Why we should never complain about our job hunt...

Having been back to the city for almost a month now, adjusting to life back in the city of Toronto has been a slow process. Transit is a joke, the weather has been abysmal, and the city has this duality of familiar yet foreign to me - perhaps I've been away for too long.

The job hunt, on the other hand, has been going well. Due to great friends in the industry, I've been flooded with details about interesting roles back in advertising. The interviews have been more like conversations - chats with strangers who didn't feel all that unfamiliar since we spoke the same ad speak. Some interviews have lasted over an hour and a half which is always a good sign. But the process is always long and tedious, with meetings set on different dates, shifting gears from one agency to another, one account to another. A lot of research and a lot of waiting. And waiting. And waiting...

But I should not complain. I should be grateful for having the opportunity to even be considered for a lot of the roles coming my way. It was definitely not that way for my parents and for many of their generation as immigrants to this country.

I cannot imagine how scared my parents must have been during their first interviews in this country. I remember when either had even the opportunity of a job interviewed, they stayed up late to prepare their answers, repeating them over and over again. As if struggling with their own answers wasn't part of the problem, but having to deal with the language barrier was another hurdle that had in their way.

I remember it took months for my mom to find a role in her field of accounting and the role she finally took was an entry level bookkeeping job at a petroleum transportation company out in the middle of (then) nowhere Markham. And the job hunt was not kind to my father, who had a Masters in Marketing Management and was forced to abandon his hunt and taking a role in a fast food restaurant as a Supervisor. This story is common for any child of an immigrant parent and it still plays out today for all of those people coming to Canada.

When I was interviewing other people for ad jobs the one thing that would irk me the most would be how underprepared some of those candidates were. If they had put in a fraction of the time most immigrants put in on their interview prep, they would have the role, no problem.

I put a lot of time prepping for roles that come my way. Most of this training does come from my university days, but I'm inspired by my parents who put every effort they had into trying to land that job so that they could provide a better life for me and my brother.

We've got it easy, folks.