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Getting a job is hard right now\u2014ask any Gen Z grad who\u2019s at risk of being \u201cunemployable<\/a>\u201c. But Squarespace\u2019s chief marketing officer, Kinjil Mathur, says that\u2019s long been the case, which is why she had to get creative when she was starting out nearly 20 years ago.<\/p>\n The New York-based exec has worked in the elusive worlds of tech and fashion, climbing up the ranks of Conde Nast, Saks Fifth Avenue and Foursquare to the C-suite at $6 billion software service provider Squarespace.\u00a0<\/p>\n However\u2014contrary to the notion that Gen Xers and geriatric millennials had it easier<\/a>\u2014Mathur didn\u2019t expect to walk straight into a job with her finance degree at the ready, back in the 2000\u2019s.<\/p>\n Like many graduates today, she recalls being \u201cworried about her future\u201d and thinking outside of the box to get some real work experience under her belt.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEvery single summer I was trying to find some internship,\u201d Mathur tells Fortune. <\/em>\u201cI just wanted to get experience.<\/p>\n \u201cIn my freshman year\u2014and this is dating me\u2014but this is when we used to have telephone books where you had yellow pages that had the name and number of every business and every person in your city. <\/p>\n \u201cI went to the business listings and I just started calling up companies and asking them if they had internships available and that I would be willing to work for free.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n It worked. Mathur\u2019s first foot in the door of employment was at the travel firm Travelocity during her first summer at the University of Texas. She did admin and research for its general council\u2014all for free.<\/p>\n In the end having that experience listed on her resume turned out to be priceless.\u00a0<\/p>\n For Mathur, that first internship created a snowball effect on her career.<\/p>\n \u201cThe next summer, that experience helped me get the next experience and so on [and] so forth,\u201d she adds.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBy the time that I was a junior, I had enough real world experience that when I went into these interviews, I could talk about them, and talk about business in a way that resonated with the people interviewing me because I had been doing it for a little while.\u201d<\/p>\n Mathur was offered a full-time job as a technology consultant at the global consultancy Protiviti<\/a> before even graduating.<\/p>\n \u201cI was in my 20s advising much more senior people on all things tech at their company,\u201d she adds. \u201cSo you can imagine that dynamic too, it wasn\u2019t an easy job.\u201d<\/p>\n Although the Yellow Pages stopped printing after more than five decades in 2019, it\u2019s never been easier to track down prospective employers.<\/p>\n Like Mathur, many Gen Z grads today are successfully trying their luck with strangers to get a foot in the door of employment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Just last week, Ashleigh Spiliopoulou told Fortune <\/em>that she stumbled upon her dream employer, Emerge, on Instagram<\/a>. Instead of waiting for the PR firm to hire, the 25-year-old emailed its founder directly with the subject line \u201cproposal to hustle\u201d\u2014and it worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now, one year later and working as Emerge\u2019s senior account executive, she\u2019s describing cold emailing employers as the \u201clife hack to avoiding long interview processes<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Another Gen Z grad, Basant Shenouda, landed an internship at LinkedIn<\/a>\u2014where she still works three years later\u2014by using the networking platform to see which conferences recruiters were posting about. She<\/span> then waitressed at those events, armed with a stack of r\u00e9sum\u00e9s to hand to hiring managers.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, 24-year-old Ayala Ossowski used the 20 hours a week she was working at a pizza shop in suburban Washington to try to get poached by DC\u2019s elite.<\/a> She wore a baseball cap emblazoned with her university logo on the front to every shift and launched into an elevator pitch any time a customer asked about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n After a month of pitching herself while serving pizza, Ossowski landed her first internship.<\/p>\n A cold call, email, or tweet may open doors for you\u2014but your efforts can\u2019t stop there.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOnce you have the internship, you\u2019ve got to take it incredibly seriously,\u201d Mathur warns. \u201cI did and that got me the full-time offer.\u201d<\/p>\n After all, employers can close doors just as quickly as they can open them.<\/p>\n It\u2019s why Mathur suggests that unemployed Gen Zers need to ditch their list of demands<\/a> for prospective employers\u2014including plenty of working from home, minimal working hours and a generous pay check\u2014and start hustling.<\/p>\n \u201cThe list of criteria for people coming out of college, or in college, right now is so long,\u201d she says, adding that your time will come to be picky.<\/p>\n But for now, her advice to young job seekers is to flip the script and say: \u201cIf anyone can give me any kind of experience, I would be forever indebted to them.\u201d<\/p>\n When looking back at her own success, going from internship to employment, and eventually landing at Squarespace, Mathur insists \u201cyou\u2019ve got to be willing to do whatever it takes\u201d early in your career.<\/p>\n \u201cI was willing to work for free, I was willing to work any hours they needed\u2014even on evenings and weekends. I was not focused on traveling,\u201d Mathur concludes. \u201cYou really have to just be willing to do anything, any hours, any pay, any type of job\u2014just really remain open.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nOne internship led to another<\/h2>\n
Yellow pages is out\u2014but shooting your shot isn\u2019t<\/h2>\n
Don\u2019t stop hustling once you\u2019ve got your foot in the door\u00a0<\/h2>\n
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