I have a first-class degree from a London uni, but I’ve still had 500 job rejections

A London graduate who finished top of his class has shared that he hasn’t been able to land a graduate job, despite applying to hundreds of relevant roles.

Khaled Sharif, 21, achieved a first-class degree in digital media technology from Kingston University in 2025. Since graduating, however, he is yet to land a job, despite having submitted 500 applications for film-making roles.

Khaled, who estimates that he paid more than £100,000 for his time at uni, says the problem is not his degree, but the job market, calling it a “broken system” which is “flooded” with applicants. 

He added: “I got a first class, top of my class, but can’t find anything. Kingston’s not a top uni but I just can’t find anything, and I’ve applied for everything. If people got a lower grade, how hard would it be for them?” 

Although Khaled got a first – once considered a golden ticket for the job market – he has now had to resort to applying for whatever he can find and may even have to leave the country.

Khaled, who has UK residency through his mother, said: “I’ve been applying to anything I can get here in the UK. I could go back home, it’d be much easier and pay would be better but the UK is known as having the best opportunities in the world.

“If you tell people you’ve worked here, they instantly have respect for you, but it’s been really hard, if it stays like this I’ll have to go home.”

via SWNS

Despite having gained work experience as a videographer and photographer during his studies, Khaled has had to continue to freelance while he applies for more full-time jobs.

“From the 500 applications I’ve had 10-20 interviews, but they all say I passed the first one, but after the second I hear back in two weeks and they say they’ve decided to move forward with someone else,” he said. 

“The time that upset me most was when I passed a second interview with a multi-national tech firm. I was really happy, really confident, then the hiring manager texted me to say ‘we’re not doing the graduate programme anymore’ – so why did I have to go through the whole process? Nothing is stable.”

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“It does make me really upset. It’s really stressful.”

Khaled’s experience is unfortunately a familiar story to many recent graduates in the UK. 

The Financial Times reported the proportion of final year students who had secured a job by the February before graduation has hit its lowest figure since records began (excluding the pandemic year of 2021), with just 27 per cent receiving early offers.

Not only is the job market “flooded” with applicants, but there are also simply fewer jobs than before. This year, the number of UK grad jobs on the market dropped below 10,000 for the first time, having plummeted by over 19 per cent.

Khaled now wishes that he had followed his heart and chosen a degree closer to his passion of filmmaking, instead of opting for a bachelor of science degree in fear of the “mickey mouse degree” trope. 

“[The degree] taught me a lot of life lessons but, honestly, I didn’t learn much,” he explains. “Everything I know content-wise is because of experience, volunteering, and YouTube.”

“I wish I did filmmaking, but when I was thinking about it before, there were much fewer job opportunities.”

Khaled has not given up and continues to innovate in spite of his bad luck. He has recently created his own clothing brand, named Zoqué, in a bid to combine his passion for fashion and photography. 

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Featured image via SWNS