The next wave of college graduates will be stepping into the world of work over the coming weeks. Some already have jobs, some are job hunting, and some have pushed aside the thought of a career until after finals week. No matter where you stand on the job front, you can all benefit by updating your vocabulary with a few words that can help you push through difficult times on the job hunt, on the job, or in all aspects of life. These words to live by are:

Grit. Persistence. Challenge.

As you transition and settle into new job territory, remember to revisit these words during the many transitions that are ahead. Just like in your college years, you will be confronted with the unexpected, work long hours, get stressed out, and sometimes be tempted to take the easy way out. But as many of you discovered in your college years, persistence will be invaluable as you learn, grow, and find yourself by standing strong to embrace  challenge. As you approach the working world remember the words grit, persistence, and challenge as you come across some of the common career challenges and milestones, especially on days that test your patience, sanity, and chosen career course.

• Stay at your entry-level job for at least two years. Why do you think it might be important to stay for more than a few months or a year at your job? While you build  relationships with people who could be a future reference and create a solid job description to put on your resume, the most important thing you do is build real-world experiences and learn real-world skills which become the foundation for everything else you do. It is hard to learn anything inside of two years.  But for quick  starts who are well beyond the learning curve, the second year can be the time when real skill and contributions are made laying the groundwork for more responsibility and sometimes inventing a whole new job function. Before quitting your job prematurely, or checking out and coasting on autopilot, ask yourself  how you will benefit by seeing your job as a challenge to be mastered, mentally jumping over all of the obstacles on the way.
• Set yourself apart. Once in your job, show your uniqueness, your extraordinary work ethic, and your desire to learn. Whether it’s staying late, taking on a heavier work load, or bringing more ideas to the team, you need to tap into that “extra” energy that sets you apart. You need to use your grit, persistence, and desire for challenge to make a difference in your work environment, on your team or with your ideas. Figure out how your unique abilities can improve your company and bring forth measurable results.
• Keep learning. The end of a college career doesn’t mean the end of your learning career; in fact, it is just the beginning. You’ve spent eighteen plus years learning how to seek knowledge, and now it is time to be a self-motivated learner. Technology will continue to change many of our industries, and as you become a seasoned worker, it’s important you are open to change and willing to learn new ways of doing things. Continue being a valued team member by blending your years of experience with a desire to keep learning and stay up-to-date. When you bring these new insights to your work world, you improve the overall mission and scope of your team, department, or company.

Over the last few years, Americans have become more familiar with change. Our president’s campaign was based on change; our economy took a change for the worst and is making small steps to recovery; many members of our friends and families changed or lost careers; technology continues to change how we communicate, learn, listen to music, fight disease, etc. All of these factors have created a new economy that will only continue to get further away from what we know today (65 percent of kids in grade school are predicted to have jobs that don’t exist yet.¹)

How can new graduates meet the demands of our new economy when the skills they just learned in their (expensive) college years could be outdated in 10 years? In a study of 200,000 new hires, 46 percent of new hires failed within 18 months. Of those failed hires, 89 percent failed due to attitudinal reasons, the other 11 percent failed from lack of skill, according to Forbes². What do these numbers show? New graduates and new hires can worry less about whether or not their college prepared them for the technical side of their jobs, and start working on their presentation, communication, uniqueness, and go-get-it-ness that will make them stand out from the crowd. A college education is not the end, it’s just the beginning. That’s why even if there is an upheaval in the work available in the new economy, educated professionals will be able to find employment because they learned how to learn, how to think critically, and how to adapt to different types of peers, presentations, authority figures, and demands.

The 54 percent of new hires who are succeeding at their new job are those who are choosing to look beyond the obvious and add something original to the company. They make themselves stand out as exceptional pieces of a team, they go beyond without being prompted to by a boss, and they bring an energy that shows they are present.

Not all college students get social or attitudinal training in their college that they need to succeed in their career. In fact, many successful professionals weren’t only students (more and more are even college dropouts), they also had paper routes, worked at the movie theater, or served slices of pizza in their youth. Real-world experience is how people learn to communicate with a boss, work with their peers, and handle clients.

Soon-to-be graduates can start working on conveying their unique abilities by taking time to answer questions about themselves, in relation to a company and in relation to their own personal and professional goals:

Through answering these questions, students may even discover they have more experience than they thought they had by finding transferable skills learned in school and jobs as a youth. Endeavoring to grow, to learn, to embrace difficulty, and to over deliver are highly sought qualities which will never go out of style. Soul-searching and self-awareness characterize many of our greatest contributors in the world of work and, you, soon to be graduate, can be among them.
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Sources:

¹“What’s Your Major: Working Toward the Uninvented Job,” by Ana Tintocalis. 26 December 2011. Mind/Shift. Accessed on 19 April 2012. http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2011/12/17717/

²“Hire for Attitude,” by Dan Schawbel. 23 January 2012. Forbes. Accessed on 19 April 2012. http://www.forbes.com/sites/danschawbel/2012/01/23/89-of-new-hires-fail-because-of-their-attitude/

Piper Perry, my intern last semester,  had worked since she started cleaning Super 8 hotels at 16. A lackluster student in high school, she went to Montana State University at Bozeman to please her mother. But , like  a lot of students, she spent more time partying than studying, and she dropped out.

Piper is a wonderful example of perseverance, resilience and intrinsic motivation.  While we explored the world of work this week, and the role college plays in employability, next week we will discuss how your attitude in school and at work can impact your overall success.

If you have looked  for work without luck or if you are stuck in a job and need a career change, an internship can provide you with a preview into a whole new field and give you an idea of whether your skills and abilities match that career, even if you’ve already graduated from college or have yet to go to college. Whether you took the opportunity to have an internship in school or not, getting an internship at this point in your life can get you in the door of your dream job, build work experience and skills to add to your resume, and give you something fulfilling to do that can break the monotony of a job search.

For career people who want to land an internship, follow these steps:

1. Find an internship. If you have a specific company in mind that you would like to work for, see if you can intern there. If you can’t get an internship at a company you love, get an internship at a company that will help you develop the skills and experience you need to land your dream job. A reference letter from your internship and real-world experience could be just the ticket to landing the job.  You need somewhere to start to build skills and  a track record you can share later.

2. Determine the amount of time you can intern. As a working adult, you might not see the worth in working for someone for free and think the sacrifice is too great. At LifeBound our interns work anywhere from 10-30 hours a week, depending on the experience they want to have and how much time they have to dedicate to the company on top of their school, work, and life schedules. It can be depressing being on the job hunt day after day. Break the cycle by doing something that’s rewarding and new, while also advancing your career, interests and skills.

3. Make yourself stand out. Your internship is a job. Show off your professional skills by showing up to work on time, wearing appropriate attire, and exhibiting strong communication skills. It might sound elementary, but working in a professional setting isn’t easy for everyone. Go above and beyond by finding creative ways you can show the company you care and that you have the ability to grow with them. Are you displaying the attitude of someone who they would want on their team? Some interns lose energy for their tasks because they aren’t earning much or any money.  If you think of an internship like a college class—and your internship is often as valuable if not more valuable than a college class—then you’ll see that time invested in an internship will pay dividends later in a better job with a promotion track.

If you are spending day in and day out looking for a job, consider breaking up your week with an internship.  You’ll gain valuable skills, you’ll meet people who can help you make connections and you’ll be able to build up a series of deliverables—outcomes which show the value of what you have to offer in specific, concrete and measurable terms.  This additional perspective can often open more doors for you and help you to be more confident in interviews for other positions outside of your internship.

Resources:

“Get hired after an internship — even with a tattoo” http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/18/news/economy/hiring_interns_tattoos.fortune/index.htm

During tough times, people go back to school.  By many estimates, the depression America is experiencing right now hasn’t been this bad since Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time in office.    His ingenuity in the Works Progress Act and many other programs which put people to work when jobs were scarce is the hallmark of his presidency.  Obama, who clearly understands that the number one thing we can do to improve our economy is educate young people in America, also needs to look at how people over twenty-five can increase their earning power, save for retirement and, hopefully, find ways to give back to society in both money and time.

Today’s college grads find themselves competing for entry-level jobs against laid-off workers with master’s degrees in business adminstration and years of experience.  After seeing the movie Larry Crowne this weekend, we are also reminded that there are millions of displaced workers—people who don’t have college degrees who find themselves on a no-growth path and are ultimately let go to face more schooling and/or retraining. Here are a few things recent graduates can do to maintain equilibrium duing the economic downturn.

Finally, technology has made this economic downturn somewhat easier than those of the past because you can both learn and network on-line.   There are a plethora of on-line resources and we’ll discuss what they are tomorrow.