Graduation experience in pandemic 2020

....... A short background .......

I completed my mechanical engineering with a distinction from VJTI, a reputed college in Mumbai, but I’ve always wanted to put my artistic side into my work. Without further ado, I pursued my masters in Product Designing from MIT Design College, Pune, knowing that my mechanical engineering background would work to my advantage.

Mechanical engineering jobs had less opportunities to grow quickly and also less pay. There was a saturation in the market for them. I completed my post graduation in Product designing in 2020- the Covid outbreak year. Yes, I graduated in the most inconvenient times.

                

....... During the Pandemic .......

No job, no placements. Everything was going digital. I did not receive my expected first break even after completing masters with top 5% in the class. The products and branding design I made for the client in my graduation project were already out in the market. This should have been a huge boost for me to get amazing job offers. I certainly hoped to gain better opportunities and a good story to convince during my interview level, but my worst fears got real. I was jobless and had absolutely nothing. Suddenly, there was a followed recession with no firms hiring freshers and needed experienced persons. My experience was barely any, besides the college time internships. Also, work-from-home opportunities for mechanical or industrial designers as such are limited and on-site works were not preferred.

Meanwhile, my design colleagues from other fields like UX design, graphic design never faced such a setback. Their opportunities were now manifold as the world was going virtual and more websites/ apps were in demand. Rising need for motion graphics, illustrations, developers and user interface designers.

This was an exact scenario during my engineering when Computer science / IT engineers were getting placements and offers from everywhere without any slack. Well, now I had none. I had no degree in visual designing or UX design and neither IT/ coding knowledge. Where was I seeing myself in next 5 years? (Laughs it off)

Wish I had the chance to switch my career choices with engineering itself from commercial point of view. Now that I had a masters degree, it was futile even of switching careers at this stage and needed to find a job to fill in the experience void. After 6 months, there was a product design opportunity at an agricultural technology startup in my contacts. I hopped on immediately and gave my 200%. Being the first industry practical experience, there was an enormous amount of learning involved. The work was mostly associated with mechanical engineering core. I faced lot of stress and times of desperation when I felt like a novice and underperformer, when my work was not upto a post graduate level. They wanted to see an experienced designer with decision making knowledge in me. I had no one to help me out on that front as the startup had a team of 3 - only 2 founders and me handling the entire design work, without any senior designer or team member to relate to me or co-work with. I was not ready to take the senior designer mantle or advisor as what this startup founders wanted. A few days, I was even working for more than 12 hours/ day. Despite everything, I kept working on it just to gain more experience. I even created 3D animation video of the products for the firm by learning a new software on my own. There was no pay involved in this due to insufficient funding. I slogged for 4-5 months and eventually ended my role as product designer with them.

During this time, I was trying to earn a few bucks for the house with my customized character illustration orders from contacts and clients. I learned character designing during this time from multiple sources and have completed around 45-50 orders till date. I was a portrait artist since my school days and knowledge of finearts helped me understand the characters well. The feedbacks were amazing and people loved my work. This was the single straw holding my self confidence during the pandemic where I felt I was contributing something from my design knowledge. I even began mentoring and helping my colleagues and juniors on design and illustration front. But, still I had no direction where this would lead me in the future. Some small order illustrations cannot be something a double degree holder should be doing at the end.

I took up online courses on user research, user experience, interaction design to learn about Ux design and take up small internship opportunities to get started with. Most of my time I spent learning about user-centric product design and brush up my software skills. In the long run, I was sure this would help me in a way to get a decent starting job in product design field.

Lets see what the future has in for us. Stay safe! Stay positive!

....... My takeaways .......

Although we might be fantastic at what we do and hold some good degrees, it all comes down to which opportunity doors are still open for us. To be in the right place at the right time is a matter of luck. Had it not been pandemic, there would have been better chances to get a design job as a fresher and eventually shift to better ones like most people. But, in a way its clear that every person has its unique journey and we cant simply follow the footsteps or idolize anyone in particular.

The question of "Where do you see yourself in next 5 years?" need not be answered in a direct way of occupying a certain position of Senior Manager/ Lead designer. This can have an open ended answer of being useful in whatever place we are with our own set of self confidence and experience.

Also, I do recommend the book of 'Who moved my cheese?' by 'Dr. Spencer Johnson' which talks about ways to deal with your work and life.

Do share your own experiences during the pandemic in the comments below or mail me at

amoghgharpure@gmail.com