We Are Chemistry Blog: The Lab Notes

Once the excitement of first year dies down and exams end, you start hearing more and more people mentioning LinkedIn. So, you make an account. You realise very quickly you have no professional looking pictures for your profile, and start adding your education, work experience and extracurriculars. You add your skills, a bio, connect with your classmates and friends, and for a minute you feel accomplished for getting to the milestone of adding yet another social media app to your phone. The problem doesn’t start until you start to scroll. Over the year one by one, everyone on your feed has either secured an internship, a placement, attended a networking event you didn’t even know existed or have even started their own business. I have seen people post that they’re on a list of future upcoming leaders, been invited to business events, and it begins to feel like the pond is full of much bigger fish than you initially thought.

Now for clarification, there is nothing wrong with sharing your achievements on a platform meant for that exact purpose! LinkedIn’s exact purpose is to be a window for employers to look through to see what you have to bring to the table. It’s the digital footprint you want employers to see. Posting on LinkedIn is a good way to document your efforts and achievements and connect with people who can help you climb the ladder once university has come to an end. However, it can be disheartening to see incredible people your age running far ahead of you.

Realising you’re not the biggest fish in the pond at university is expected. But realising you’ve not even made it to the sea yet is what catches you off guard. Suddenly that competition for jobs your schoolteachers and parents always warned you about has started, and you’ve missed the starting signal.

If you have been on social media over the past few years, you’ve probably heard the stories from UK graduates. Struggling to find jobs, sending dozens of applications with no replies, making it to the interview only to be told you’re not the right fit. All these stories from the mouths of strangers with a TikTok account that you assume are better than you. And if they are struggling, what chance have you got? The fearmongering online about the job market does leave me sceptical if I’m honest. I’m not saying job searching isn’t a process, but remember to take everything you see online with a pinch of salt.

So what can you do?

As your resident Jack of all trades, my overused bit of advice is to try new things. It doesn’t have to be a research internship or a placement. If you don’t know what path you want to go down, try them all. Find a personal project, a society to get involved with, volunteer. Become a Chem Intern for Warwick’s Chemistry Department! Not that I am biased but it’s a good way to be a part of a team and get involved in projects. It can be easy to watch frozen from the sideline, watching everyone find their niche. But sometimes, the only way to tackle the fear of falling behind is getting ahead.

I genuinely have tried so many different things I have lost count. Not all of these new skills or projects will reap results, or even be something you want to do forever, but I have realised that doing anything practical is never a waste. You don’t have to do the same thing as everyone else if it’s not your speed.

Also, get off LinkedIn. If it stresses you out, just get rid of it. Open it if you have something to post, then delete it. There’s no need to be constantly active if it only makes you panic.

Most of us have no idea what we want to do. Social media is deceiving, the people posting on LinkedIn that you think have it made probably feel the same way as you. That post on LinkedIn is only a snapshot of that person’s year, you don’t see the bad days, the doubt, and the struggle leading up to these big achievements on your feed.

I have the mildly delusional, yet optimistic belief that everything will work out the way it’s meant to. But that’s only if you don’t bury your head in the sand. As long as you try, your efforts will bear fruit in time.

I highly recommend reading The LinkedIn Effect by Devina Singh from The Boar, an article I discovered halfway through writing this post (and then had to panic-change my title). It’s a fantastic read that delves further into this problem and reminds you that you’re not the only one feeling like the weakest link.