Eight Things to do in College to be Successful in Your Career
April 6, 2008
Eight Things to do in college to be successful in your career
1. Take leadership roles.
The best way to learn to lead is to do it. Generation Y has been rasied to be great team players – in everything from school to work to social lives. Gen Y is a generation that will live its life out in groups. But for all the hoop-la about being on a soccer team where everyone plays, there has been very little focus on leadership for young people. You can address a deficit like this by taking leadership positions in college, and courses like this one (which I loved taking) if you can get someone else to pay for it.
2. Get a good internship.
Eighty percent of graduating seniors will have completed at least one internship, according to Mark Oldman, co-founder of Vault, a media company for career information. “In the United States an internship is no longer an optional benefit but an essential stepping stone for career success.” So part of your job as a student is to line up good internships. The way to set yourself up for success as an adult is to balance the school stuff and the work stuff – even now, before you graduate.
3. Don’t get straight A’s
There is little correlation between how well someone does in school and how well that person does in adult life. School rewards people who follow rules and are motivated by grades. Adult life requires people to figure out how to steer themselves and motivate themselves. Spend your time in school doing something besides studying so that you will steer well when you graduate. People who spend their college years getting straight A’s often say they regret it.
4. Be a joiner – spots, fraternity, cheerleading
Cheerleaders do better in business than everyone else except athletes, who do as well as cheerleaders. So be a joiner. Figure out how to work in teams and how to exude enthusiasm even in the face of bad news. And, when it comes to building networks, a fraternity is a ready-made network of people who are generally similar to you, so get started in college, when it feels more like a party than a network.
5. Read novels, even if they’re not assigned
Tiziana Casciaro, professor at Harvard Business School, says that,”How we value competence changes depending on whether we like someone or not.” And people who lack social competence end up looking like they lack other competencies, as well. This is why social skills are as important as other work place skills. The best way to learn social skills is to put down your books and go meet new people. But if you insist on reading, pick up a novel. It will require you to understand what motivates people, and that, after all, is what social skills are all about.
6. Take a Myers Briggs test – know strengths
We are each born with strengths and weaknesses. Instead of banging your head against the wall trying to change who you are, take a personality test and find out your strengths. Then, forget about overcoming your weaknesses and focus instead on leveraging your strengths. Many studies conducted at the Gallup Institute show that we find more success through our strengths, but you have to know them in order to leverage them. Most people wait too long to take a test. Take yours now, in college.
7. Start a company
You can run a company out of your dorm room. Try anything. It’s free. The software is free, the viral marketing is free (your friends list) and your time is almost free since you wouldn’t be getting paid right now anyway. So even if your business does nothing, you will have the experience of starting one, and that will give you the confidence to try many more times after you graduate, when the stakes are higher.
8. Turn a professor into a mentor.
People with mentors are more likely to do well in work than people without them. It is hard to find mentors and hard to keep them motivate to help you. So start practicing now, with your professors. They want to help, and, like corporate mentors, professors want to help the people who are most motivated to help themselves. A professor can give advice, make a connection, or tell you about their own travails. In any case, the more you are able to show that you used his or her advice, the more likely you will be to get more help.
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Penelope Trunk
Blogger: http://blog.penelopetrunk.com
CEO: http://www.brazencareerist.com
Journalist: http://www.boston.com/jobs/news/archive/Climb/
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Confessions of an MBA Student
December 26, 2007
Last year Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the US Federal Reserve, earned $183,500. With bonuses included, this is almost exactly what a graduating MBA now expects to be paid to create PowerPoint slides for a bank or consulting firm. But don’t expect them to look happy about it.
We (I graduated four days ago from Insead) have taken our core negotiation course, plus optional salary-negotiation masterclasses and we know that all first offers, no matter how generous, should be viewed as only inching their way into the ballpark of respectability. No wonder recruiters think we are arrogant.
According to the 2007 survey of recruiters run by the Graduate Management Admissions Council, the key gripes of MBA recruiters are about our unrealistic expectations, both in terms of salary and level of job. MBA hires are routinely perceived to be strong on analysis but weaker on interpersonal skills.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!The Best College Admission Essay
December 22, 2007
College Admission Essay Topic
IN ORDER FOR THE ADMISSIONS STAFF OF OUR COLLEGE TO GET TO KNOW YOU, THE APPLICANT, BETTER, WE ASK THAT YOU ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:
ARE THERE ANY SIGNIFICANT EXPERIENCES YOU HAVE HAD, OR ACCOMPLISHMENTS YOU HAVE REALIZED, THAT HAVE HELPED TO DEFINE YOU AS A PERSON?
Following is the Best College Admission Essay I have ever read. Truly reflects a personality, in fact most of us and what we aspire to be. The last paragraph is the most important. However, read through this
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Graduate School Guide: Is Grad School right for you?
December 1, 2007
Do you want to go to Grad school because you want to persue your dreams, a better job and a better future that come along with a higher degree and strengthen your claims of “bringing more to the table” or because you miss the school culture and are nostalgic about the good ol’ days where you are the brightest star in the galaxy, popular among professors and other students?
In any case, Penelope Trunk over at the Brazen Careerist provides good advice on this intersection of work and life. Life is all about choices. Whether you want to take the red pill or the blue pill is upto you but making that decision with some introspection is only going to help.
Check out Penelope Trunk’s article on Is Grad School right for you
About Penelope Trunk:
Penelope Trunk is a career columnist at the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance. Her syndicated column has run in more than 200 publications. Earlier, she was a software executive, and then she founded two companies. She has been through an IPO, an acquisition and a bankruptcy. Before that she played professional beach volleyball. Her book is Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success (Warner, May 2007).
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Importance of a College Degree & Education
October 13, 2007
Wonder the importance of having a College Degree and go through what college education has to offer. Well, according to a survey by the US Census Bureau, those with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $51,554 in 2004, while those with just a high school diploma earned $28,645 . Those without a high school diploma earned an average of $19,169.
The series of tables, Educational Attainment in the United States: 2005, also showed advanced-degree holders such as a Masters degree and a PhD made an average of $78,093.
Other highlights from the US Census Bureau Survey:
* In 2005, 85 percent of all adults 25 years or older reported they had completed at least high school. More than one-quarter (28 percent) of adults age 25 years and older had attained at least a bachelor’s degree.
* High school graduation rates for women (ages 25 years and older) continued to exceed those of men, 85.4 percent and 84.9 percent, respectively. On the other hand, men had a greater proportion of the population with a bachelor’s degree or higher (28.9 percent compared with 26.5 percent of women).
* Utah, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire and Alaska continued to have the highest proportions of people 25 years and older with a high school diploma or higher (around 92 percent).
* The District of Columbia had the highest proportion of people 25 years and older with a bachelor’s degree or higher (47 percent), followed closely by Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey.
Fourteen tables of data on educational trends are available, and attainment levels are shown by characteristics such as age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, marital status, occupation, industry, nativity and period of entry, as well as metropolitan and nonmetropolitan residence. The tabulations also include data on earnings and educational attainment. Although the statistics provided are primarily at the national level, some data are shown for regions and states.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!Become a Professional Virtual Recruiter
October 12, 2007
How would you like to recruit for one of the largest financial services corporations in the world … FROM HOME?
Since 1997, Courtney Raymond Consultants has had a long history of successful placing financial brokers with Merrill Lynch – ranging from trainees to ultra high net worth teams. Their client is one of the largest and most influential wire houses in the world.
The reason they have been so successful is do to their business model. They focus on providing Independent Virtual Recruiters the opportunity to share in their profits as opposed to bringing on “salaried employees.”
This business model has assisted them in attracting people who have an entrepreneurial mindset, with a business owner’s mentality; someone who has a passion for success.
The Rewards for taking up this unique opportunity
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* An opportunity to enjoy a flexible work schedule leaving you more time to enjoy with your family.
Salaries for Computer Science Graduates up
October 10, 2007
According to a survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, the starting salary for Computer Science graduates is up 4.5% from last year to an average salary offer of $53,051 in 2007.
After the IT bubble burst post 2001, many students going to colleges have stayed away from a career in Computer Science. The laws of supply and demand seem to have caught up finally with Employers who are now competing for the smaller supply of qualified Computer Science graduates, with the starting salaries now at their highest levels in seven years.
If you liked this article, click here to buy me a beer!
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