Stop Complaining.
I’ve been through 60+ coding assessments and interviews.
Not applications.
Actual interviews. Real loops. Final rounds. Rejections after 5–6 interviews.
So when people tell me “the 2026 new grad market is impossible”, here’s my honest take:
Yes, the market is bad.
But if you’re not getting interviews, it’s usually not the market.
It’s your profile.
Let’s talk facts.
Amazon still hasn’t opened 2026 new grad roles
Meta is in a hiring freeze and has rescinded offers
Many Amazon interns from last year are still inclined with no return offers
Google is back to onsite interviews, which is brutal if you’re not in the Bay Area
This market is harsh.
And yet—
I personally know people holding several big tech offers right now.
Their problem isn’t unemployment.
It’s deciding which offer to take.
That contrast matters.
I’m not even a CS major.
But with the UIUC name and an AWS internship, I still landed interviews at almost every company people talk about:
Stripe. Databricks. Apple. Cloudflare. Together AI. WeRide.
That doesn’t mean I’m special.
It means there are opportunities.
And don’t get me wrong — interviews are a whole different battlefield.
Anyone who’s been through new grad recruiting knows:
getting the interview is the easy part.
The hard part is:
surviving 5–6 round interview loops
passing coding, system design, behavioral, cross-team screens
and then winning in brutal head-to-head comparisons
That “one offer out of a hundred” is real.
I interviewed nonstop from October to January.
So many times I reached the final round.
Six interviews in.
Rejected.
No feedback. “Company policy.”
I cried at night.
I complained to friends.
I applied to jobs while literally wiping away tears.
But I didn’t quit.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
If you’re not getting interviews,
it’s probably not the market.
It’s:
your resume isn’t strong enough
your projects aren’t convincing
your experience doesn’t signal impact
or your story doesn’t stand out
And the good news?
All of that is fixable.
Stop blaming the market.
Build one more project.
Ship something real.
Contribute to open source.
Go to one more career fair.
Post one more time on LinkedIn.
Rewrite your resume — again.
The market doesn’t owe us anything.
All we can do is get better.
And if you’re still in the fight —
I believe you can survive this too.