By Aaron Timms

Perhaps you, like me, are a smug young narcissist gripped by the utterly delusional conviction that you’re the most shatteringly brilliant figure of your generation, that every thought that dribbles out of your magnificently open and cosmopolitan mind is minted with the dust of an ineradicable greatness, and that your words are a cascade, a mountain, an ocean, a universe all to themselves. Perhaps you, like me, believe that when the time comes to leave this great, beige building and find a job, you will have to do no more than breathe to be instantly guaranteed a career involving riches, an office with a drinks cabinet, the affection of millions, an unending supply of Fun Dip and little real expectation of productive work. Perhaps you, like me, have had some trouble securing a summer internship for yourself.

“Oh, but it’s easy,” the Office of Career Services (OCS) tells you. Start early. Target the field you want to work in. Tailor your resume and cover letter to each of the internships you’re going for. Rack up the informational interviews. Work on promoting yourself to strangers, preferably in elevators, over two-minute blocks.
That’s all good advice. But based on my experience to date, I’m finding there are a few other quick rules of thumb that need to be made public.

Cover letters are best written sober. At one point, a few months ago, I had a cover letter that basically said, “I am the son of God.” At other times I have made the mistake of coming home after a night out and dashing off a quick application or two in what I thought was only a state of “moderate” drunkenness. Bad idea.

In interviews, don’t laugh, repeatedly and inanely, at your own jokes. During a recent interview I spent much of my time making jokey little asides to everything the interviewer was saying. In my mind, I told myself this was me “turning on the Australian charm” (it’s a terrible thing to have to admit in polite company, but yes, I am Australian). In reality, this was me “coming across as a rambling, incoherent mess”. Awesome.

Enthusiasm is good. Manic, wild-eyed ranting about capacity building and social entrepreneurship is not. Everyone at SIPA, it seems, has a snappy one-liner ready to go whenever someone asks them why they’ve come to grad school. Usually it’s something like: “My focus is on the intersection between emerging markets and the resurgence of fascism in Eastern Europe; I hope to get a job with a Polish hedge fund.” Or: “I’ve worked in an NGO in Sierra Leone for the last 18 months helping de-sexed LGBT chickens reintegrate into the community and I’m concentrating on development as a way of deepening my understanding of sterilisation and its effect on poultry in western Africa”. Generally these one-liners go down well in interviews. The mistake is when you take things too far and start trying to show off. In a group interview last year I was shocked and delighted to hear another guy say that he wanted a career that combined elements of “social entrepreneurship, grassroots campaigning, microfinance, emerging market research, viral marketing and nude yachting”. Okay, I’m exaggerating. But a sentence can only bear the weight of so many buzzwords.

Try not to end your cover letters with the words, “In conclusion, just give me a job.” I’ve learnt from painful experience that this is generally not the best way to approach the task of finding employment. Who would have thought? Some employers are just so unreasonable.

Good luck, and above all, in those moments when all hope seems lost, just remember: Things could be worse. You could be me.