It has been just over a
year after finishing undergrad; I can’t believe it. What a rollercoaster
of a journey, and here I am on the other side 12 months later. I’ve
learned a lot, and I think there are many of you out there who can
relate to my thoughts and experiences. While this is a deeply personal
story, I’m sharing it because I think it can help people, namely young
adults like me. I hope you find something useful out of it... I returned from my big euro-trip last August thinking, “Alright, time to find a job now. I went to businesses school, I’m a pretty smart kid, finding a job in business for social change shouldn’t be too difficult, right?”
WRONG.
It
didn’t take me very long to realize the brick wall I was up against.
It didn’t matter that I had gone to business school and that I was
incredibly passionate and driven. As a new entrant into the workforce,
new grads face one of most challenging and defeating barriers to
achieving career success in our society. We are bred to strive for
success; we are raised to believe that with hard work, great education
and some good-old student debt, we’re going to fly.
But
new grads are stuck in a really funny spot, because even though we are
intelligent and motivated, we don’t have the ‘3-5 years of experience’,
and no one wants to spend the money training us- at least not in this
economic climate. So how are we supposed to get anywhere if no one is
willing to take us on initially? How is this system fair?
Graduating
from a school like Ivey brings a ton of pressure and anxiety with it.
If you aren’t going for the more mainstream careers (finance, marketing,
accounting, consulting), you have a mountain to climb. I started
business school knowing I wanted to use business tools to drive social
and environmental change – that has been my vision all along. I never
wanted one of those mainstream jobs, and it was a very isolating and
scary feeling. Whereas most of my peers had recruiters coming to them, I
literally had to start from scratch.
September
came quickly and after a few weeks of effort I started to feel really
frustrated. I sent emails, made some phone calls, spent time on
applications – I heard nothing in return. I started to let myself
believe I wasn’t smart enough, which is a slippery slope to fall down.
Please, don’t ever let yourself think that way. And as a side note, a
few weeks of emails and cover letters isn’t the way to find yourself a
job – but we’ll get to that a little bit later.
After
an interview with a company that ended up taking an MBA grad instead of
me, one of my interviewers recommended I check out Ashoka. I’d never
heard of Ashoka before, and while they weren’t hiring, it seemed their
volunteers gained a lot of value out of the experience.
“Volunteer?” I thought, “I can’t volunteer. I need money, I need a job. I’m a business grad for god sakes!”
After
a few weeks of thinking this way, I checked out the Ashoka website and
knew right away I needed to become a part of the organization. So I put
my ego aside and committed to volunteering for a few months. I
realized that if I’m going to get anywhere with my niche career
vision and passion, I’m going to have learn more about it and build a
network (Lesson 1!). Unfortunately, we are in an unfair system that
takes advantage of new graduates, but until someone figures out a way to
change it, you need to work within the system to get what you want.
Ashoka,
with social entrepreneurship at its core, was my answer.
The
Ashoka staff welcomed me with open arms and very quickly became like
family. I was doing interesting work, was valued by the team, and felt
stimulated every day – I was heading in the right direction.
After
a few weeks, I met with an individual who is now a great mentor of
mine. He is one of those “must-know” people in my field. Lesson 2:
find the right people to get advice from. I happen to work in the
same office space as him, so I got pretty lucky. I asked for some career
guidance, and he gave me the best piece of advice that I believe has
gotten me to where I am 8 months later:
