DIY Company

June 9, 2010 2 Comments

Six weeks ago, I wrote a post titled “Rejected?  Make your own success.”  The premise was that rejected graduate school hopefuls shouldn’t throw in the towel just yet – there were other opportunities out there for them.  Graduating seniors, this economy creates an excellent opportunity to DIY – Do It Yourself.

This week, big media outlets agree.  Both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal ran columns encouraging disappointed graduates of the class of 2010 … to start their own companies.

  • “We need three things: start-ups, start-ups, and more start-ups,” waxes New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman, in his article “A Gift for Grads: Start-Ups.”  Good jobs, Friedman says, don’t come from the government.  ”They come from risk-takers starting businesses.”  Friedman talks about a couple of governmental policy possibilities that would encourage start-ups, and why we should implement them.
  • Perhaps HackNY is one of these solutions.  Less than a day after the New York Times column, Shira Ovide publishes “Steering Grads to Start-Ups” in the Wall Street Journal.  HackNY, she writes, is “a new organization that hopes to steer more graduates in computer science, math, and related fields to New York City technology start-ups instead of the well-worn path to Wall Street.”

Reputable news sources agree: this economy is providing an opportunity for new graduates to choose to do something they really want to do, instead of hitting the 9-5.  Graduates: if you’re looking for an after-graduation alternative, take this opportunity to DIY company.

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I’m a Bachelor (of Arts)

May 27, 2010 5 Comments

I’ve known Derek Strykowski for quite a while.  Not only is he a fellow Phillips Academy alum, but we also studied at Oxford University around the same time.  Derek recently graduated from Brandeis University, and I roped him into writing a guest post.

A bit about Derek: he is the Composer in Residence of the Irving Fine Society, and a member of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.  His music has been performed by many groups in the Boston area, including the Andover Chamber Orchestra, the Boston Microtonal Society’s NotaRiotous, the Coreli String Ensemble, Quintessential Brass, the Brandeis University Chamber Choir, and the Phillips Academy Concert Band.  Here’s his take on graduating with the class of 2010.

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“Education is different from training,” Professor John Burt said on Saturday, to the newly-inducted members of the Phi Beta Kappa Society at Brandeis University.

For me, Dr. Burt’s observation resolves a very basic question: why do we go to college? In my final months as a Brandeis undergraduate, I noticed that this question can prompt some very different responses.  Some students go for training, while others go for that more elusive activity, education.  Here’s how I distinguish between the two:

The student who seeks training will lean towards a very specific outcome—to qualify for a high-paying job.  He soon realizes that very little of his undergraduate coursework will have a direct, practical impact on his presupposed career.  With this mentality, studying for an undergraduate degree feels like one big speed bump, which is why I suspect that otherwise-intelligent students sometimes put in a minimal amount of academic effort when they get to college.  A few even lie and cheat to get their degree.  For those focused completely on outcome, a haphazard college experience is just fine because a BA or BS magically appears on their résumé and they get their wish: a nice job.  If training as an accountant is all you need, what’s the point of taking courses in art history or religious studies?

The point is your education—that thing which prepares you to be a valuable citizen of the world (and a desirable employee!).  This second type of student engages the university on its own terms, seeking to learn anything and everything, and observing her own progress while doing it.   A college education is not some sort of certification that can expire; it is a process during which the student learns about how she responds to the outside world, and how the outside world responds to her.  In my own time as an undergraduate, I completed most of the course requirements for my major (the “training”) by the end of my second year, but it was during the following two years of study that I learned some invaluable lessons about myself—a true education that was unsought but invaluable once found.  Those life skills will never be lost, and apply to all careers and pursuits.  My parchment diploma is not the bachelor of arts—I am, and always will be.

Having a BA prepares you to land a job, but being a BA prepares you to keep it.

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The Power of Three … Years

May 25, 2010 Leave a comment

Universities in the U.K. award undergraduate degrees in three years.  Why shouldn’t American students finish their degrees in three years, as well?

I and a few of my co-students were able to power through our undergraduate experience in three years.  I did take a summer class, and I did take a few extra units every quarter, but overall, it wasn’t too difficult an undertaking.

Stephen Joel Trachtenberg and Gerald Kauvar wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times extolling the virtues of “A Degree in Three.”  The assumption, the two wrote, that it takes four years to get a degree needs to change.  ”There is simply no reason undergraduate degrees can’t be finished in three years, and many reasons they should be,” they said.

For example, three-year curriculums would:

  • Increase the number of students the institutions can accommodate during a four-year period.
  • Reduce the cost per student, for both paying students and the institutions they attend.
  • Allow universities to take better advantage of their facilities during the summer.
  • Spread out internship opportunities throughout the year, rather than just the summer, allowing more students to participate.
  • Allow students to enter the workforce, or graduate school, a year earlier.

For some programs, condensing a degree down to three years may just not make sense.  For example, Northeastern University on Boston, the school my brother attends, offers a five-year business degree program, during which time students participate in at least three semesters of internships.  However, for the majority of areas of study, three-year degrees are certainly feasible and attainable.

An undergraduate degree is expensive.  At some institutions, a year of education can cost $50,000 or more.  Who wouldn’t want to save that much money?

For the sake of our pocketbooks and theirs, universities should seriously consider the merits of three-, rather than four-, year degrees.

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Good News for New Grads

May 23, 2010 Leave a comment

In the news:

The New York Times recently ran an article that provides a fairly good snapshot of the outlook for the college class of 2010.  It can be found here: Graduates’ First Job: Marketing Themselves.

According to the article, hiring this year is up 5% over last year, and the most desirable majors are not surprising: accounting, engineering, computing, and mathematics — most are technology-related.

And larger companies, like Facebook and HP, are offering programs with openings that would be a good fit for new grads.

The take away message for new grads in the market for a job: Don’t take the search lightly.  As one career advisor says, “Bring your A game.”

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Learning, Teaching, and Learning to Teach

May 6, 2010 Leave a comment

I was hired to HP as part of the Graduate Investment Program [GIP], along with 32 other fresh college graduates from the class of 2009.  We’re all effectively the same age and at the same stage in our lives, and we’re all starting off on our respective career paths.

When we started at HP, we looked to the 2008 graduates, hired less than a year before us, for guidance and mentoring.  To us, these 2008 graduates were masters of HP sales.  They had training, experience, and expertise.  They always knew the answers to our multitudes of questions.  Even though their 10 months of experience paled in comparison to the experience of the real HP veterans of 10, 20, 30 years, we venerated the 2008 graduates as role models alongside the HP career veterans.

This week, over 50 prospective new hires visit the HP campus.  These candidates are the best of the best. Culled from hundreds of references, career fairs, and online applications, they’ve all made it through the resume screen and the manager interview already.  This site visit was effectively the third round of the process for these potential new hires.  Many of us on the team, including me, volunteered to interview a few candidates and show them around campus.

As we went through the process of talking to these candidates, reading their resumes, and weighing their work experience, it occurred to me that, starting June 1st, we 2009 graduates will no longer be the newbies.  Instead, 20 new, 2010 graduates will consider us, the class of 2009, experts in sales, successful veterans of GIP.  We’ll be mentors and leaders, providing insight and guiding these new hires in the same way the 2008 graduates mentored us.

The prospect of mentoring and teaching is exciting.  But we, the class of 2009, are still learning.   We’re still taking training courses.  For as long as we’re at HP, we probably always will be taking training courses.  We still have questions every day for our veterans, class of 2008 and before.

As the class of 2009 rounds out their our year in the real world, many of us are thinking back to last summer.  The class of 2008 hires took us under their wing and guided us, helping us effectively transition from the world of grades to the world of quotas.

We are still learning, still new to the job.  But I know that the class of 2009 will do our best to provide the same mentoring, guidance, and inspiration to the class of 2010 that we were fortunate to receive from the class of 2008.

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