Personal Stories

I Did 8 Internships Before Landing A Full-Time Role

When I graduated from university, I was excited to get a job and join the workforce for real. To develop my skills further, I attended a lot of online webinars and workshops. With so many extra skills under my belt, I felt confident I’d land a job in no time. But reality had other plans. Despite all my extra abilities, my job hunt turned out to be more challenging than I expected. I applied for dozens of roles, but I didn’t hear back from any of them. After several rounds of applications and rejections, I turned to internships. I thought that if I built up enough experience, I’d eventually land a full-time role. My first internship was unpaid, and the field wasn’t even related to my degree. Still, I gave it everything I had – I worked hard and even volunteered whenever I had free time. At the same time, I continued to apply for jobs but never got a response. The hardest part came when I didn’t receive an offer for a full-time job after my internship ended. I was crushed. I didn’t know what else to do. I was exhausted, discouraged, and unsure if continuing was worth it. But I pushed myself to try again and applied for another internship and volunteer programme... and then another. Before I knew it, I was moving from one internship to the next, always with the hope that it would lead to something more permanent. But it didn’t. I felt completely burnt out from juggling unpaid work, constant rejections, and personal struggles. While I tried to keep myself moving to stay productive, deep down, I was losing hope. Then one day, a friend sent me a link to a webinar. “This girl is in the same programme as you,” she said. The person she was talking about had joined an overseas internship through a platform I hadn’t tried. I reached out to her, and she kindly shared her tips, and encouraged me to give it a shot. So, I did! After completing seven internships, I was feeling a bit disheartened, but decided to give it one more try – and landed an internship with that company. Towards the end of that internship, I found out that the company had an opening for a full-time role. At first, I was a bit hesitant to ask if they would like to employ me because I wasn’t sure if my heart could take another rejection. But I summed up all my courage to ask them. And to my surprise, they did! Now, when I look at my resume and see the line-up of internships I’ve done, it’s almost funny to think I went through all that. But I did, and somehow, they led me to a place I never imagined I’d be. This article is part of TSS Confessions, a weekly column where we delve into personal finance topics that are unscripted and genuine real accounts from people.