I graduated from Stanford and couldn't find a job, so I created my own. I turned it into a six-figure business.
The author started her own business after struggling to find a full-time job. Courtesy of Dani Hamlett In my senior year at Stanford, I began my job search but couldn't secure a full-time offer. I was frustrated because I felt overqualified, yet I wasn't even getting interviews. I started my own PR business, which has since made six figures. I started applying for jobs in the first week of my senior year at Stanford University, assuming I would have something lined up by graduation, if not sooner. I was surrounded by friends entering finance and consulting, where recruiting begins early and offers are secured months, sometimes years, in advance. While I wasn't part of a traditional corporate pipeline, I had spent my college years building inroads in Silicon Valley, managing marketing for hot startups. For nine months, I tracked every application in a spreadsheet. Over time, I simplified it, deleting the "Second Round Interview" column. I wasn't even making it to the first round. Most of the time, there was no update at all. By graduation in 2025, I still didn't have a full-time job offer. I had experience, but it didn't seem to count When I did hear back, it wasn't for full-time roles; it was for internships. One came through an alumni referral. Another was in a field unrelated to my experience. What made the situation more frustrating was how well-qualified —perhaps even overqualified — I felt. I started doing marketing work at 15, helping local small businesses. In college, that work expanded into roles at tech companies, often taking up 30 to 40 hours a week alongside my classes. By graduation, I had seven years of experience. As a sophomore, I switched from engineering to English and linguistics. Mastery of language and narrative made me a better marketer. But as a senior, I began to worry I might end up as the stereotypical unemployed English major. I was a financial aid student who didn't want to burden my parents after graduation. I found myself considering roles that would only prolong the search I was trying to finish. The job market felt different from what I expected At highly competitive universities like Stanford, most students spend every summer interning, expecting it to lead to full-time offers. I followed that path. But when I started applying, the road seemed to lead to a cliff rather than the golden gates of adulthood. In 2025, I wasn't just competing with other graduates. I was up against candidates who had recently been laid off. Many of my target industries were slowing hiring or cutting roles entirely. I started taking on whatever work I could find With graduation approaching, I started saving whatever I could. A professor of mine asked me to help run her book campaign. I told her I had never worked in publishing or in public relations, but I said yes anyway. Around the same time, I began assisting a journalist through my school's alumni network, editing her writing, pitching stories, and managing her newsletter. Even in the midst of my own misery, I could see the difference my work made. It was exciting, even if it paid less than I was used to. I turned that work into my own business Three weeks before graduation, after being rejected from a minimum-wage internship I had gone through three rounds of interviews for, I created my own role: publicist and founder of Punctuation PR. While finishing my thesis, I filed paperwork to start an LLC. I built a website. I told my parents that instead of staying unemployed in an uncertain economy, I was starting a marketing and publicity agency for writers. The return on my effort would be more within my control. They were unexpectedly supportive. My mom told me she was proud — not just because I was creating a job for myself, but because I was building something that could one day create jobs for others. The day after graduation, I drove from the Bay Area to Los Angeles and started working full-time from a barely unpacked apartment. I turned my side projects into clients and cold emailed academics and authors. I wrote contracts, set up billing, and raised my rates. Referrals came in. One project led to another. It became my full-time income For the first few months, I lived paycheck to paycheck. When I couldn't pay off my credit card, I sold my clothes and furniture. I often worked more than 12 hours a day. Within six months, I was earning more than the entry-level roles I had been applying for. In early 2026, Punctuation PR became a six-figure business. I had worked with over a dozen clients, built relationships with publishers and media outlets, and helped my books reach hundreds of thousands of new readers. What began as a stopgap became my full-time income. It changed how I think about work I used to believe that graduating — and similar milestones — followed a sort of ideal inertia: once success was in motion, it would naturally continue, uninterrupted. In reality, life is a series of unbalanced forces. You change speed and direction. In 2026, the institutions that once felt stable now feel far less certain for many. Starting a business is still one of the riskiest things a person can do. I hope to scale my company from six to seven figures in the coming years. There's no guarantee that I will, but there's also no guarantee that I won't. It's up to me to decide. Read the original article on Business Insider