Surviving Unemployment While You Seek Your Dream Job by Faria Ahmed

Feature Photo Credit: Tero Vesalainen, shutterstock

As young adults we are geared to believe that we have a higher purpose in life than just growing up, working, having a family and dying someday. We all want to do something important, be someone significant that can impact a community or touch people’s lives. Some of us want to shine bright as artists and push the creative barriers of our fields farther then they have been pushed before. While chasing these beautiful dreams to reach a point of self-actualization, we also have to survive the process of getting there. Here’s how I managed to survive unemployment while I kept looking for my dream job. 

As a young adult living on your own, life can be hard when you have just finished school. As soon we you cross the stage to smile for the cameras on your convocation night, you can say goodbye to whatever student grants or scholarships that you had been receiving till then. This is the true beginning of adult life. Welcome on board. 

You go home with your diploma and you realize that you only just have your part-time job and you will now need to begin applying for a ‘real’ job in the field of your education. However, those jobs are often the most sought after and very competitive. They are also not very easy to come by depending on your field and where you live. This means you can easily spend months applying to and interviewing for these positions while rent and bills are piling up. 

That’s pretty much what happened when I finished my Master’s degree from the University of Ottawa. My scholarships stopped the very next week and I only had a part-time job that barely covered my rent. I had been applying to job since before the convocation but there were very few vacancies in the type of jobs I wanted to do, and the few interviews I had attended did not result in offers of employment. 

That’s when I had to make some realistic choices and decisions about surviving unemployment. I realized I have the following financial responsibilities which I need to tackle including:

1. Rent
2. Utility Bills
3. Cell Phone & Internet Bills
4. Tenant Insurance
5. Petcare/Pet Health Insurance (if you have one)
6. Medication/Dental/Vision or other costs not covered by insurance
7. Transportation Costs (a monthly bus pass? Car payments?)
8. Groceries
9. Toiletries

Everything else like clothes, eating out, entertainment and so on could take a back seat. However, these 9 things were essential to survival and no matter what I would need to keep coming up with about $1500 a month to stay afloat long enough to find myself that ‘dream job’. 

This is the stage where a lot of millennials such as myself get frustrated and allow themselves to get into crushing debt because they refuse to work while they are applying for their field-appropriate jobs. The smarter and more practical way to approach the situation is that the longer you keep working part-time jobs and staying financially afloat, the more time you are buying to properly research and apply for the type you really want to do in the industry where you can really see yourself growing over the years. 

You have lots of different options in order to survive this period. These include:

1. Moving back in with family: this can significantly cut your costs since rent and bills are the biggest chunk of expenses
2. Working as a server or finding other part-time positions to stay financially solvent and debt-free
3. Ask parents or family for a loan to get through this difficult period of time
4. Pay your bills using your credit card

I highly discourage options 3 & 4 because as a young person entering adulthood, you don’t want to start off on the wrong foot by acquiring more debt. You are young, you have energy and are in good health. You can easily use this to work enough hours at part-time positions to keep your bills and dues in check. You also need to find time for your mental health as it can be a challenging time for people who had expected to get a great job right out of college. All good things take time and there’s no harm in taking it slow and figuring out the job market one step at a time. Getting a dream job can require more than a paper diploma. In the current and competitive job market in most North American cities, employers are looking for computer skills, soft skills, experience and personality types to make sure the hired person is a good fit. 

All these mean you can use the time after graduation to slowly build up your portfolio through internship or volunteering opportunities, or even by taking some hands-on skill-building classes while you work your survival jobs. Taking it slow is no reason to worry, it’s just how the world works now. Don’t put too much pressure on yourself and allow yourself a break to learn and evolve with the changing society so you can thrive. Now, go forth and conquer!

Faria is the editor of a successful lifestyle blog for millennials. You can visit her blog here: www.millenialthings.blog

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