Made it to college, Now What?
An informal take on how to set yourself up for success in your chosen career path.
So I don’t know how many folks this information can be helpful but just putting it out there so that at least the driven could do better.
THERE’S LITERALLY NO LIMIT TO THE OPPORTUNITIES AVAILABLE IN THE COUNTRY OR DELHI(FOR THAT MATTER) , ITS JUST THAT PEOPLE ARE NOT WELL EQUIPPED TO CONVERT THEM.
Now things to consider: Separate education from employability. I just guided someone from DRC, zoology major on how to make it in UI UX. You are not bound by your major atleast not this decade anymore. I am personally aware of 16 year old kids raking in sustainable cash flows for themselves.
Before you set out in something: study the market, what kind of roles are present in the job market, what are entry level, what can only be done after some years of technical experience? Really sorry for me being the one to say this: “follow your passion is the worst advice”( Look up: So good you they can’t ignore you- Cal Newport, you will get it)So now the question is how to study the job market and where?
1)Reddit: There are several relevant subreddits, you can post in your query there, people are extremely helpful. eg: r/indianacademia, r/developerinda and many skills specific places like r/consulting etc.
2)Twitter: Follow people with relevant keywords. I should not be giving this free advice but what the hell: use the terms “B2B’, SAAS”, “Growth management” etc, if you’re from liberal arts or natural science majors. There are no serious entry barriers in these fields(I swear literally My mom/dad can put the work and get into these fields but the grind is real :))
3) Discord: It’s the best place to find organic connections and develop friends on the basis of similar skillsets. Look up Disboard. search for the relevant tags, For example: “GMAT/Consulting/product management”.
4) LinkedIn(Major sus): You can search for job roles and find personal mentors here. take whatever people say with a bit of salt here because well… Indians are butthurts.
Deviation-> It is essentially very important for me to address this as many people spiral into this phenomenon. There are many people teaching & preaching plethora of wisdom and products on LinkedIn. You have to ask this very important question when you consume any kind of content to yourself: “What’s in it for them?”
I realised this when I saw people at 40% of knowledge repeatedly recycling content at 10% for knowledge again and again. There’s so much content on how to use GitHub, how to target off campus placements and many such clickbait titles of corporate experiences. You have to really calculate the value addition because of all this to your learning journey and isolate the melody from noise.
Do not browse Linkedin. Yes, do not browse it, come with a purpose and achieve that and close the application. Otherwise it can have detrimental effects for you. If you’re looking for internship use the hashtag search or jobs portal. If you need advice search for people and message/send connection request to them. Stop consuming feed.
Now you have learnt where to find out what to learn. Now the following steps are:
- How to learn( with bare minimum expense of course because well.. Indians :))
- How to get employed.
The first of the two is mostly the art of googling. But I would just put this as a disclaimer that avoid paying for udemy courses. You can get free vouchers at r/udemy, telegram groups, torrents. Read medium blogs on “ How to become a digital marketer, how to become a content writer, How to become a motion graphic designer”. Definitely add the words “Self taught” before all this to get cheeky.
My friend from MU, Jaipur landed a 8LPA Gig solely on how own and had nothing to with his degree in engineering. And his story will mostly cover the aspects of 3).
3) How to get employed:
3.1 PROOF OF WORK: Capitalised for reason, for people to trust your ability they already want to see that you can do the job they plan to assign to you. By this way they save tons of money is bringing you to speed through training on onboarding, which gives you a far superior leg over any on campus hires who just mugged up case interview questions and quant aptitude and cultural internships yada yada yada. This was the reason my above friend got a job.
How much time did he actually spend on making his portfolio?
6 months. That’s it. That’s the time it takes for you to completely not know the ABC’s of something to be somewhat proficient to be considered to be thrown money at.
3.2 WORD OF MOUTH/CREDIBILITY: If a person who has 3+ years of experience publicly vouches for you in the trade he pursues, there’s no further assurance needed by any recruiter that you can get the job done. Use twitter for this and also try to get recommendations on your LinkedIn Profile. There’s nothing more I can add here.
3.3 Network: For this try to build organic relationships(definition: when you do not go to someone only when you need something from them. Be a valuable resource, not a cost centre). Have people who are successful in what you are trying to do as your mentors(4–5 in a good mentor). tap into their network when you need referrals. 3.4. Previous experience: You must have already heard of this loop. you need experience for job for experience. How do you beat this?
INTERNSHIPS:
Ok so your opinion to avoid unpaid internships is very much correct as they then don’t take you seriously. Do open source(look this term up, relevant in cases of design and technology or programming). Look up “impact consulting” if you just want consulting experiences. You should pitch people on convincing them to take you under their wing. You might even start out as the doc guy/girl or coffee vending machine for all they care. But what matters the most is what you do there.
YOUR EXPERIENCE IS YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.
Wow I just realised this phrase can be used in sex/college/office/relationships. Anyway, make the time spent worth it and seek more responsibilities. Get better at googling “marketing agencies in Delhi” or whatever it is you are looking for. Also another great knack: Stalk people on LinkedIn( make a note of where they interned and check in the same places again.(Works like magic , I know)
You can decide a point from whence you wont work if you are not substantially compensated. You will understand that with time. So that was it. The key to this is starting early(think first semester).
Learn. Build. Showcase. Repeat.
That’s all you need for a successful career. Also could have written very specifically on how to ace jobs in consulting or content writing but then I wanted to make sure this was a Major-Blind Advice and blueprint which can be applied by all.
Some specific bullshit tips: Don’t pay for GRE coaching , you can take GREGMAT(costs 5 USD per month and refer r/GRE for study approaches)
Branding, content strategizing, Product growth roles and project management are very much realistic career options for any major. Heck you all can do machine learning also(look up Vyom Bhatia on LinkedIn, BBA kid)
For writing/ design look up: SamaiyaMehak on Twitter. you will pretty much get the picture
Sorry if I wasted someone’s time with this. But probably gives someone a fighting chance to make a career so decided to pen this.