Răzvan Ispas

Why "Doing Everything Right" Wasn't Enough

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Last month, I updated my LinkedIn to announce that I had finally landed the position I wanted at a company I truly admire. I felt incredibly grateful; I’m now working for an amazing company right here in London—one of Europe's biggest AI hubs. However, if anything felt stronger than the gratitude, it was the exhaustion and the void left by finally crossing the finish line.

I graduated from Paris-Saclay University in September 2024 with an MSc in Artificial Intelligence. I had completed internships in the research labs on my campus as well as a Research Engineering internship at a bank. Things looked promising on paper, but in reality, I faced almost eight months without any job offers.

I genuinely didn't know what was wrong with me. I was still operating with a student’s mindset: the belief that life, like university, is fair—that results are proportional to effort. In school, if I studied hard, I got the grade; I expected the job market to follow the same logic.

I started the year with ambitions of joining the giants—Google, Meta, or DeepMind. But as the months dragged on, the reality of the market crushed those expectations. Not only was I missing out on Big Tech, but I was also struggling to get a simple callback from early-stage startups. I had the degree, the grades, and the internships. I had done everything the system told me to do. Yet, it felt like those years of effort had led nowhere. I felt robbed.

Entry-level roles that used to be accessible for graduates with my background had suddenly become unreachable, demanding the experience of someone with three or more years in the industry.

Part of me wanted to bury this unpleasant chapter of my life and never look back. However, a friend insisted that I share my story, pointing out that LinkedIn is flooded with "I’m thrilled to announce" posts, but is almost completely void of honest stories about the struggles that even top students face in this market.

I don't claim to be a career guru, and I don't have a magic formula. However, I want to share three lessons that kept me grounded during this year. Perhaps they can help you navigate this difficult period, or at least remind you that you aren’t alone—and that even those who eventually land a great role struggle to get there.

Since I’m a huge bookworm, I’ve also included a book recommendation for each point :)

1. Be kind to yourself

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This is the most important takeaway I want you to leave with. Unfortunately, life is incredibly uncertain. The only certainty is that you are stuck with yourself until the very end. Since nobody knows you better than you do, nobody is better positioned to offer you compassion than yourself.

When I first moved to London, I hit the ground running, applying to dozens of roles. At first, I felt excited—even the initial rejections didn't bother me. But as weeks turned into months, that excitement slowly curdled into confusion, then frustration, and finally, anger.

I have always had the mentality of a performer. I believed that if I didn't achieve what I wanted, it was entirely my fault. I started to criticise myself relentlessly. Spoiler alert: that self-criticism did more harm than good.

I had moments where I spiralled into burnout simply because I refused to accept that the situation was objectively difficult, rather than just a personal failure. When I finally took a step back and started practising self-compassion, the weight on my shoulders lifted. No, it didn't magically speed up the recruitment process; the waiting was still painful. But it kept me grounded, even when the outcome was completely out of my control.

If you want to dive deeper into this, I highly recommend Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. I first encountered this concept when I was a BSc student. Back then, my self-compassion scores were incredibly poor. But with time and practice, they improved.

But wait—if I was already practising self-compassion, why was I judging myself so harshly during my job hunt? Because when events feel incredibly stressful, we, as humans, are inclined to enter "survival mode" and switch to autopilot. It doesn't mean I forgot what I learned. It just meant that I needed to take a step back, breathe, and consciously reconnect with that compassionate side of myself.

2. Life is unpredictable. Learn to think in bets.

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This was perhaps the most enlightening shift in my mindset during the job hunt: learning how to take risks.

During my eight-month unemployment stretch in the UK, I fell into a mental trap. I started questioning whether moving to France for my Master’s at Paris-Saclay had been a mistake.

I looked at the result—being unemployed—and told myself that if I had chosen a different path, I might have a job by now. That is when I listened to a podcast by Mark Manson discussing Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke. For me, the core lesson was the following: We are inclined to judge the quality of a decision based on its outcome. In poker, this is called "resulting", and it is a logical flaw. You can make a statistically perfect bet and still lose the hand due to bad luck. Conversely, you can make a terrible bet and get lucky. In reality, the quality of a decision should be weighed against the information and reasoning you had at the time you made it.

I used this framework to re-evaluate my time at Paris-Saclay. When I looked back at the information I had at the time, the logic held up. I wanted to master the mathematics of AI, and Paris-Saclay was ranked number one globally in mathematics (according to the Shanghai ranking) and was a top hub for research. Based on that data, going there was a sound decision. The fact that the tech market slowed down significantly afterwards was a variable completely outside my control.

I started approaching every single application like a bet. I stopped obsessing over whether companies would reply. Instead, I viewed my time and energy as chips on a table. I realised that even if I played my hand perfectly, the outcome was often decided by factors completely outside my control.

Every new skill I learned became a strategic bet. Whether I was practising for behavioural interviews or learning System Design, I analysed the information I had and made the best move possible—without any guarantee of a reward. I stopped trying to control the result and focused simply on maximising my odds by making smarter decisions.

If you think life is a fair game like chess—where the chances to win are directly proportional to your skills—you will be disappointed. Life is poker. There will be moments where you play perfectly and still lose the hand. But if you keep making the right decisions with the information you have, you can eventually win the pot, even with a pair of twos.

3. The Excellent Generalist

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This final point is deeply personal to me. Last spring, I considered starting a PhD, so I applied to a highly competitive laboratory in Cambridge, where the standards were incredibly high. The supervisor had a clear preference for elite students from institutions like Oxford, Cambridge, or ENS.

The process was gruelling. After completing an intense two-week research task, I faced a panel interview where PhD students grilled me on every corner of machine learning. Afterwards, the supervisor gave me their verdict, and they told me that my interview was "great, but not excellent". I share this story not to complain, but because I realised something crucial: their evaluation was correct.

I have never been the person who is the absolute best in one narrow, specific subject. Instead, I have always been the person who is consistently good across many areas. This brings me to my final concept: "the excellent generalist".

In a world that pushes us to hyperspecialise, it is easy to feel inadequate if you aren't the top 1% in a specific niche. But I realised that my value comes from a different place. I define an "excellent generalist" not as someone who lacks mastery, but as someone who maintains a high standard of performance across a wide spectrum of subjects, allowing them to adapt and solve problems that specialists might miss. In a continuously changing market, companies view new graduates as long-term investments, which makes early specialisation risky.

Last winter, I realised I needed to pivot. I opened myself up to broader Software Engineering roles, leaning back into my Computer Science roots. I didn't abandon my passion for theory—I was still reading dense texts like Christopher Bishop’s Pattern Recognition, but I balanced that by expanding my practical engineering skills: brushed up on algorithms, learned system design (both classic and ML), figured out how to train models at scale with Ray, and built LLMs from scratch.

All this preparation eventually helped me land a Machine Learning Engineer position at a private equity startup. Was there luck involved? Absolutely. I happened to have niche expertise in evaluating agentic systems right when that skill was in high demand. But I wouldn't have passed the interview without the generalist skills. If I hadn't spent those months learning system design and engineering fundamentals, the door would have remained closed. It wasn’t the "Research Engineer" title I had originally aimed for. However, looking back, that period taught me rigorous engineering frameworks and practices that make me a better engineer today.

Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, consider exploring multiple areas that complement your core career path. If you are still not convinced that generalists can thrive in a specialised world, I wholeheartedly recommend reading Range by David Epstein. It might convince you that your diverse interests are your greatest strength.

Conclusion

I wrote this post because I wanted to break the illusion that LinkedIn often creates—the illusion that everyone else is on a smooth, linear path to success while you are the only one struggling. That is simply not true. If you read this and you've been struggling with the current job market, there is one last thing I would like to tell you: you are a valuable person even when the outcome is not the one you expect. The transition from university to the professional world is one of the most turbulent periods of your life. It is a time defined by uncertainty (and there will be plenty of these situations in your life).

Be kind to yourself, place your bets wisely, trust in your unique mix of skills. And please, don't let the silence convince you that you are failing. You are just playing the hand you were given as best as you can until the odds turn in your favor.

📚 The Reading List

If you want to replicate the journey or dive deeper into the topics I mentioned, here is the complete list of books that shaped my year.

Self development

Technical Foundations (Math & Theory)

Engineering & Production

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