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During my senior year at Stanford, I began my job search but was unable to secure a full-time offer.
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I was disappointed because I felt unqualified, yet I didn’t get the interview.
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I started my own PR business, which has since made six figures.
I started applying for jobs the first week of my senior year at Stanford University, hoping to get some by graduation, if not sooner. I was surrounded by friends entering finance and consulting, where recruiting begins early and offers are secured months, sometimes years, in advance.
While I wasn’t part of the traditional corporate pipeline, I spent my college years building penetration in Silicon Valley, managing marketing for hot startups.
For nine months, I tracked each application in a spreadsheet. Over time, I simplified it, deleting the “Second Round Interview” column. I didn’t even make it to the first round. Mostly, there was no update at all.
Graduating in 2025, I still didn’t have a full-time job offer.
I had experience, but it didn’t count
When I heard back, it wasn’t for full-time roles; It was for an internship. An alumni came through a referral. The other was in an area unrelated to my experience.
What made the situation even more frustrating was how entitled — perhaps even overqualified — I felt.
I started working in marketing at 15, helping local small businesses. In college, that work expanded to roles at tech companies, often taking 30 to 40 hours a week alongside my classes. By graduation, I had seven years of experience.
As a sophomore, I switched from engineering to English and linguistics. Mastery of language and storytelling made me a better marketer. But as a senior, I began to worry that I might end up as the stereotypical unemployed English major.
I was a financial aid student who didn’t want to burden my parents after graduation. I found myself considering roles that would only prolong the quest I was trying to fulfill.
The job market felt different than I expected
At highly competitive universities like Stanford, most students spend each summer interning, hoping it will lead to full-time offers. I followed that path.
But when I started applying, the road seemed to lead to a cliff rather than a golden door to adulthood.
In 2025, I wasn’t just competing with other graduates. I was against the newly fired candidates. Many of my target industries were reducing hiring or cutting roles altogether.
I started working on what I got
As graduation approached, I started saving as much as I could.
One of my professors asked me to help run his book campaign. I told her I had never worked in publishing or public relations, but I said yes anyway.
At the same time, I began assisting the journalist through my school’s alumni network, editing her writing, pitching stories, and managing her newsletter.
Even in the midst of my own suffering, I could see the difference my work made. It was exciting, although it paid less than what I was used to.
I turned that job into my own business
Three weeks before graduation, after being rejected from a minimum-wage internship I went through three rounds of interviews, I created my own role: publicist and founder of Punctuation PR.
While finishing my thesis, I filed paperwork to start an LLC. I have created a website. Instead of staying unemployed in an uncertain economy, I told my parents that I was starting a marketing and promotion agency for writers. The rewards of my efforts will be more within my control.
They were unexpectedly supportive. My mom told me she was proud — not just because I was creating a job for myself, but because I was building something that could one day create jobs for others.
The day after graduation, I drove from the Bay Area to Los Angeles and started working full-time from a freshly unpacked apartment.
I turned my side projects into clients and cold emailed academics and writers. I wrote contracts, set up billing, and raised my rates.
The referrals came. One project led to another.
It became my full-time income
For the first few months, I lived paycheck to paycheck. When I couldn’t pay off my credit cards, I sold my clothes and furniture. I often work more than 12 hours a day.
Within six months, I was making more than the entry-level roles I applied for.
By early 2026, Punctuation PR had become a six-figure business. I’ve worked with over a dozen clients, built relationships with publishers and media outlets, and helped my books reach hundreds of thousands of new readers.
What started as a stopgap became my full-time income.
It changed the way I thought about work
I used to believe that graduation—and similar milestones—followed a kind of idealized inertia: Once success is set in motion, it continues naturally, uninterrupted.
In fact, life is a series of unbalanced forces. You change speed and direction. In 2026, institutions that once felt stable now feel less certain to many.
Starting a business is still one of the riskiest things a person can do. I hope to scale my company from six to seven figures in the coming years. There’s no guarantee that I will, but there’s no guarantee that I won’t either.
It’s up to me to decide.
Read the original article on Business Insider
