2025 college grad. I have a pretty padded resume which consists of the following:

- two summer internships at the same company where I personally assisted and worked with the executive director

- a year long internship

- a nine month long teaching assistantship

- a year long research assistantship

- listed as third author on a published paper

- several relevant volunteer and leadership opportunities

I applied aggressively for my first six months out of school before deciding to take a break after a pretty brutal rejection from a job I had nine rounds of interviews with (yes, seriously). I just started applying again three weeks ago. The thing I’m concerned about is the most recent part of my resume. I’ve worked in the service industry for the past year which is at least something but I’m afraid it will still be viewed as a resume gap since the experience is irrelevant to my field and doesn’t require a degree.

Am I totally cooked here or is there still hope for me? Anything I can do to increase my odds? I’ve considered applying to more internships but from what I’ve seen they only want to hire current students