Why can’t I Find a Job?

I graduated in December 2013 with a finance degree and a job lined up at a small family firm doing day trading. On paper, I’d done everything right — degree in hand, job secured, and ready to begin a stable career. Within weeks, I realized it wasn’t a good fit. The work made me miserable, and although I usually encourage my students to stick it out for at least a year and a half, I knew staying would hurt my mental health and possibly even my family relationships. So I made the difficult decision to leave. Within a few days I’d had the conversations, relationships intact with only some minor hurt feelings that have since healed, and exited. Then came the unemployment.

I Thought I Knew What I Was Doing. I Didn’t.

Over the next three months, I applied to dozens of jobs — anything that seemed remotely tied to my degree in finance. But I was facing two major problems:

1. I didn’t actually enjoy finance, and
2. I had no real plan for how to pivot into something like marketing, which I thought I might like more.

It was a tough stretch. I customized applications, sent out plenty of generic ones, rewrote cover letters, and refreshed job boards constantly. Some interviews came through — in finance, mostly — but nothing felt right. I felt stuck, and well, I was. I started second-guessing myself and wondering if I was doing something wrong, or worse, if I wasn’t good enough to move forward. I was, quite honestly, petrified.

Eventually, it was a connection that opened a door. I’d worked as a teaching assistant while I earned my bachelor’s of science in finance, and that day was visiting my old boss when another professor I’d known walked in. Coincidentally, he was building a neuromarketing lab and upon learning I was looking for a job, asked if I’d be interested in helping build it. There was no formal interview, just a very short conversation. Your prior work experience really can be such a differentiator. I thought about it for a day and took the job.

That “yes” changed everything. It led to an MBA, then a Ph.D., and ultimately to the work I do now as a professor, and here as a business owner helping others navigate their own job searches. But I’ve never forgotten those three months of uncertainty.

How Long Does It Take to Find a Job Today?

If you’re asking yourself, “Why can’t I find a job?”—you’re not alone. Today, the average job search takes 5 to 6 months, and often longer for early-career professionals. Today’s recent graduates also face unique challenges: fewer entry-level openings, unclear career paths, AI competitors who are quite honestly often faster than a fresh new employee, and systems that filter out resumes before a hiring manager ever sees them.

If you’re sending applications and hearing nothing back, there’s probably more going on than just bad luck. Here are a few common reasons job seekers struggle to get hired:

• Applying too broadly instead of strategically.
• Wasting way too much time customizing every single part of documents.
• Using outdated or hard-to-read resume formats.
• Not editing the AI output.
• Relying too much on online job boards.
• Not reaching out directly to employers and connections.

What I Teach Now (and What I Wish I Knew Then)

Many of the tools we teach job seekers today — resume structure, interview strategy, and effective outreach — are things I had to figure out the hard way. But that still wasn’t enough to reach the next level. I also had a lot of help from some people who gave me some very useful tips. Sometimes even when you’re doing everything the internet tells you, you just need the human touch. That’s my reason for building Ryze, my “why” if you’re familiar with Simon Sinek’s “Start with Why” Ted Talk. If you aren’t familiar with it, you should watch it soon. It may just change your life.

During my own job hunt, I thought I was doing everything right. But in reality, I was working hard without a clear strategy. And it showed. Later, during my Ph.D. applications, my resume was still awful if I’m being fully honest. So I asked for help from my then-boss, who had been a successful vice president of human resources for a major pharmaceutical company before switching careers and joining the, you guessed it, neuromarketing lab I worked in. With his help, I started telling my story in a way that got me rapidly noticed.

How can I get a Job?

As a professor, I’ve spent the last several years helping students and early-career professionals get traction in a market that’s not designed to make it easy. I’ve written the Ryze Guides guides to share those tips in an easy-to-read, succinct format.

The guides are designed to help people apply smarter, interview better, and get noticed faster. Just like my old boss gave me advice that turned my resume into a callback machine, we can help you hone your own application documents, interviewing ability, and general salesmanship into tools that turn heads.

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