My father made the decision to move to Berkeley, CA in the late 1980’s. he landed in SFO alone with nothing but 40 dollars and a 4 year old who he wanted nothing more than to grant his only child the opportunities and choices in the United States that he never experienced living under the lingering Cultural Revolution policies in 1980s China. We didn’t have a network or connections. No safety net and no plan B, but somehow we managed to survive, and my father’s dream of his only child living independently and earning a college degree was a success in itself.

Stepping into college, I expected to graduate with a rewarding job, but after hundreds (and hundreds…) of application submissions, I found myself first job making $21.54 an hour. This barely covered my rent at the time in addition to the looming stress of deferring student loans. While still incomparable, my problem was similar to that of my father’s: I didn’t have a rich uncle or a successful cousin to call for support, let alone to ask for a job. I quickly learned that no one was coming to help; so I did what many struggling recent grads would do when they felt stuck - apply to grad school…

Unfortunately, grad school was in itself a very similar scenario. Regardless of my grad school’s brand name, career services, or internships, I was still rejected from the top management firms and tech companies that I so desperately wanted to get an offer from. It took months of trial and error, but opportunities finally started to come to me through refining my outreach strategies. There was nothing that I had to lose - my failures turned into lessons that cultivated into a methodology. Finding a dream job in 2022 is both operational and etiquette-based; There is a strategy in every e-mail, every phone call, every LinkedIn message.