Almost six months in and I still can't find a job.

What's your GPA? What have you applied for?

hi! I was in your situation and still am but mine is a bit more extreme due to some personal reasons and I'm trying to get out of this situation. I just took consulting internship, non-summer, off-cycle for 6 months. But I did anything I could to network, cold-call and search for not advertized jobs.

Good luck!

You did a lot of great things in school, perhaps it just does not look as good as a real internship.

Use your alumni directory and LinkedIn to find alumni who work in your desired industry: ask for a short phone call to learn about their job and firm and get their feedback on your resume. Be open minded about relocating. I am sure things will turn up.

Most importantly, you need to have a story: what you did in school, why you want to work in this firm / industry, what you can offer. The more informational interview you did, the more rehearsed you are, your story only gets more convincing.

You should still apply to those graduate level jobs anyways. You're effective still a senior from college from my standpoint.

Expand your net. Check your resume. If you're applying to marketing jobs and your resume is all technical finance you're probably not gonna get picked.

On your resume, quantify what you ended up doing in your internships when possible. Spell check. Put some actually interesting interests and have a friend you can trust look over it (it helps a lot).

You're not entitled to anything just because you have a paper that says you graduated. Agree with above posters that talking to friends, family, anyone is better than just applying online. Better to put a name to a face.

Don't mean to get racist but if you have an asian name and an english name, my recommendation is to put your english name first with your chinese name (if even) in parenthesis. Unfortunately some people do have an unconscious bias and if your resume is among others with similar asian names you might just get skipped. Take it from me, I'm asian and I've been on the other side of the table choosing resumes.

If you intend to stick to the online route, open up other avenues for application other than your school OCR. Apply to monster, indeed, etc. And if going this route, dont give up at 60 applications... I took about 300 before hitting on an unpaid internship my sophomore year so you can definitely do better.

While you apply, literally practice your elevator pitch. 10 seconds where you're from, 10 seconds why you chose your major, what you did to develop yourself in school, and then leave the end open for why the position you're applying to. At least get the intro down because this will help you during networking and ultimately your interviews.

Lastly, exercise (physical appearance unfortunately matters), set time daily for applying to jobs (literally make this full time job), and check in with friends occasionally (if just to relieve stress).

When you get that job in a few, come back here and write an awe inspiring "started at the bottom now we're here" story. We love those things.

Good luck kid.

There's not much you can do. In a shitty economy, coming from a non target and with 0 connections, it's very hard. I was in similar boat in 2010 (3.93 GPA, strong extracurricular's, non target). I didn't find anything until after I went to grad school. That's your best bet.

Study for the GMAT and get an MSF from a target ASAP.

You're at a non-target. You have to hustle harder to get these opportunities. Do a couple of online applications a night while following up on linkedin and personally reaching out to people who work in finance for informational interviews - there should be an opportunity to come in off-cycle.

The problem with any economy is that finance related positions are elected to those who attend the target business schools. Companies like to aim for those who have prior work experience as well. I would re-evaluate the situation and make a conscious decision as to why you pursued finance in the first place.

Have you looked into a Sales position? I am talking Real Estate (residential, investment, commercial) or operations related opportunities to start as an Office Assistant and work your way up?

If you do go the commission route, have a part-time weekend job handy to make some dough while you build up a client database of people.

Cold-call companies and get your name out there, simply sending out resume to jobs that get about 100+ people (or a lot in general) and hoping for a phone call is not something I call proactive.

It really depends on how bad you want it like I said before. I used to stay up drafting emails at 1-2am after I was done with classes and practice and then I would send them in the morning before I would leave to start the day.

I would send them in increments of 20 emails (usually 3-4 emails per firm/bank), wait a few days, then send 20 more to different banks. I covered basically all of NYC over the past year and received countless interviews, informational interviews, and connections for the future who just weren't hiring at the time.

This is the way to do it. Especially if you are having no luck using other sources/outlets.

Good luck.

Listen to Eye of the Tiger and send cold emails all day, every day.

Come to Sunnyvale - I'd be happy to bring you on as Assistant Trailer Park Supervisor

First off I highly recommend going to the library and checking out the 2 Hour Job Search. Then get networking, cold applications outside of OCR are a black hole, the response rate is abysmal. Reach out to alums and those friends who got snatched up by decent firms.

Have a goal of sending out X emails to alums a day and having conversations with at least Y per day. Since you're near a major metro go in and grab coffee with anyone who will grab it with you. Also reach out to the ancillary industries that are going to manage to touch all aspects of business. I can not recommend highly enough that you talk to lawyers and accountants.

If you're unemployed you need to carve out time each day and stuck to a schedule, treat the job search like a full time job.

I have tried the cold email route. Typically I'll introduce myself, tell them my degree, then I'll leave a little blurb about their bank showing that I HAVE read about their bank and know what its about. At the end I'll ask if we can chat about their career in finance or something specific to them. No one seems to reply at all, ever. I usually spend time and tailor messages to the person. I've tried a lot of the templates posted here too. Even someone talking to me would be encouraging but no one replies.

Honestly even a back office or coffee fetcher at a damn investment bank anywhere would be amazing, but I feel I'm completely locked out. I can't even get close enough.

Maybe I should make my template simpler and spam it everywhere? It takes a long time to find a bank, find the way the company sends emails, and guess their email. Takes about 20 minutes with my old computer(2 tabs at a time)

I won't quit, perhaps I should take the CFA I, but I feel this will just be another disregarded "check" on my application vs the millions of others who probably have it.