Applications, Deadlines & Selections..

Ever since my detour into the world of enterprise software with SAP came to an end, I have been on the lookout for jobs matching my skillset and future goals. Be it a job in IT management, data engineering, or something else, I have noticed it is remarkably hard to get any interviews nowadays.

“Junior” roles

Almost every (junior) vacancy for data analysis/engineering requires you to have 3 years of experience in tools such as Power BI, Spark, Azure, SQL, Databricks, and more. Tools that you might have worked with during your educational background — and if not, you are left hanging.

And it doesn’t end there: even if you are qualified for the job, there are still 200+ other applicants, with a large number of them also being qualified. This makes the process feel even more hopeless at times.

What I always believed was that, as a junior, the most important things are your motivation, your eagerness to work hard, and your ability to learn quickly. Personally, I might not have in-depth knowledge of some of these tools, but I have shown that I can pick up various (tech) skills quickly through my extracurricular projects and my “side quests.” In the end, though, that doesn’t seem to matter as much as I had hoped.

Traineeship selections: KLM Experience

If you thought applying for a traineeship would be any better — it depends. Last year, in October and November, I was busy with the selection procedure for the KLM Management Traineeship Business & Tech, and I honestly learned a lot about myself in the process.

I first attended the Business & Tech Inhouse Day at KLM’s “Point of View” office (with an amazing view of Schiphol Airport). There, I met many bright and like-minded people from different (educational) backgrounds, all interested in being part of IT innovation within KLM.

After the Inhouse Day, the actual selection procedure started. I got through the initial screening round and moved on to the first assessment round: the cognitive tests.

These tests measured my ability to perform inductive logical reasoning, deductive logical reasoning, and multitasking. I did exceptionally well on the multitasking and inductive reasoning tasks. However, despite scoring high on accuracy in the deductive reasoning task, I was relatively slow in answering many of the questions.

I passed this round and moved on to round two, which consisted of a personality test accompanied by an English literacy test. I aced the English test, and I felt the personality test also went pretty smoothly. Still, a week later, I received the unfortunate email announcing that I didn’t make it to the next round (recording a personal video message).

The email mentioned that, despite me performing well across all tests (combined from both rounds), some other applicants did slightly better, and they decided to move forward with those candidates.

Obviously, this was a bummer — not only because I felt I performed really well in the rounds so far and was highly motivated to join the traineeship, but also because I never got the chance to reach the more “personal” assessment rounds involving the video message and interviews.

Overall, I think it was a very structured and eye-opening selection procedure. The only real downside was the lack of the “human component” in the selection process until round three.

What’s next?

Right now, I’m focused on sharpening my AI engineering skills through several applications I’m actively building. While the job market hasn’t been particularly forgiving, I see this phase as an investment rather than a setback. I’m continuing to apply for roles in AI engineering and data science, and if nothing solid materializes in the coming months, I’ll be applying for the Rijksoverheid traineeships starting in March–April. It feels like a place where IT innovation and human-centric impact genuinely intersect — and that’s exactly where I want to be.