students

I talk to way too many 20somethings who are planning to go to grad school but can’t explain what they plan to do with the degree once they get it. Instead, they have a have a vague idea that having a graduate degree will somehow make their career path easier for them … when the reality is that it may make it harder.

Now, of course plenty of career paths do require a graduate degree, and I have no quarrel with people going to school for that purpose. I’m talking about people who can’t even explain why they’re thinking of (or in) grad school.

Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I take on this topic in more detail, and explain how getting an unnecessary degree can even hurt your job search later. You can read it here.

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This is an excerpt from a letter I received from a reader recently. Don’t do this!

I especially agree with your advice to students, since I (somewhat) recently graduated myself (’08). I get contacted by a ton of students from my alma mater and I am often discouraged by their lack of awareness about the corporate world. I had a kid call me up and after I spent 30 minutes talking to him about my job/the industry (he had no questions for me or insight into what differentiated my company in the market), he asked ME to monitor the job board at my company and “let him know” if there were “any jobs that might appeal to him.”

I’ve been on the receiving end of this too. It’s bizarre.

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For all the talk about how college is essential to landing a good job after graduation, college often fails to prepare students for the workforce in some key ways. Many students graduate without ever having been taught essentials like how to address both sides of an issue, why you should write short, not long, and more. Over at U.S. News & World Report today, I lay out 10 key work lessons that colleges aren’t teaching. Please check it out here.

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A reader writes:

I am a college student working my way through school to (hopefully, someday) work in journalism. Currently, I am working at a private school as an after-school worker to pay the bills. I enjoy working with the kids, but the school is incredibly demanding. I only work about 15 hours per week in the afternoons, but somehow, this job has become the most rigid part of my already-busy schedule.

For instance, I had the opportunity to attend a four-day student media conference in Orlando, Fla. this year. Attending the conference would give me a lot of career advice, not to mention allow me the opportunities to meet some professionals in the field. The conference is in November. I provided the dates and asked for permission to leave work (for 2 of the 4 days…it’s a Thursday through Sunday conference) in August, the week before my work at the school began. The director of schools denied my request. Now, I understand that finding a replacement for teachers is difficult due to laws about adult/child ratios, etc. However, as a worker for this school, I give up my fall break, my spring break, and half of my Christmas break, because the school has more days on the calendar than my university. Furthermore, I will end up working well into my university’s summer term for the same reason. All of this was on an informal contract I signed at the beginning of the school year.

However, since I’m beginning to send my resume out for internship opportunities (I’m stating that I am seeking a summer/fall 2012 internship in order to finish out my contract with the school), I’m wondering what I will do if I’m offered a position that starts earlier than I am able to leave the school. The school I work for made it very clear that I should take the job seriously and that they expected me to work for the entire school year. However, I am looking for a job in the media, not in childcare. How inappropriate would it be for me to break my contract with the school? And how much notice should I give them?

If I’m understanding this correctly, when you agreed to take the job, you were clearly told that all the things that you’re now objecting to would be the case. Right? They even had you sign a contract, which seems to indicate that they really wanted to make sure that you understood what you were committing to.

You agreed to the terms of the job — including working the duration of the school year — because you wanted the paycheck. They held up their end of the bargain — they’re providing you with paid employment. But now you feel justified in breaking your end of the bargain because … the job isn’t in the field you want to be in? Which you knew when you signed up and committed to it?  How exactly is that their problem?

Brace yourself, because this is going to sound harsh:  Your whole stance here comes across as a little naive and entitled, as if you’re still functioning by student rules rather than by real-world rules. For instance, complaining that you’re giving up your fall break, your spring break, half of your Christmas break, and some of your summer term … well, you know that working adults don’t typically get any of those breaks, right?  If you had a problem with that, you shouldn’t have committed to this job.

Look, if you want to break your commitment and leave early, they can’t stop you from doing it. But yes, it would be unprofessional and you would be engaging in behavior that, as a responsible adult about to embark on a career, you really shouldn’t be engaging in.

This is the real world. When you make commitments, you’re expected to keep them. If you don’t, you will quickly find yourself with a reputation that will make it very hard to get hired for jobs in the future. I strongly suggest that you adhere to the original agreement you made and not start harming your reputation before you’ve even left school.

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A reader writes:

What advice do you have for high schoolers? I have a nephew who’s barely in the 9th grade – just started last August, in fact. Nevertheless, he’s already feeling the pressure from a million different sources to pick the right major that will lead to a relatively secure job. (And yes, I’m aware that “secure jobs” are a dying breed.) What do you think kids should focus on in college that will better employment chances? Lots of internships? Clubs? Double majors/minors? I’m not looking for a magic bullet, but rather some helpful tips that might steer my nephew and other teens in the right direction.

Oh jeez. He’s in 9th grade? Do what you can to get the people around him to back off about how he needs to pick the right major. He has four more years, at least!  And I’m not even convinced that freshman in college are equipped to pick the right major. So please point out to anyone you see pressuring him like this that very few people are well equipped to make good long-term career decisions for themselves when they’re 15 (were you? I certainly wasn’t) and that pushing him on to a definitive path now before he’s in a position to choose wisely could do him real long-term harm.

And please tell him the same thing — reassure him that these people are out of their minds and that he will figure out a career path when he actually needs to, which isn’t for quite some time. Right now his job is to do well in school, try things out, and figure out what he likes and is good at.  Period.

Once he’s actually in college, the very best thing that he can do is to work and/or intern, not just take classes. I receive way too many resumes from recent grads who have literally no work experience: nothing, not internships, not temp jobs, nothing at all. And since they’re competing against candidates who do have experience, they’re at an enormous disadvantage. So while he’s in college, he should get all the work experience that he can. It’s the single best thing he can do to make himself marketable.

Great extracurriculars and relevant coursework and summers abroad, while interesting, don’t make up for a lack of work experience. There’s a learning curve when you enter the working world, and it doesn’t matter how much you studied or how fantastic your thesis was — you don’t yet know how the work world works, and you only learn by joining it. So anyone who has spent time working has a leg up on anyone who hasn’t in that regard.

So, make sure that your nephew finds a way to get plenty of work experience before he leaves college (which again, doesn’t even start for four more years!). He should do internships every semester he can, so that he has that experience on his resume. Paid, unpaid, whatever it takes. If a part-time job of a few hours a week is all he has time for outside of his classes, that’s fine. If he has trouble finding work, he should get experience as a volunteer — that counts too.

But for now? Get people to leave that kid alone.

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In response to a recent post on parents who job-search on their kids’ behalf, one anonymous commenter left this question:

I am hiring – albeit only summer positions for teens – but have had several responses from parents on their kids behalf. I don’t know how to respond. I want to contact the parent and ask them to let their kids apply, but now I am asking if this is more acceptable today when the kids are first looking for work. For young healthy teens, I don’t think it’s ever appropriate for a parent to find a job for their child.

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From a Monday New York Times article on the job market for new grads:

Liam O’Reilly, who just graduated from the University of Maryland with a bachelor’s degree in history, said he had applied to 50 employers — to be a paralegal, a researcher for a policy organization, an administrative assistant — but he had gotten hardly any interviews. While continuing to search for something he truly wants, he has taken a minimum-wage job selling software that includes an occasional commission.

“Had I realized it would be this bad, I would have applied to grad school,” Mr. O’Reilly said.

Nooooo.

Grad school is not a way to prolong the day of reckoning.

You go to grad school if you want to pursue a career that requires it. You do not go to grad school for the hell of it, or because you don’t know what else you want to do, or because the job market is bad and it’s somewhere to hide out for a while.

Liam isn’t alone in thinking this way. I see countless job applicants with freshly minted masters degrees that they’re not going to use, and I see countless people making plans for grad school when they can’t explain why they need to.

Grad school is expensive. It’s time-consuming. And it generally will not make you more marketable, unless you’re going into a field that specifically requires a graduate degree. What it will do is keep you from getting work experience for that much longer, meaning that when you’re done, your peers who have been working full-time while you were in school will be more competitive than you. It might also limit you by requiring you to find a higher-paying job than you might otherwise need, in order to pay back those loans (without actually increasing your earning power). And if you apply for jobs that have nothing to do with your graduate degree, employers will think you don’t really want the job you’re applying for, since it’s not in “your field.”

Being a new grad entering this job market is scary. I can understand why staying in the warm bosom of academia a little longer would be appealing. But using grad school as an escape isn’t a good answer.

P.S. 50 applications isn’t that many for an entry-level candidate, especially when it apparently produced some interviews. Keep persisting!

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