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[Samovar]

I'm a chemical engineering graduate from May 2025, and at the time, I was not applying for jobs because I already had an offer from a startup. In the summertime, before the position began, the startup went belly up, and now I had to hunt for a job. Unfortunately, I have somewhere between 50 and 100 rejection emails in my inbox from between September of last year to January of this year. I've only had two phone interviews that ended with an enthusiastic "You'll hear back from us next week" - only to never hear back from them.

Unfortunately, during my undergrad, I did not pursue any co-ops or internships, so I have zero chem e experience outside a 3.48 GPA. I've tailored my cover letters and tweaked my CV to no avail.

I personally want to work in Controls, but I've not limited myself to entry level controls roles. I've applied to Chem E roles everywhere from California and Texas to Kansas and North Carolina. I live in NYC where there's not many Chem E roles hiring so I've been willing to expand geographical search. But still no luck.

In the meantime, I'm about to take the FE Exam which I've spent the last month preparing for, and I'm going to try getting an ISA certification to appeal to the companies hiring controls engineers. But other than that, it's a scary thought to be approaching 1 year of graduating and still have no job to show for it. And according to one of my former professors, at least 15% of the graduating class don't have a job either.

Is this normal?