On graduating into a recession
The class of 2009 graduated into the deepest recession in almost a century. Many of my classmates had their plans blow up — either concrete jobs evaporated, or people’s longer-term arcs shifted.
I was recently on a panel with some of these classmates, answering questions from students graduating into 2020’s even-deeper recession. We had all taken quite different career paths — everything from teaching and medicine to theater and tech — but some clear themes emerged. In the interest of passing knowledge on, I’ve written up some of the major themes among us.*
Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Keep moving and keep learning about yourself.
The very specific career path in mind a few months ago may be closed now; your dream job may have evaporated. Don’t let that dissuade you from jumping at the next opportunity, even if it doesn’t look exactly what you originally had in mind.
Momentum and progress are often more important to career development than finding what looks like the perfect first job. The starting point matters less than you think given how much will change along the way.
Your early career is about learning what you like and what you don’t, changing course along the way to move closer and closer to a career you love. It’s hard from your dorm room to imagine where your career will go. Almost every panelist took a first job that they were unhappy with in some way. But these same panelists were glad they did it because of what they learned along the way.
Your 10-year plan doesn’t all have to happen in Year 1.
Not only will accumulated work experience change the path you take, it will also inform how you approach future jobs. This experience has real value.
Both of the doctors on the panel, for instance, held jobs before attending medical school; both of the tech operators on the panel worked in public service before joining the tech world. These experiences differentiated them later as applicants, and gave them a unique perspective to bring to their work.
Keep building your network. You never know where your next opportunity will come from.
It helps to stay in touch with many of your peers and to be transparent about what you’re looking for. These friends and acquaintances can serve as informal scouts, keeping their eyes open for jobs, projects, and people that match your interests.
Networking is a skill you can develop. It usually doesn’t come naturally. Read books and articles about how to meet people and build relationships. Use chance encounters as an opportunity to practice.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to people who are ahead of you in their careers, but be purposeful about how you do it. Generic requests for informational interviews often don’t build sustained relationships. Instead, if there’s someone you admire and want to build a relationship with, start with a small, specific ask. For instance: “I’ve really admired what you’ve written about Topic X. Can you recommend to me the one or two books that most informed your thinking?” Or: “I’ve been researching how organizations deal with Y. Can you introduce me to the person who is responsible for Y so I could ask a couple of practical questions to satisfy my curiosity?”
Think carefully about risk.
Especially in a deep recession, flexibility has value. Think about the choices you’re making not just in terms of cost, but also in terms of opportunity cost. What will a given career decision do to foreclose other options?
Taking a job to postpone graduate school, for instance, will not prevent you from attending later. On the other hand, taking on loads of debt will likely rule out many future career options.
Although four of the six panelists eventually attended graduate school, none of them did so straight out of school. All but one of them waited 5+ years after undergrad to matriculate.
Remember, you’re still you.
It’s easy to let the uncertainty of the world affect your perception of yourself. Maybe the fact that you can’t find the job you wanted, or can’t get into the school you wanted, is a reflection on you and your worth. It’s not.
The world has changed dramatically in the last few months, and those changes have nothing to do with you. The effects they’re having on your life are very real, of course. But they’re not a reflection of your ability, your intelligence, or your employability. You’re still you.
* It probably goes without saying that this advice comes with substantial caveats based on both the panelists and the original audience. We were all Yale graduates, with the obscene privilege and opportunity that implies. There’s also an element of survivorship bias — we were sharing advice because we had navigated things reasonably well — so our experience is not necessarily representative.