When I graduated in 2020, I realised something that no lecture hall had prepared me for: the world of work had changed faster than our understanding of it.

COVID-19 had brought economies to a standstill. Companies were restructuring, graduate programmes were being cancelled, and thousands of young South Africans were entering one of the toughest labour markets in recent history. A qualification, once seen as the gateway to opportunity, suddenly felt like one of thousands competing for attention.

Like many graduates, I did what we had always been told to do.

I printed my CV, took public transport to Montecasino and walked from one restaurant to the next asking if they had any part-time vacancies.

The answer was always the same.

“No.”

As I sat in the taxi on my way home, I realised I wasn’t just experiencing rejection, I was staring down the beginning of the end of an era.

For decades job seekers had been taught to wait for opportunity. Study hard, graduate, submit your CV and wait for feedback. 

But what happens when thousands of candidates have the same qualification? What happens when your CV becomes one of hundreds in a recruiter’s inbox? How do employers recognise your potential when they know nothing about you beyond your academic record?

It soon became clear to me that the bigger obstacle was visibility, not opportunity. That single shift in perspective changed the trajectory of my career.

Instead of asking, “How do I apply for more jobs?” I started asking, “How do I put my value out there?”

The answer, for me, was LinkedIn.

When I chose LinkedIn as the best place to answer that question, I wasn’t trying to build a following, my goal was far simpler: to earn an internship.

Without corporate experience or an impressive CV, I started sharing what I was learning about HR, recruitment and the future of work. I wanted employers to see my thinking, curiosity and commitment to learning. I understood that while I couldn’t compete on years of experience, I could compete on consistency.

The beginning was quiet. Many posts went unnoticed. There were moments when I questioned whether I was wasting my time. But I kept writing because I believed that every piece of content was another opportunity for someone to discover my work.

Slowly, the work I’d been putting in started opening doors. People who had never met me began recommending me, recruiters started reaching out and conversations replaced applications.

Today, six years later, I’ve built a LinkedIn community of more than 105 000 people. I’ve been featured on New York’s Times Square and spoken at more than 20 universities and organisations, and every professional opportunity I’ve received since my internship has stemmed from the reputation I built long before I needed it.

Looking back, I don’t think those restaurants rejected me. They exposed a reality that many organisations and job seekers are still coming to terms with: the labour market has changed.

Today, opportunity doesn’t always knock. Increasingly, it searches and finds you through your digital footprint,  ideas and whatever reputation you’ve built before you click ‘apply’.

This isn’t to suggest that qualifications no longer matter. They do. Skills, competence and experience will always be fundamental.But in a world where talent is abundant and competition is fierce, being capable is no longer enough. People have to know you’re capable.

That is perhaps the biggest career lesson my generation has had to learn.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if one of those restaurants had offered me a job. Perhaps I would never have questioned the traditional path to employment. Perhaps I would never have discovered the value of making my thinking visible before I had years of experience to validate it.

Sometimes the opportunities we miss push us towards building something far more enduring than the opportunity itself.

Looking back, I don’t remember the seven rejections as moments of failure. I remember them as the day I stopped waiting to be discovered and started building a reputation that opportunities could discover instead.