No employer questioned the gap in employment at that time because many people were unemployed - especially engineers. A year as a fry cook does not make you unemployable - this is complete and utter nonsense! This is what is wrong with America - we are headed straight to Hell and there is no hope.Geezus - I this is pure insanity ...
Carnegie Mellon 2010 wrote:
When I graduated from college in 2001 the job I had lined up while in school evaporated in the wake of the dotcom implosion. I could have simply "sucked it up" and taken the first crap job I found and try to "pull myself up" from fry cook to CEO, but I knew that doing so would have closed the door to numerous other much more lucrative opportunities. It also would have been a tremendous waste of 4 years and 100K worth of education. Instead I held on, lived out of my car on one friends couches (yes with financial support from my parents) and hit up every campus job fair and recruiting event available. It took eight months of pounding the pavement, but eventually I landed a position as a consulting engineer with a high five figure salary. No employer ever questioned the gap in employment. Meanwhile, friends who went to work behind cash registers and bank teller windows, because they were to scared to holdout for something better, took years to catch up to my income level.
Its much easier to enter many high paying professions as a fresh college graduate. Investment banks, most consulting employers, law firms, and many engineering and accounting employers ONLY recruit fresh college and graduate school graduates for entry level positions (the main exception is former military). A year as a fry cook post college essentially makes you unemployable in many of these fields. A year of job searching does not.