Hey so it's gonna be a longish and vent-alike one.
Tl:dr is ; Hi! I'm a young fart smella, recently got fired from a job. I have my bachelors in Digital art, Masters in management and post-graduate in UX/UI design. Getting rejected from every single place..what to do?
So yeah, where do I begin.
I'm a young guy based in Poland. I'm a graphic designer/artist/illustrator, call it whatever you want. I had the opportunity to work in gamedev for 3 years now and recently got fired due to budget cuts. It sucked but I figured, eh, it's gonna be fine, it's just a matter of time now, since I have my degrees, my experience and a neat portfolio with 1 game out and 2 more coming. SOMEONE should hire me sooner or later, right?
Boy oh boy, was I dead wrong. I've been looking for nearly a year now and honestly it's getting worse. Back when I started, I've just finished my bachelor's in Digital art. I had a shitty ass portfolio and 0 real experience but STILL I had alot of interviews going on ( This was before covid).
Now? I've been looking for around a year now, applied in every possible way, started developing into 3D ( since i was mainly a 2D boye ) further and further now and I when I get 1 response from 80 sent applications ( which, usually is something alike “yeah your skills are AMAZING but we prefer someone else)
it's a miracle. As time moves on a little panic started peeking into my mind. While I realize that there are alot of graphic designers and what-not, it seems unreal to me that I can't get my hands on a junior or even an intern job.
It's insane.
I am very well aware of the circumstances, world/country/this particular business situation but..damn. Where the fuck should I go from here? I don't know If I should keep digging and POTENTIALLY hit jackpot or at least something one day or should I rebrand my ass thoroughly and become a.. what? Here comes another problem.
From my observations, whatever you pick rn besides very few specialized instances or plain manual labour on construction, you're gonna have a very hard time getting anywhere. Everyone keeps yapping about programming, but since I worked in gamedev
In the meantime I've finished my post-graduate and masters, HOPING and truly believing that it might actually give me something. Shitass. It gave me nothing, at least now, so to say. It's surreal to me that just a couple years ago, my current knowledge and degrees would GUARANTEE me a spot at least as a junior somewhere. Now it feels like EVERYONE is a damn PH.D, expert and has skills of unmatched potential. It really bumms me out since, ffs, I'm not applying for a senior specialist expert giga-chad, Im a lousy junior and I qualify just for that D:
I KNOW for a fact that knowing C# at a very basic level gives you shit really, couse there are 1423512525 people that know C# at a very basic level and more.
Recently we had an influx od ~ 2-3 mil people from Ukraine from which at least half stayed, settled and uptook work which definitely does not help in terms of competing with others for the job spot.
I'm just confused, angry and starting to panic a little, since, yknow, YOU GOTTA EARN SOME money unless you wanna starve and each day feels like whatever you're doing – you're either wasting time or wasting time. I have no idea whether this path will lead me anywhere then again I constantly hear and see open job spots ( 1500 applicants for 1 spot is another thing.. XD) and “preachers” saying that gamedev will rise again after this covid/war/economic tragedy fiasco. It's hard to believe anything at this point :/
I feel like I KNOW alot of things, can do alot of things and I'm constantly developing somehow, but I also feel like a total idiot and a loser bcs no one is willing to hire me even below the god damn minimal wage. Oh, this + everything else you gotta deal in life, including physical, mental, social, love – health status. Additionally, war is looming around the corner, holding hands with climate and economic crisis. It's killing me. Is this really how it looks like bros?
(edit: Few typos and small changes)