Sripathi Venkat

60% with a job beats 85% without one.

That's the cold, hard truth I wish someone had told me before I boarded that flight to the UK.

Football brought me here. Ironic, really. My passion for the beautiful game became the tiebreaker between UK and US universities. The home of football won, ofcourse. But I quickly learned that in the job market was a whole different play all together.

My timeline looks neat on paper:

• September 26, 2022: Landed in the UK
• December 2023: Graduated
• July 2024: Landed the job

What that timeline doesn't show? The 700-800 applications. The 10 interviews. The 2 final rounds. The number of days I had wondered if I'd made a massive mistake.

I realised late that Master's degree is just a gatepass. A ticket into the country. Not the golden ticket everyone thinks it is.

Don't get me wrong – I'm not saying not to study. But that distinction you're killing yourself for, is not worth it

It won't matter when your PSW is halfway gone and you're still unemployed.

My first mistake was waiting until 2 months after my course ended to get serious about job hunting. By then, my classmates who started on day one already had their foot in doors.

The juggle was real. Part-time work for rent and bills, coursework for the degree, and job hunting for the future. One thing I stuck to was to never lose sight of the true goal. A job. Not grades.

What changed the game were two things (thanks to Unimad):

1. LinkedIn Optimisation – mine was underwhelming, to put it mildly
2. Value Proposition Documents – the number of HR people who commented on how well-structured and articulated these were high and I highly recommend this.

The truth is, I was lucky. I had some freelance/contract work from January 2023 that kept me afloat. But luck isn't a strategy.

If I could teleport back to September 2022 and tell myself one thing, I'd say: "Start now. Not tomorrow. Not after midterms. NOW."

A decent 60-65% and working your socks off from Day 1 to land a job > Getting 85% but ending up jobless.

That's not being pessimistic. That's being a realist.