On graduation

So, it's exam time. Which means that around about now thousands of knackered excitable university students are getting ready to launch themselves onto the job market. My own graduation was fifteen years ago. I like saying that because the fact that I took two years to decide what to do about university now makes it seem like I'm two years younger than I actually am. Top tip, handy hint there for A Level students - take a few years out, pretend you're younger than you are later in life.

OK, maybe not the best top tip, handy hint I'll offer in this post, but you need to start somewhere.

I've interviewed quite a few fresh faced graduates over the past 15 years or so. I've even employed a few. So I thought it may be useful to share some of my advice and the stuff I wish someone had told me as I readied myself to enter the world of work.

Get over yourself

That degree that you've just spent the past three or four years sweating blood and vodka for? The one that has consumed your life, shaped your world and provided your love interests for 14% of your time on this earth? It's only going to get you so far. This is a rather frustrating thing to be told I appreciate, and somewhat contradictory to what your parents and lecturers have been drumming into you since you were about four. However, If I'm employing you, I care less that you got a first, and far, far more that you have all the attributes to do a brilliant job for me. Those two things do not necessarily come neatly wrapped in the same package. 

Given the choice between a graduate with a first and a superiority complex, and one with a 2.2, bundles of pro-active energy, smarts and a real will to learn, I will take the dude with the Desmond* every time. 

Get over other people (1)

(I may as well keep saying this to you for the next 50 years by the way). In school and university it's perfectly natural to want to keep up with the herd. In your early career this is a guarantee of a bum steer. I know lots of people who followed the crowd into graduate traineeships in big, shiny blue-chip consultancy firms, only to realise 5, 10, 15 years later that this was not want they wanted to do. I was lucky. I was an arts graduate - those blue-chip consultancies wouldn't have touched me with a twenty-foot balanced scorecard. At the time though my lack of a PWC rucksack made me feel like a failure. I know now that rucksack was never a good look for me. If you find it impossible to let go of the herd mentality of school and uni, go into teaching, you'll do just fine.

Be prepared to work bloody hard...

I get it, I do. Generation Y wants a better work-life balance than Gen X and the baby boomers had. More power to you. But work-life balance is not a euphemism for slacking off. If you've worked behind a bar, or in a restaurant, or in retail you probably already know the meaning of hard work (and coping with people you don't like - more of that later). You will not walk straight into a corner office with a PA and a frothy coffee machine. This ain't the Apprentice. That stuff gets earned. Even the right to stop making the tea and preparing someone else's powerpoint slides gets earned. Sorry (not sorry).

...But not too hard

This work thing seems really flippin' important right now doesn't it? You have a debt the size of a small African country, you really, really don't want to move back home, all your friends are getting glamourous jobs in the media (I'll let you into a secret - they are making tea for pretentious arses 80% of the time). But don't ever let work be the thing that defines you, or that takes priority over your health, your loved ones or your dreams. If you have passions now (sport, arts, travel) keep them going - even if its hard. Don't let some grey, overworked 40-something who sacrificed their dreams to the corporate gods tell you you should do the same. Work at it's best should utilise your talents, allow you to do more of what inspires you, broaden your horizons, stretch and challenge you. But mainly it's there to pay your bills. If that's all its doing for you, make sure you are getting the other stuff somewhere. 

Get over other people (2)

You know how at uni you could ignore or mock those people you didn't like? You know; stick to your own gang, take the mickey out of the maths geeks, only go to the union on Mondays and Wednesdays. That doesn't wash in the world of work. You will have to work with people you don't like. You may even have to work for people you don't like (probably a maths geek). You will also have to do a good job if you want to get on, and doing a good job is about far more than fulfilling each task on your job description. It's about being a team player, creating harmony, collaborating, encouraging. It's about tolerating the people you don't love. Who knows, you may learn something from them. But ignore/mock them at your peril. As Sheryl Crow once said, this ain't no disco, and it ain't no country club either. 

Clean the damn kitchen

This one comes courtesy of a great graduate I interviewed yesterday. We were talking about how at uni, the kitchen was a good barometer of how things were going. If everyone was pulling together, doing their share and stepping up to the plate, the kitchen was clean. If things were stressed, tense, or people weren't getting on, the kitchen would be like the seventh level of hell, including those little passive-aggressive notes on everyone's food (you know the ones). Work has parallels. There are things that everyone needs to do to keep the whole show on the road. They may seem unimportant, they may not even seem like part of your job, but they are absolutely essential. And everyone has to do them. Things like answering each other's phone, joining the tea round, mucking in with the dull tasks, sharing information, pulling together when the shit hits the fan. That stuff is no-one's job and everyone's job. And when one person stops, its easy for everyone to stop. That's when the metaphorical pass-agg post-its begin. The work equivalent of this is bitchy smoking shelter conversations, or sneaky emails behind colleagues backs. Not cool people. Be a team player. Clean the kitchen.

You're not the first, you sure as hell won't be the last

This is not meant to be depressing, or patronising, but I realise it may be. It's really easy to come bouncing out of university ready to shake up the corporate world, show them how it's done. Innovate, radicalise, bring them into the 21st century. Don't lose that passion, enthusiasm or drive. But try to remember that grey forty-something was you once. And forty is not old. You will learn from people older than you. They will learn loads from you. But you may not be reinventing the wheel every day. Want proof? Look at this video of Bob Fosse - legendary choreographer and 47 yrs old in this clip. Recognise any moves? 

And, finally...

Don't Panic!!

In the words of Baz Luhrmann in advice to a graduating class of people around my age; Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. 

*I'm not going to explain, you'll need to google it