Advice to new grads
The graduation season is upon us; soon, freshly minted grads will be looking to enter the workforce. Armed with your new degree and endless enthusiasm, you are embarking upon an exciting and scary time in your life. You’re likely getting lots of advice, much of it conflicting, from well-meaning family, friends, and your college’s career center. I’m going to give you some scandalous direction: ignore most of it. Your family and friends love you, and they want the best for you, but usually, their advice is outdated and outmoded. (Does your uncle want you just to get a job at IBM and “work your way up”? Yeah, not very likely anymore!) The people in your college career center, while committed to helping alumni succeed, tend to dispense advice that does not align with the reality of today’s job market. (Having a degree does not guarantee you’ll get a job in the field you desire.) Here is what I suggest:
Manage your expectations. You’ve probably been told that a degree is the key to success. And, while having a degree certainly does help, you may still need to invest a lot of time and energy in job searching. A degree has become more of a minimum qualification than a key to a good job.
Don’t lead with your education. Hopefully, you are graduating with some work experience, either from jobs you held as an undergraduate, internships you completed or a combination of both. Employers want to know about what you did and what you achieved there. They are not particularly interested in the courses you took or on the topic of your senior thesis.
Continue learning. Graduation is not the end of your learning adventure. You’ve earned the degree, which is a great baseline. But there is so much more knowledge out there. Continue to pursue it.
Build your network. This is advice that you’ve probably heard already. But you may not know how to go about it. You build your network by meeting people. People you meet at your weekend job, at your volunteer activities, your classmates, etc., are all potential people to include in your network. When you build your network, you expand your reach. It’s important to remember that when you’re building your network, offer help first and ask for help second.
Don’t expect perfection. One thing is absolutely certain—life will not always go according to plan. It’s critical to have a plan, but it’s also crucial that you allow for the inevitability that some things will go awry. Perhaps your dream job will turn out to be less than dreamy. Maybe the field you thought you wanted to devote yourself to is, in reality, uninspiring. Know that these things may happen; you will have to adapt and embrace change.
Don’t limit yourself. Your intuition and curiosity can take you to far-reaching places. You have a degree in history and want to be a programmer? Awesome. There are lots of liberal arts majors out there who work in highly technical capacities. What interests you? Notice I am not saying “do what you love.” Instead, think about what motivates you and how you can translate that into a career. I worked with a new grad who was obsessed with nail polish. She turned that personal interest into a career as a market researcher who focuses on beauty products.
Congratulations on this first important milestone. Now create your future!