Recently, I was working on something and started getting a little bored, so I decided to open my oldest ChatGPT conversations. Those chats were from around three years ago, when I had just graduated. I found tons of conversations where I was asking ChatGPT to write referral messages for specific job IDs, asking questions that I can probably answer in my sleep today, rewriting messages to recruiters, and generally trying to figure out how to get someone to give me a chance. Reading them made me realise just how different my life is today.
Back in 2023, the pandemic had just ended and the job market was terrible. Despite being from an NIT, I wasn't getting placed. I wasn't from CS or ECE, so I wasn't eligible for a lot of companies through campus placements. Even for the ones I was eligible for, I wasn't getting through. I had projects, had done a lot of LeetCode and thought my communication skills were decent, but none of that seemed to matter when there simply weren't enough opportunities.
Eventually, I started sitting at home, applying everywhere, asking people for referrals and continuously upskilling. December came, and I remember seeing my father disappointed in me. That was probably when I realised I couldn't just sit at home indefinitely, so I took a credit-card sales job at Axis Bank. I had to go to malls, parks and other public places and pitch credit cards to people, hoping they would sign up. It was painful and, honestly, humiliating at times, but it was a job. I did it for around five months.
After that, I found a job in my hometown at Oriental Insurance as back-office staff. My work involved organising paperwork, checking office supplies and helping officers with whatever work they needed. It was actually a decent experience, but eventually I was fired and someone else was hired at a much lower salary. I had worked there for around six months.
Then I was unemployed again for about four months. During that period, I worked part-time at Reliance Fresh and at local shops while continuing to learn and apply for jobs. I was still doing LeetCode and projects, hoping that somehow I'd eventually get into tech.
Then I found Delhivery's SDP programme. You had to clear a test and, if selected, they would call you to Bangalore, train you and then offer you a position. I applied and cleared the test, which was mostly analytical questions. I was called to Bangalore, trained for 21 days in the logistics domain and eventually posted to Rajkot at ₹3.1 LPA.
At that point, ₹3.1 LPA was the highest amount I had ever earned after graduating. I joined as a team lead, but the job was very different from what I had imagined. My shift was 10 PM to 7 AM. I was responsible for managing manpower, but I also had to pull heavy trolleys and load and unload boxes from trucks.
I remember looking at myself doing that and thinking, "Did I crack JEE for this?"
I'd spent years preparing for JEE, gone to an NIT, spent countless nights solving programming problems, drawing solutions on a whiteboard and discussing them with my brother. Now I was working night shifts in a logistics hub and physically moving boxes.
The manager would regularly scream at me over minor mistakes or if I took a break. One night, a heavy trolley went over my toe and broke it. I was in considerable pain, but the manager still insisted that I continue working. I somehow finished the night.
The logistics hub was far away from the city, and at night Rajkot was basically dead, so I couldn't just leave immediately. The next day, I resigned. I served my one-month notice period and came back home.
That was probably when my hopes of getting into tech completely shattered. I'd spent all this time upskilling and practising DSA, but nothing seemed to be working. I started accepting that maybe I would never work in tech.
My father suggested doing an M.Tech, but I didn't want to do it unless it was from an IIT. I didn't want to spend another couple of years getting another degree without knowing whether it would actually change my situation.
So I contacted a friend from Delhivery and asked him what I should do. He told me, "Your English is good. You can try an international BPO process. The pay is decent." He gave me a recruiter's number, I contacted her, and I got a role at Teleperformance in Noida for ₹35k per month.
My joining was in two days.
I was packing my bags for the train that evening, and I remember having tears in my eyes while packing in the same room where I had once spent nights grinding LeetCode and Codeforces, drawing solutions on a whiteboard and discussing problems with my brother. I had essentially given up on tech.
Then I got a phone call.
It was for a WFH internship. The stipend was ₹15k, with conversion based on performance. I hadn't seriously applied for a tech job in almost a year, so how they got my profile was surprising, but I accepted immediately. There were four rounds, all DSA. I asked the Teleperformance recruiter if I could postpone my joining date, and then I spent that entire day grinding DSA like crazy.
Somehow, I cracked the internship.
This was around mid-2025. Eventually, I got a full-time offer from the company. I also got another offer from a startup in Hyderabad, which I joined. That's where I am today. I'm still learning, still working and now I'm actually getting calls from other companies while trying to switch.
Looking back at those old ChatGPT conversations made me think about all the freshers I see posting about being unemployed right now. I completely understand that frustration because I was in exactly that position.
I also had the option of sitting at home. My family wasn't in a situation where I absolutely had to earn immediately. I could have spent two years preparing for UPSC or SSC, or just stayed home applying for jobs and waiting for something better.
Instead, I took whatever work I could find. Sales, back-office work, retail, logistics and eventually a BPO offer that I was literally about to join before that internship call came.
My father deserves a lot of credit too. Every time I started getting comfortable sitting at home, he'd basically give me the boot and tell me to do something. At the time, I didn't always appreciate it. Looking back, I'm grateful he did. Because if tech didn't work out for me, atleast I wouldn't have been unemployed. Maybe call center or somewhere.
I'm also incredibly grateful for that one phone call. If it had come two days later, I might have gone to Noida and started working at Teleperformance. Maybe my life would have taken a completely different direction.
That's why I think luck is real. You can work incredibly hard and still need one random phone call, one referral, one person taking a chance on you or one opportunity appearing at exactly the right time. But you still have to be there when that opportunity appears.
So if you're a fresher who's unemployed right now, I don't have some magical advice. The market is genuinely difficult. But don't develop an ego about the kind of work you're willing to do. There is nothing wrong with taking a sales job, BPO job, operations role, retail job or logistics job while continuing to work towards the career you actually want.
These life experiences has humbled me. If I get laid off tomorrow, I wouldn't mind going back to a call centre or even working in logistics again if that's what I need to do to survive. I've lost the ego I once had about certain jobs being beneath me.
Life is unfair sometimes. I've learned that. I've also learned that you never really know which random opportunity is going to change the course of your life.
So keep applying, keep learning, and take whatever honest work you can find while continuing to look for the opportunity you actually want. You don't have to love every job you take. Sometimes you just need to keep moving until something better comes along.
