To quote Jane Austen: it is a truth universally acknowledged that getting your dream job straight out of uni is an absolute bitch.

Many of us, especially those of us who couldn’t hack nursing or teaching, may not even find any sort of new job straight out of uni – I certainly didn’t. While uni grads might find themselves underemployed after graduation (and that’s totally OK), there are many things you can do to make your current job sparkle on your CV.

Go To Training Nights

Depending on where you work, you may have opportunities to go to training nights for certain brands and products. They may not have too much relevance to your job, but they can be worth doing for other reasons too. A lot of these training sessions have booze and giveaways, so even if you’re bored senseless, you can just get wasted instead.

Case in point: I recently went to a robot vacuum training night, something I had little interest in and didn’t really need to know about for my job. It turns out robot vacuums are super sick, and I got classy cooked on champagne and ate spring rolls. I haven’t put any of my newfound knowledge to use yet, but I do get tagged in videos about robot vacuum beer pong, so I’m considering it a win.

Get A Sideways Promotion

If you can’t move up in your uni job (or don’t want to), move sideways. Change departments; get off the checkout. We all know everyone who says “a change is as good as a holiday” clearly have never been on a good holiday, but a change is closer to a new job than nothing. Plus you get trained in a new area that may be useful background for whatever your next job is. If nothing else, customer service based roles show your ability to deal with the public, and apparently that’s not a skill everyone has.

Change Of Scenery

Depending on the company you work for, you might have the opportunity to help start up new stores, or even move to a different store. Whether you move states or just across the road, new clientele, new co-workers, and a new area can refresh the same old job. Moving states or stores might bring you into a city with a position with more power and responsibility than you have had before, or even a city where your dream career has an opening for someone just like you.

Go Back

If your dream career isn’t calling and you can’t, or don’t want to, make your uni job into a full-time job, why not use it for what you intended? A way to fund your uni lifestyle. Go back and do another unit or two. Do honours or masters. Do a TAFE course in something completely different that you’ve always been interested in, or teach yourself something for free at home.

Making the most of your uni job doesn’t have to be done in the job itself, sometimes making the most of it is using the flexibility in hours it gives you.

Do What Works For You

Maybe you don’t want to train yourself up in an area you see no practical use for, or maybe you’re so done with studying just the sight of a book sends you into a panic. Use your lunch breaks, days off and holidays to find something that suits you.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself to find the “perfect” job, but do know that it’ll happen eventually.

(Lead image: La La Land/Summit Entertainment)