A college student from the United States (US) spent about four months applying to 456 jobs.
Throughout the gruelling process, he created his own tracker to stay on top of his various applications and see which ones got back to him.
Eventually, he landed three internship offers and accepted one.
He shared his experience in a TikTok clip which has since gone viral around the world, garnering over 2.9 million views on the platform.
Chinese American Computer Science student Olie Wu (@oliesandriod) wrote in the in-video captions of his clip: “456 applications, 56 interviews, and 0 sleep in 4 months, all for 1 internship.”
The video included brief footage of a spreadsheet tracking his numerous job applications.
The sheet included status updates for the companies he had tried for, such as “Applied”, “Ghost”, and “Reject”.
Source: @oliesandriod on TikTok
There were also check boxes indicating the application stages he got to, such as phone screenings and interviews.
Speaking to MS News, Olie revealed that he started applying for jobs in July 2023.
He saw job openings on some online job boards, and very soon he had sent in 200 applications. At that point, he decided to stop looking at the number of jobs he had applied for.
“I never really planned on applying to 456 applications, it just kind of happened after applying day in and day out,” he said.
“I also started very early and finalised my offer pretty late so I had a lot of time to apply.”
Olie added that he was looking for internships to boost his work experience before applying for full-time roles after he graduates.
Source: @oliesandriod on TikTok
The Computer Science student shared that he had mostly applied for internships in related fields like software engineering.
However, he also reached out to other companies that were more specific, such as those in systems engineering, cyber security, or data science.
Eventually, he received three internship offers and ended up accepting a position as a software engineering intern at a large automotive company.
To those who find themselves in a similar rut Olie did, his advice is simple: “Don’t give up!”
“It’s easy to get discouraged when you see rejection after rejection roll in,” he said.
The Computer Science student realised in hindsight that 456 applications are “overkill”.
Olie explained: “The sheer number really only applies because of my field — Computer Science, my location — US, the current job market — bad, and the fact that I did not apply to any start-ups, only Fortune 500 and other established companies.”
He has also made his spreadsheet tracker available on his e-portfolio for those who wish to check it out.
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Featured image adapted from @oliesandriod on TikTok.
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