Matthew Behara in Toronto on Tuesday.Sammy Kogan/The Globe and Mail
Name, age: Matthew Behara, 21
Education: Bachelor of Management and Organizational Studies from Western University (2025)
Where he lives: Toronto
His dream job: Asset management sales
The job search so far: Since Mr. Behara graduated in May, he has spent months job hunting, applying to around 60 positions while seeking networking opportunities in person and online. Despite prior internships in the pensions industry and strong feedback on his resume from his time as a student, he’s been repeatedly turned away from employers: 30 applications were rejected, 20 resulted in silence and only one landed a phone interview.
However, Mr. Behara said he’s been proactive, networking through alumni connections and beyond. He’s attended job fairs, reached out to industry contacts through LinkedIn for advice and received referrals from about a dozen employees who are already working at companies he’s applying to.
His main challenge: During university, Mr. Behara completed two summer internships at a pension firm doing administration work, including database management. However, he wanted to transition into more finance-focused roles. In his third year, he wasn’t able to secure a finance-related internship, so he feels he currently lacks experience in this field. He has instead focused on his involvement with Western’s ACE case competition club, where students tackle real-world business problems.
“I put in a great effort to get hired for another internship somewhere else, which was more degree-specific,” he said. “It just didn’t work out, so I joined extracurricular clubs and set up coffee chats with people in my preferred industry to ask for advice.”
Jen Narayan, owner of Jen Rose Coaching and a former recruiter, has seen similar issues plague new grads she works with. Here’s what she suggests for Mr. Behara to land a job.
Broaden target roles
Mr. Behara wants to work in finance and eventually asset management, but starting out, Ms. Narayan suggests casting a wider net. “I would like to see him apply to entry-level consulting roles, because they would be really interested in his ACE competition background,” she said.
Ms. Narayan also suggests he apply for entry-level data and operations analyst roles, because recruiters would love his back-office experience and data-processing skills. He can still pursue financial analyst roles and explore rotational programs where employees rotate within a company to try different roles, she said.
Ms. Narayan said when she worked as a consulting recruiter, she would often consider people with his experience and skills for consulting roles across industries.
Reframe work experience
Mr. Behara’s resume should be reworked, particularly the summer internship experiences. “His titles are doing him a bit of a disservice by being too specific,” Ms. Narayan said. For example, rather than using the title central processing summer analyst, he could instead use the words operations analyst intern or finance analyst intern.
“People look at the titles right away,” she said. “If it’s titled too specifically, it might not relate to the target company and then he rules himself out.” Using more high-level titles can allow the target company to better understand what it means and then both parties are “speaking the same language.”
Mr. Behara’s work experience is admin-heavy. However, he is looking for sales and client-facing jobs, so Ms. Narayan suggests bumping his extracurriculars and ACE competition experience to the top of his resume.
Be more selective
Ms. Narayan often hears clients say they’ve applied to 100 jobs and only one or two have responded. She wants them to consider which of those 100 jobs would realistically call back. Often, it’s only around 10. “You’re skewing your results – and almost gaslighting yourself into thinking 100 people didn’t respond,” she said. It also makes applicants feel bad about themselves if they don’t hear back.
Instead, Ms. Narayan suggests applying thoughtfully to three to five well-suited jobs. “Otherwise, they’re just slingshotting, and that’s what leads to burnout.”
Optimize LinkedIn
Mr. Behara should continue to reach out to people on LinkedIn, but Ms. Narayan suggests he connects with early-career peers who were in his shoes recently, such as past ACE competition participants or Western grads who work at target companies. “Basically people who could say, ‘Oh, I was him a few years back,’” she said.
Mr. Behara should also tweak his LinkedIn headline to be more forward-looking. Instead of focusing on what he’s done – which may not be relevant to target companies – he should highlight core skills such as technical analysis, database management or giving stakeholder presentations.
“His LinkedIn profile and his resume need to reflect where he’s going, versus what he’s done,” Ms. Narayan said.
Should he upskill?
Mr. Behara is considering applying to a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) program, a postgraduate professional certification for investment professionals.
“He’s on the right path of considering the CFA. Once he registers for it, he should update his resume and include that intention. It doesn’t matter that he hasn’t completed it yet,” Ms. Narayan said.
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