The months after graduation nobody warned me about
My job search after graduating in 2025: hundreds of applications, no replies, and what I’d tell any fresher still in it.
I joined OneMetric as a GenAI Engineer this week, and a few people have asked what changed for it to finally happen. Honestly, nothing did. I got a call, went through the rounds, and now I’m here. But the months before that call were rough, and I think they’re worth writing about, mostly for anyone who is in that phase right now.
I graduated in July 2025. Even in my final year I was getting offers and interview calls through LinkedIn and applications, so I figured I had time. I took up a lead developer internship on a project between my college and a company: a full-stack solution, built from scratch, and I would own it end to end. My plan was simple. Finish it, deploy it, then go job hunting with real experience behind me. There were so many openings, so what was the hurry?
I deployed it. When I looked up, the market had moved.
The skills companies wanted for ML and AI engineer roles had changed. The machine learning skills I had prepared for were no longer what job descriptions led with. Now they asked for LangChain, RAG, agents and other tools I was only starting to learn. “Entry-level” postings wanted 2 to 5 years of experience. Layoffs meant people with far more experience were applying for the same junior roles as me. Some postings closed within 15 minutes because they already had 500 or even 1,000 applicants.
So I applied to hundreds of jobs. I updated my CV again and again, read job descriptions, and studied whatever tools kept showing up in them. I had been learning FastAPI and LangGraph during the project and kept working on them. Then came referrals: finding the right person, messaging them, asking. Many people who had offered help earlier now said their company wasn’t hiring freshers, or that layoffs were going on.
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Then came the silence. A few months before, I’d had many options. Now I had no replies, no interviews, not even a call from HR. I started to think I had made a mistake, and that maybe I wasn’t good enough. I was at home, my parents asked every day if anything had moved, and I kept scrolling LinkedIn and seeing friends and juniors settled into jobs while I was still figuring things out.
Here is something I wish I had understood sooner. Not getting calls, or not getting shortlisted, doesn’t only mean you aren’t good enough. Hundreds of people apply for the same role, recruiters skim each CV in seconds, there are experience cutoffs, and referrals and timing matter too. A lot of it is outside your control. Don’t turn every rejection into a verdict on yourself.
Then the OneMetric call came. I gave every round my best and stayed honest about who I am. But I will tell you something: I wasn’t sure it would work out, because with this many applications nothing feels certain. So even while I was going through those rounds, I kept applying elsewhere. If an opportunity comes, give it everything, and don’t stop applying until it is actually in your hands.
I don’t have a trick, and nothing I did suddenly worked. But here is what I’d tell someone in the same place.
The market is tough right now, and it can take a long time. Keep applying and keep talking to people. Don’t feel ashamed about it. Be patient and believe in yourself. And keep learning, because that time isn’t wasted.
The most important one: don’t compare yourself with others. Their timeline isn’t yours.
I’m at the start of something new now. I’m just glad I didn’t give up before the call came.
