What the Unemployed College Graduate should Do
In today’s job market and declining economy it has become harder and harder for college graduates to find jobs. A recent study showed that just 20% of all college graduates has successfuly secured a full-time position by the time of graduation.
This leaves 4/5 of all 2009 college graduates unemployed. (and shows another great reason who youth entrepreneurship is so appealing, especially in this economy)
So what should these students do?
Marketing whiz Seth Godin wrote a great post of things college graduates could do in the year after graduation. Below is an excerpt from the post.
How about a post-graduate year doing some combination of the following (not just one, how about all):
- Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
- Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery. [Clarification: I know you can't become a master programmer of all these in a year. I used the word mastery to distinguish it from 'familiarity' which is what you get from one of those Dummies type books. I would hope you could write code that solves problems, works and is reasonably clear, not that you can program well enough to work for Joel Spolsky. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.]
- Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
- Start, run and grow an online community.
- Give a speech a week to local organizations.
- Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
- Learn a foreign language fluently.
- Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
- Self-publish a book.
- Run a marathon.
Taking time to complete some of these tasks will differentiate you from the pack and increase your chances of landing a job.
