The job market is especially tough for recent grads
Ashley Terrell, a 2024 University of Hawaii graduate with multiple business degrees, struggled to find work in her field despite months of networking and job applications. Her post-graduation employment has consisted of a retail promotion role and a hotel job she was later laid off from. She reflects that roughly half of her graduating class also lacked employment at graduation.
Summary
Ashley Terrell, a 23-year-old graduate of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, shares her experience navigating a difficult job market after earning degrees in marketing, international business, entrepreneurship, and management in 2024. For Ashley, attending college was not a choice but a firm expectation set by her parents from an early age.
Despite entering college with aspirations of working at a startup in a marketing capacity, and despite dedicating months to networking and submitting job applications before graduation, Ashley was unable to secure a role aligned with her qualifications. The only offer she received was from power tool manufacturer Tektronic Industries, which placed her as a promotional retail worker at a local Home Depot, earning $25 an hour. Her duties included stocking shelves, drilling display sets, and promoting Milwaukee and Ryobi products — work far removed from her academic focus.
Ashley subsequently found a position at a local Marriott hotel, but was laid off in September 2025. At the time of the interview, she remained unemployed and actively searching for work. Despite her difficult circumstances, she expressed cautious optimism, while acknowledging that rapid change across all industries is making the job search uniquely challenging for her generation. She also noted that approximately half of her graduating classmates did not have jobs at the time they walked the stage, underscoring that her experience is broadly shared among recent graduates who feel collectively unable to help one another given their shared struggles.
Key Insights
- Ashley argues that despite holding four degrees in business-related fields and spending months networking and applying before graduation, the only job offer she received was a retail promotional role at Home Depot for $25 an hour — far below her academic qualifications.
- Ashley states that approximately half of her graduating class did not have a job by the time they walked the stage, suggesting that her struggles are not an individual failure but a widespread generational phenomenon.
- Ashley describes rapid change occurring across 'all industries, not just one,' framing the difficult job market as a broad structural problem rather than a sector-specific one.
- Ashley entered college with the goal of working at a startup in a marketing role, but her post-graduation reality involved physical retail labor — stocking shelves and drilling display sets — illustrating the gap between career expectations and actual outcomes.
- Ashley reflects that her graduating cohort is unable to meaningfully support one another in the job search because 'none of us are really thriving,' highlighting a collapse of the peer network as a resource for career advancement.
Topics
Transcript
[0:00] For 23-year-old Ashley Terrell, going to college wasn't optional. >> For my parents, college was an expectation. It wasn't something they were asking me to do nicely. It was something that I was expected to do out of high school. >> Ashley attended the University of Hawaii at Monoa. She graduated in 2024 with a degree in marketing, international business, entrepreneurship, and management. >> After college, I hope to kind of work either like at a startup doing something marketing related ideally. But despite months of networking and filling out job [0:31] applications in the run-up to graduation, the only offer Ashley received was from power tool manufacturer Tektronic Industries, promoting their products at a local Home Depot for…
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