still unemployed. I&#8217;m frustrated because I thought I did everything right."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d686a5f36fd1a78c051f2a?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Nicolette Alexandra Brito-Cruz sitting in front of two computers\"\/><figcaption>The author has her master&#039;s and still can&#039;t find a job.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Nicolette Alexandra Brito-Cruz<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>I&#039;ve studied around the world and even earned my master&#039;s degree, but I still can&#039;t find a job.<\/li>\n<li>I&#039;ve applied to over 1,000 jobs, but most of the listings just disappear.<\/li>\n<li>I&#039;m frustrated because I thought I did everything right, but I&#039;m now focusing on freelancing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For most of my life, I believed in a very specific formula: work hard in school, build a strong r\u00e9sum\u00e9, study abroad, learn languages, get a master&#039;s degree, and be globally aware.<\/p>\n<p>I studied journalism and media, and I leaned into storytelling early on. I spent time abroad multiple times in Rome, Florence, Kuwait, and Scotland. I learned how to navigate new cultures, new systems, and new expectations. I became fluent in spaces that were not designed for a first-generation student like me.<\/p>\n<p>After graduating, I went on to earn my master&#039;s degree in international affairs as part of the inaugural cohort at John Cabot University in Rome (again). I focused on global justice, human rights, and representation. I contributed to research on the gig economy, attended UN conferences both in Italy and Azerbaijan, and built what I thought was a strong, competitive profile.<\/p>\n<p>I completed my MA degree early, believing I had done everything right. But I still can&#039;t find a job.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>I applied everywhere, across countries and industries<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Since graduating, I&#039;ve applied to over 1,000 jobs.<\/p>\n<p>That includes roles in Rome with UN agencies, NGOs, and humanitarian organizations. It also includes jobs across the US \u2014 in-person, hybrid, and remote roles. I applied to communications positions, research roles, media jobs, and anything that aligned with my background in storytelling and global affairs.<\/p>\n<p>I tailored r\u00e9sum\u00e9s. I wrote cover letters that took hours. I researched organizations, memorized their missions, reached out to every connection, and prepared for interviews like they were exams.<\/p>\n<p>Out of all those applications, I&#039;ve gotten 15 interviews. Only two of those moved me to a second round. Less than five of the roles I interviewed for were actually filled.<\/p>\n<p>For the rest, I watched the same job postings reappear weeks or months later. Were those even real positions?<\/p>\n<p>It started to feel like I wasn&#039;t competing for jobs. I was competing for the possibility of a job.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>The hardest part is not knowing what I&#039;m doing wrong<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Rejection is one thing. Uncertainty is another.<\/p>\n<p>When you don&#039;t get a job, you can usually point to something. Maybe someone had more experience. Maybe you didn&#039;t interview well. Maybe the role just wasn&#039;t the right fit.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69d6871bcc468aeec524cf9f?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Nicolette Alexandra Brito-Cruz dressed in her graduation gown\"\/><figcaption>The author earned her master&#039;s degree.<\/p>\n<p>Courtesy of Nicolette Alexandra Brito-Cruz<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>But what do you do when there&#039;s no outcome at all? When positions stay open indefinitely. When companies repost roles without hiring. When you make it through multiple steps and still hear nothing back.<\/p>\n<p>It creates this constant loop in your mind. You start questioning everything: your degree, your experience, and the choices you made.<\/p>\n<p>I did everything I was told would make me employable. Yet, I&#039;ve never felt more unsure about where I stand.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Freelancing became my way of earning<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>At some point, I had to shift my focus from waiting to building.<\/p>\n<p>During undergrad, I spent four years working in publicity and creative marketing. That became the one thing I could return to when the job market kept shutting me out.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I freelance as a creative director and marketing professional. I design campaigns, create visual content, and work with clients to build cohesive brand identities. I&#039;ve worked on everything from social media strategy to email marketing to photoshoots to editorial visuals.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s not stable or the full-time role I desire for myself. But it&#039;s something I built myself.<\/p>\n<p>Freelancing has taught me how to trust my skills in a different way. It&#039;s shown me that I don&#039;t need permission to create meaningful work.<\/p>\n<p>Still, there&#039;s a difference between surviving and feeling secure. I&#039;m still trying to figure out how to bridge that gap.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Not having stability forced me to rethink what I actually want<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>For a long time, I was chasing stability as it was defined for me: a full time job, steady paycheck, and clear title. But not having that has pushed me to ask a different question. What kind of work do I actually want to be doing?<\/p>\n<p>The answer keeps bringing me back to storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>I want to be a creative director who focuses on telling BIPOC stories with care and accuracy. I want to create media that doesn&#039;t flatten people into stereotypes or reduce cultures into trends. I want to build projects that feel honest, layered, and intentional.<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s the work I&#039;ve been drawn to for years. It&#039;s also the work I kept putting off because I thought I needed something more &quot;stable&quot; first.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I&#039;m starting to see that maybe the path I was following was never designed to lead me there.<\/p>\n<h2><strong>I&#039;m still figuring it out<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>I don&#039;t have a clean ending to this story.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;m still applying for jobs while freelancing, and trying to make sense of a system that feels unpredictable and, at times, impossible to navigate.<\/p>\n<p>But I also know this: the effort I&#039;ve put in hasn&#039;t been wasted. It just didn&#039;t lead me where I expected. Maybe that means I have to build something different instead.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The author has her master&#039;s and still can&#039;t find a job. Courtesy of Nicolette Alexandra Brito-Cruz I&#039;ve studied around the world and even earned my master&#039;s degree, but I still can&#039;t find a job. I&#039;ve applied to over 1,000 jobs, but most of the listings just disappear. I&#039;m frustrated because I thought I did everything [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-48957","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48957\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}