In this guest blog Youth Action Network member, Ishitha Islam, reflects on the lessons she’s learnt on her employment journey, and shares a message to her younger self – and other young people like her – about what she wish she had known when applying for jobs.
From a very young age, we are hounded to answer this one simple but daunting question: ‘So, what do you want to do? What is your dream job?’
Looking back, as someone who had a strong conviction for the career choices I thought I wanted to pursue – from wanting to be a fashion designer, then realising quickly that my artistic capabilities wouldn’t have allowed that, to an accountant and police officer – it’s funny to now reflect that every single one of those choices, at one point, held so much significance to me.
None of them are remotely linked to what I want to do now.
When I had those dreams, I was fairly young and naïve. I had no idea that what skills, or qualifications, I would need to get from A to B, let alone set down to follow a pathway. Being educated in a state-school all my life, in a deprived borough, didn’t help either.
I just knew what I wanted to do because I enjoyed it and had a passion for it.
I wish I could rewind the clock and tell younger Ishitha that, whilst passions should be a driving factor in choosing what you want to do, they’re only a small piece in a massive jigsaw. There are so many others factors beyond passion: like the location of the workspace, whether you’d be a good ‘cultural fit’, or if your future manager would be a good one or not.
Now, after years and years of searching, whether it be undertaking work experience and learning about different industries, I have an idea of what I want to do and be.
But before I started my journey of wanting to pursue a career in social justice, I had wished that someone had sat me down and had a frank conversation with me about how hard it was going to be.
This blog is my attempt at having that conversation with other young people like me.
Ishitha with fellow Youth Action Network member, Christie at ARE’s youth employment conference
Even through the help of some amazing social mobility programmes I’ve been part of, I have often found myself lost and kind of dumbfounded as to how difficult things are.
Up until the age of 18, I was privileged enough to not needed to step into the workplace quite yet. But the summer of Year 13, when I was frantically applying to every job I could possibly find in order to save up for a laptop for university, is when the veil finally lifted.
During those two months I spent so long filling out form after form, question after question, and probably applied to over 100 different roles.
None of those roles, except one, had ever gotten back to me – not even an automated courtesy email to say I was unsuccessful. Safe to say, I wasn’t expecting this nor was I even remotely prepared for it.
Before I had started my career journey, I had thought (as told my others), that I would need to be great at interviewing and also have a great C.V. and that’s it. That after that, I should be able to secure a job.
But no amount of interviewing practice with my peers, and no amount of edits to my C.V. would compare to the things I learned along the way. Whether that be that about writing a good cover letter, about the various application stages that applying for a job comes with, or even the emotional lessons that came from the a lack of success.
For example, I quickly had to learn, and swallow, rejection. This is an inevitable part of the application process of anything: whether an insight day, a job application for a retail job or for a graduate scheme. (It didn’t make the pain of rejections and ghosting by employers sting any less).
I feel as though that’s a sentiment that a lot of young people share: that no matter how polished and how many jobs you’ve had in the past, and the spectacular grades you have, it is simply just not enough.
There will always be someone more qualified, someone who has better grades than you, or someone who has it ‘all’. That even after securing your dream role, or your dream course at your dream university, there is still so much more left to achieve and that what you’ve done is nothing in comparison to others.
In the age of social media, it is hard to not compare yourself to others who are doing so much and it feels like you’re never going to stack up against the multiple accolades and experiences.
But there is only so much one can do, given their time, and their circumstances.
It is key to recognise that everyone has their own journeys and paths to tread upon and it’s only that once we realise that, life feels a lot more manageable than a never-ending to-do list.
It is imperative to take things slow, and step by step, the fruits of your labour may not be seen as soon as you have sown your seeds, but slowly, you’ll realise that even to get to where you are now, is something to be proud of in and of itself.
Author: Ishitha Islam
Ishitha Islam is part of ARE’s Youth Action Network, a group of young Black, Asian and mixed heritage people who are passionate about improving employment outcomes for other young people across England and Wales.
This forms part of our work with the Youth Futures Foundation, ‘Building Ethnic Diversity in the Youth Employability Sector’ to strengthen employability services for and led by Black, Asian and Mixed heritage people.
