This market sucks (fresher rant)

I graduated in June this year and have been struggling to find a job despite all my efforts. I was offered a position at TCS Digital, but it feels like a letdown after all the preparation I’ve done. For the past year, I’ve been solving DSA problems and developing apps, but the job search has been incredibly challenging. I even interned at IIT, yet I still can’t land a job.

It’s so frustrating to see people who don’t have the same level of development or problem-solving skills get hired while I go from one interview to the next. I’ve been applying to 3-5 jobs daily for the last six months, and I’ve only received a few interview calls. In one case, I made it to the final round after excelling in three technical rounds, but I was rejected after the founders’ round without any feedback. I was led to believe I had done extremely well, which made the rejection even harder.

During campus placements, I reached the final rounds of interviews with decent companies, but I was always rejected after reaching the top 5. Other companies either ghost or give out task rounds where you compete with devs who have 3-5 years of industry experience. It’s insane.

I’m fortunate that I don’t have to support my family financially, thanks to my well-off parents, but it’s still disheartening. On top of all this, the focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives is tough to navigate. All the top companies that came to my college—Flipkart, Myntra, Amazon, Adobe—had female-only hiring tags. I thought I could make it through hackathons, but now even those are women-only. I am not blaming women nor do I mean to knock their hustle but I hope you can understand how difficult it is to deal with quotas in this market.

I can’t figure out where I’m going wrong. I network heavily on LinkedIn, have strong communication skills, have been grinding LeetCode, and participate in hackathons while developing apps for fun, but I still can’t seem to land a job.

PS: If anyone can help with advice or referrals, I’d be grateful. Thanks for bearing with my harangue.