r/Netherlands•
mezernik_sz

What did you do after graduating, without income?

Life in NL

Hello good people on reddit! xd

Genuinely interested to hear your experience, whenever you graduated and had no job yet. How long did it take for you to land one, and how did you get by during that time?

--- Further I will yap about myself, in case anyone is interested.---

My situation is a bit complex, so I will try to summarize and simplify it as much as I can.

Last year I have finished my Master's degree in Human studies in a different country (Czechia, in EU, I feel like I should clarify). Thing is, to really start a life and get a decent job, I had to move from my little mountain town regardless and at that point, money-wise, It made no difference between moving to my country's capital or to The Netherlands, which was always my dream. It was also not a random endeavor at all, as I have been preparing for this move for years at that point - trying to learn the language, understand the culture and so on. I have also gone out of my way to complete uni. fieldwork here.

Long story short, I live here now (Flevo - and I rlly like it! :) ). I am well qualified with a good degree, I am at approx B1 with Dutch and follow a local taalcursus... However, for several months now, I am living only out of my savings from my shity part-time job I have had during my uni. Every day, I am desperately hunting for jobs at countless vacature-websites. I have applied to a few uitzendbureaus and my best result after all this time was ONE phonecall and several "waiting lines" ("We will get to you shortly, please stay patient :) ").

I am not here to cry about it. But this shit is hard, and I am just curious what other people, either immigrants like me, or locals, do in these situations. I understand well that this is not only my experience and that the job market is fucked beyond comprehension (not only here, but in the world overall).

Posted Mar 1, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

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