I’ll start off by saying that this is some what of a sweeping generalization. While most graduates take school, work and job hunting seriously; there are the few that manage to make their way across our interview stacks, our daily blog reading and even casual conversations that have this sense of self entitlement.
While this is not only true of students, but in society as a whole, I’m going to touch on students only. Why am I picking on these hard working individuals that spend so much time studying to make the grade, that work full time and still manage to pass their classes, because all that tends to mean very little in today’s market. It’s fact of life. Now, that doesn’t mean that those things are not taken into consideration, but really, it takes more then a resume to impress supervisors. They’re not hiring your resume, they’re hiring a personality who will not be, as Seth Godin calls them, Sheepwalkers. Those are willing to go above and beyond the 8-5 routine. I’ll step off my soap box on that point.
I started noticing this trend about a year and half ago when I went back to The Art Institute of Houston as a quest speaker with Aaron. My half of the lecture was about being an alumni in the real world. What to really expect after graduating.
I tried to encourage these students to get out of the rut I faced early on. The, “I’m just a web designer” rut. I quickly learned post graduation that I couldn’t just be that one title. I found job listings asking for a graphic designer but their duties included and was not limited to design, office work and even IT related management. I thought to myself, these employers are stupid. Nobody is an all-in-one position, I’m just a web designer, I want to do that and only that, psh.
Boy, was I the stupid one. Being the fast learner I am, I took it upon myself to expand my knowledge beyond design and ended up really liking the logic behind development. I’ve always enjoyed being behind the scenes and knowing how things worked, so web development came quicker to me then learning awesome design.
What turned me off the most while we gave our presentations was the lack of enthusiasm when it came to the Q & A part. We spent all that time sharing our knowledge of today’s workforce, our insight to the blogging and social media community and we got, you may have guessed it, blank stares followed by..”So, um, is your company hiring?”
And that set off a little light bulb in my head. If this is happening here, it’s probably happening in major universities. They’re teaching these young people tools and that’s it. While Ai Houston has a “resume building course”, it fails to really go deeper in the importance of selling yourself.
The vibe I got from that night was, “I paid X amount of money to be at this school, which promises to help me find a job after I’m done, why are you here telling me I need to learn more?!” Since then, I’ve been looking for opportunities, whether in passing or more speaking oportunities to talk to students about the importance of being a hard worker and not expecting things to come to you based on how much you spent on your education or even where you got your education.
While “faking it till you make it” might get some people by, I say, work hard till you make, and when you make it, share that knowledge of how you did it. That’s what I’m trying to do. Granted, I don’t think I’ve made it big nor is making it big a huge deal for me, if one person takes from this and doesn’t expect a job handed to them, then I’ve done something to help.
I’ve had many jobs in my life. The days of 20 years plus and a pension are done, in my opinion. But with that being said, you can’t just jump at a high salary either and ditch a good thing. I digress.
My goal, that I’ve shared with my supervisor, is to speak to more students as an ambassador of our company. Not for the sake of recruiting talent to our staff, but to prevent prospects who think they’ve earned a position based on a sheet of paper that lists the tools they can use.
Photo credit: Joe Shlabotnik
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