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Ep. 10 - How to Land Your First Job in 2025
12 Plays18 days ago
In this episode, Ken Freire and Patrick Lowndes tackle the fear and frustration many young professionals feel when entering the job market—especially in 2025. With rising unemployment rates for new grads, fewer internship opportunities, and a competitive market flooded with experienced professionals, it's easy to believe the lie that your major must match your first job or that you're already off-track. The hosts dismantle this myth, offering real stories, biblical perspective, and a strategic mindset shift to help listeners navigate their calling with confidence and faith.
Resources Mentioned
Timestamps
- 0:00 – 2:30 – The fear surrounding job hunting in 2025 and a macroeconomic snapshot
- 2:30 – 4:50 – The common lie: "My major must determine my first job"
- 4:50 – 6:30 – Real stories of unexpected career paths and transferable skills
- 6:30 – 8:00 – Why diverse backgrounds can be a hiring asset
- 8:00 – 10:00 – Biblical encouragement: Joseph, David, and others who took the long road
- 10:00 – 12:00 – Comparison traps and trusting God's path over a perfect career trajectory
- 12:00 – 14:00 – Practical next steps: build your skills, portfolio, and trust in God
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Transcript
Introduction to 'The Buried Talent'
00:00:01
Dan Sanchez
Welcome to The Buried Talent, the show for young professionals that tears down false beliefs about faith and work so you can unbury your God-given talent right where you are. I'm Ken Freire and here with my co-host Patrick Lowndes.
00:00:14
Dan Sanchez
And today we're talking about the challenge of landing your first job in 2025.
Challenges of Job Hunting in 2025
00:00:20
Dan Sanchez
And Patrick, this is a really big challenge for a lot of people graduating today.
00:00:25
Patrick
Oh yeah, it's monumental. I've been in college classes the last couple of weeks. And when I look at seniors, like the graduating seniors, they're just like, some of them are like deer in the headlights. They're like, don't talk about that three letter word, dog, because it's just scary, you know?
00:00:42
Dan Sanchez
Yeah. Well, what's causing the fear for them to actually find a job?
Impact of COVID on New Graduates
00:00:49
Patrick
Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of macroeconomic issues going on and I want to start it off today just hitting on a few kind of rapid fire facts, right?
00:00:58
Patrick
It's always good to start with where we at, right? And ever since COVID, I mean, things have gotten more difficult. We were at about 3.2% for the unemployment rate for people graduating with college degrees, like 3.2% in 2019.
00:00:58
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:01:14
Patrick
Okay, so fast forward post-COVID, now we've gotten five, six years past, some are still saying we're almost 5%. One study I found actually said 5.8% as of March this year, 2025.
Competition and Market Contraction
00:01:29
Patrick
So unemployment for college grads is certainly like the worst that it's been in years, right? Some people say like more than a decade. And so it is just...
00:01:39
Patrick
The thing that comes that hits for me, Ken, is like when if I'm entering the job market, I'm now thinking about, man, how am I going to compete in a market? Sometimes with people that were like five or seven years into a job and got laid off. Now they're trying to go after the same job that I'm trying to go after.
00:01:55
Patrick
It's difficult, right? So those are some of the things. And the last thing that kind of stood out to me was some of you guys have been on like the handshake platforms or Indeed and stuff like that.
00:02:05
Patrick
And, you know, new jobs like internship postings, like the number of those have significantly dropped in 2025 compared to previous years. Right. And so obviously that just means there's this thing called contraction happening in the job market.
Fears of Not Landing Ideal Jobs
00:02:19
Patrick
Companies are not hiring as much and as fast as they used to.
00:02:23
Patrick
So it's just a difficult world. And so we want to do is talk about today is like, what does that mean for us as young professionals coming out of school? Or even we just graduated and like we're two, three, four months out and still like on the hunt for that first gig. So there's some stuff to get after today, Ken.
00:02:40
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, and that is a lot. And I know when I look at statistics, people can be like, oh my gosh, it's almost doubled. And then the places that you can normally get internships, they're not showing up.
00:02:51
Dan Sanchez
And then they're looking at their friends that just graduated maybe a year ahead of them. And they're like, they're just baristas at a coffee shop or just flipping burgers. And they're like, what in the world is going on?
00:03:01
Dan Sanchez
And the lie that they can believe that their major Right. No matter what they were training for, like their major is not going to actually land them the perfect job right away. And they're scared.
00:03:11
Patrick
Yeah. Yep.
00:03:11
Dan Sanchez
They're
Embracing Open-Mindedness and Operator Mindset
00:03:11
Dan Sanchez
feeling like they're going to miss out on their calling. And that weight feels crushing to a lot of them. And it makes people feel like they've wasted four years of hard work and that they're off track already before they've even started.
00:03:24
Dan Sanchez
But, and you know because you're hearing this a lot for them.
00:03:28
Dan Sanchez
So let's talk about giving them some clarity on why this lie is actually a lie and that's not true.
00:03:36
Patrick
Yeah. Yeah. No, it's good. So again, if you're like a marketing major, you're like, I got to get into a marketing job. If you're a finance person, like, man, I got to get into that financial institution or that first analyst kind of role.
00:03:47
Patrick
And yeah, that makes sense to look for that. We're not saying don't look for a job in your major. That's not the message here.
00:03:53
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:03:53
Patrick
But what we are saying is what's interesting, like consider this, nearly half of grads end up in jobs that are unrelated to their major. Like their first job is like not related to their major.
00:04:05
Patrick
And you know what's crazy is some students will get into field that they weren't really that interested and they'll like discover passion for it and be like, oh my goodness, actually really, really love this industry. I really love this kind of work that's maybe different from what I studied.
00:04:20
Patrick
And so I think the reality is to just to have is to expect that the thing that you might have been kind of preparing for, there might not be like low hanging fruit to like, oh, look at all these great job opportunities for entry level people in this role.
00:04:35
Patrick
But what it might look like, we talk about this a lot on
Value of Diverse Backgrounds
00:04:37
Patrick
this show and just at Frontier Operators, we might have to have this operator kind of mindset to think more broadly about the business that we're in. Like every business has an operation they're trying to run. If you're nonprofit, if you're a big Fortune 500 company, or you're a small growing company, like a mid-sized startup or something, everyone's got an operation they're trying to run.
00:05:00
Patrick
And it kind of doesn't matter what job title you have, you can still show up there and outsized value to that company. So that's so, Ken, that's just kind of the initial reaction is like, don't get pigeonholed on that one job or that one industry. We hear we hear grads make that mistake all and seniors, especially like they're just panicking about that.
00:05:20
Dan Sanchez
Yeah, you're learning so many things and you're not realizing like sometimes it takes action to figure out what you really enjoy. And I got a great story. I had an employee of mine who she used to be elementary school teacher. She had a degree in elementary school work. And she's like, but the first few years of doing elementary, like, you know, teaching kids was exhausting for her.
00:05:42
Dan Sanchez
And she's like, I thought I would enjoy that, but I found that it was dreadful for her and her personality. And I hired her for a different role when I worked at a university. And she just thrived. And she's like, I love this. I didn't realize that I would love administrative work, financial aid type stuff.
00:05:59
Dan Sanchez
And she's like, I feel more better used in my skill sets doing this. Now, there were skills in her degree that were vastly transferable and were huge for her.
00:06:10
Dan Sanchez
So that's what I think would be something that people need to recognize is that their degree is not something that just, oh, my gosh, it's all gone to waste.
00:06:10
Patrick
Yeah. Yeah.
00:06:19
Dan Sanchez
It's like there are a lot of transferable skills and a lot of learnings that can be taken and used in their new job, whatever that job may be.
00:06:27
Patrick
Yeah, and quite frankly, some companies, they want somebody that's coming into their industry with fresh eyes and even into a role that's going to ask questions that are not necessarily going to follow the cookie cutter playbook that
Biblical Inspiration and Non-Linear Careers
00:06:39
Patrick
maybe a business school taught you. So even if you're in school and you're like, yeah, but this is how we think about marketing. Yeah, but if you came from, like for a great example of this is like in the AI industry,
00:06:49
Patrick
A lot of people are like, oh, we don't want tech people to lead prompt engineering. We actually want people that are linguists and we want poets and English majors, people that can use a wider vocabulary and can bring a cross-functional skill set because we think we're going to get better prompting with people that are better with words.
00:07:11
Patrick
So that's ironically, it's not the tech people that are good at They're going go, right?
00:07:17
Dan Sanchez
yeah.
00:07:17
Patrick
You can even say a salesperson might better with their words. But what they found was like, actually, this different skill set is what we want. And obviously, that's an example just within AI.
00:07:28
Patrick
But I mean, we have even an example in the Bible of this happening. I think about the story of Joseph. Right. That's a great example. I don't you want to, you know, punch the punch through that or if you want me to go down that path.
00:07:39
Patrick
But like we just like to think about an example, like where has God already done this in the past to give me hope for today?
00:07:45
Dan Sanchez
Well, I mean, there's a lot of places in Scripture that, you know, God calls people and you think it's going to be a fast track, but it's not. It's like all over the place. Joseph is a great one, right? He has a dream and he tells his brothers like, hey, I'm going to be ruling over you.
00:08:00
Dan Sanchez
And all his 12 brothers hated him. They were jealous of him and they sold him off to slavery. That's the short version of it. Right. And he goes from being this shepherd person to all of a sudden the slave, then to a prisoner.
00:08:12
Dan Sanchez
And then from being a prisoner for so many years, he all of sudden becomes ruler. And he finally hits that like, this is what I'm called to be doing. This is my career, quote unquote. And he's second in command.
00:08:23
Dan Sanchez
But that happens to Abraham
Ken's Nonprofit Experience and Skill Growth
00:08:24
Dan Sanchez
in scripture. That happens to Moses. That happens to David. Right. You think about David when he was anointed be king. I think there was like 17 years later before he actually it actually happened.
00:08:36
Patrick
Yeah.
00:08:36
Dan Sanchez
So many times we think that it's like, oh, I have this urge and this calling that it's going to happen right away.
00:08:43
Dan Sanchez
And it might take some time.
00:08:45
Patrick
Totally. And so I think the encouragement here, and if you're still in college or maybe you just, you also like, hey, I'm a year or two out. And we also have this conversation a lot.
00:08:55
Patrick
You get in your first job and you're like, shoot. I hate this industry or I hate this job, right? That's, I mean, and maybe you studied, maybe like that was what you majored in. You're like, I thought marketing was gonna be great and I got in here and it was way more technical than I realized.
00:09:13
Patrick
I actually think I should probably be in customers, you know, services or support or sales or something. You'll find stuff out about yourself that you don't quite know yet. So the encouragement to you is right now is put yourself in environments where you can do as much self-learning as you can to find out the what, like what do really want to spend some time doing?
00:09:35
Patrick
And then realize this, that the chances of you actually being in a very specific job, yes, you might find, you might be one of the 50% that, yeah, you grab a certain job in your role. But can I also speak, Ken, to the lie that, let's say you're all friends with marketing majors and two or three of your friends got jobs at XYZ, Fortune 500, big company, this marketing track that they're on.
00:10:00
Patrick
You like, you...
00:10:01
Dan Sanchez
Oh yeah, the comparison.
00:10:02
Patrick
Oh my goodness, it's crippling, right? And how dare us shake our fists at God and be like, God, unless I get into this specific company in this field, on this track, unless I'm there, then you're not good or you're not going to provide for me, right? Or man, now I'm at this I met this other industry or I met this nonprofit or I met this government job or I met this random other domain I didn't really care about.
00:10:29
Patrick
Like, let's be careful about about putting God and the first step in your career into into a box as if you're the one that is like Lord of your life.
00:10:40
Patrick
Because if you're like, if you're CEO of your life and you're the Lord of your life, then it's kind of a scary, you're going to kind of set yourself up for letdown more often than you'd like.
00:10:49
Dan Sanchez
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, I remember for the first seven years of four or five years of my career, was making pennies. Like, I think my highest at one point at a nonprofit, I was making like $23,000 for the year, annual.
00:11:08
Dan Sanchez
Right?
00:11:08
Patrick
Yeah.
00:11:08
Dan Sanchez
But I felt like God wanted me there. There was a certain reason. There was certain purpose and things that I was working to. And so many times people could be like, oh, well, are you like forsaking all your other dreams and aspirations? And I was like, no, there's a reason why God's called me here. There's certain skill sets that I'm learning at that given season.
00:11:28
Dan Sanchez
I kid you not. Like I remember undergrads in biblical studies and I thought I'm going to be a pastor right after my undergrad. And then felt like God was like, no, I want you learn business skill sets.
00:11:38
Dan Sanchez
And I'm like, what? Why would I need that? I mean, fast forward 15 years now, and it's like I've helped so many companies just grow because of my ability to bring both a pastoral heart and also like KPIs and the strategic organizational development into a company.
00:11:56
Patrick
Yeah.
00:11:56
Dan Sanchez
And that's very rare.
Encouragement and Future Guidance
00:11:57
Dan Sanchez
But I would have never known that, you know, if I didn't just say, Lord, what's the next thing that you want me to do?
00:12:03
Dan Sanchez
So for those of you who are listening to this, man, just take the next step.
00:12:03
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:06
Dan Sanchez
We know it's scary. We know it's hard to find a job. Even for seasoned people, it's hard to find a job. Right.
00:12:11
Patrick
Yeah.
00:12:11
Dan Sanchez
But like, just say, what are the skill sets? What are the things that you feel like you need to learn to level up and get to the next place?
00:12:19
Dan Sanchez
Patrick, any final words before we wrap up?
00:12:21
Patrick
I was just going to say, that's right where we want to leave you. We're going to keep talking about this topic of building out what you're good at, your skill sets. And I think probably the number one thing I'm hearing from employers right now is I don't want another 22-year-old with three flowery recommendation letters and zero practical skills and experience.
00:12:45
Patrick
And you might be like, but Patrick, I'm trying to get a full-time student. Maybe I'm working on campus doing this thing.
00:12:49
Dan Sanchez
Thank
00:12:50
Patrick
Our challenge to you is what does it look like to build your skillset, a portfolio of little projects? I'm not saying have 15 jobs, but you might need to do some stuff to demonstrate that you can deliver value.
00:13:06
Patrick
And so we're gonna keep talking about that on this show. So keep coming back. We're also gonna do some fun exercises and experiments. We're about to release something. We're gonna drop it one of these next episodes.
00:13:17
Patrick
So come on back, keep listening. We're gonna share some more about how to help you build out your portfolio. But yeah, there are some practical things, but man, let's walk in faith and let's believe in a big God, not just what the world's lies are that, oh, it all has to line up perfectly.
00:13:33
Patrick
So that's what I got for today.
00:13:34
Dan Sanchez
Yeah.
00:13:35
Patrick
That's good.
00:13:36
Dan Sanchez
Awesome. Patrick, thank you so much, man. That's always gold. And it's great refresher for me too, even every season of life. Trust God in the next steps. If you guys are listening to this and you're like, I have a friend who could really use the encouragement here, make sure to share this.
00:13:44
Patrick
That's good.
00:13:52
Dan Sanchez
Subscribe to the channel, share this with a friend, because this is not just for you. for all the people who need it and are looking for a job and just reminding themselves to trust God in every aspect of their life.
00:14:03
Dan Sanchez
Hope guys have a great day and God bless.