How to Get an Outstanding First Job as a Liberal Arts Graduate
I’ve hired 100’s of people just a year or two our of school, and then watched them go on to turn into major contributors at my company. I want to share my thoughts on this topic because it’s one that both companies and new graduates struggle with.
A few years ago I read an article in the New York Times about the challenges of hiring college graduates nowadays. It’s thought provoking and raises an excellent discussion about skill development and responsibility between students and companies. Who should take what responsibility in readying new graduates for a modern, skill-driven economy?
I see it differently. New grads and companies want the same thing.
The key in hiring young stars is new grads who have sufficient skills to contribute today, and growth capacity to hold bigger jobs tomorrow.
This is what new grads want: a job today, and growth tomorrow. It’s also what companies want: work done rapidly today, and valuable employees tomorrow.
Companies would do well to understand this balance, but most HR departments and hiring managers don’t hold up their end of the development bargain. New grads would do well to understand it, too, but most job seekers expect companies to divine their special potential among a vast pool of homogenous job seekers.
Responsibility for skill and for growth are shared, and neither party looks at it perfectly. One day, companies will change. But they’re slow and almost entirely responsive to market forces.
This post is for job seekers who are looking to get hired…in spite of the fact that so many companies fundamentally misunderstand the value they offer. There’s a ton they can do to demonstrate their value and work for the right managers.
Here’s the tl;dr:
Successful job-seekers don’t promise “potential” and wait for companies to award them with training and skills, they show potential pre-hire and take action on their potential before they even apply.
Demonstrating potential
And to be clear, this advice does not apply to liberal arts graduates alone. It’s true with or without a degree. A long-time HubSpotter, Sam Mallikarjunan, is a college dropout who got himself hired at HubSpot, has done amazing work for the company, and now frequently guest lectures at universities including Harvard and MIT. True story. Amazing guy.
Your degree does. not. matter. It’s all about demonstrating potential. Here are some pointers on how to do that.
Avoid hiring managers who focus on “skills”, not narratives.
If you’re talking to a hiring manager who is obsessed only with the technologies you’ve worked with and specific skills you have — reconsider. Remember, at least half the value you bring to the organization is future potential.
Now, “potential” is not the opposite of “skills”. Skills today can demonstrate potential tomorrow. But it’s a totally false dichotomy that you have either potential or skills as a new graduate.
Painting skills vs. potential as a one-or-the-other scenario is a major issue because it allows bad hiring managers to continue to make bad hiring decisions that negatively affect their companies growth potential and job-seekers’ employment changes.
Understand what potential + skill looks like, together, and seek hiring mangers who get it.
In a reasonable candidate pool, a good hiring manager can find both potential and skill in the same person, if they keep an open mind.
- A Cum Laude Psychology major who also has a totally tricked out blog on their cat? They probably picked up some HTML/CSS along the way to make that blog and can learn new tech skills quickly.
- A captain of a field hockey team who did Teach for America on math? That’s a good promise of a future leader with ability to learn smoothly and work with all sorts of clients and situations.
- A current Apple Store employee who also does some video editing for walking around money? That’s a self-motivated learner who understands technology and can work with people (Added bonus: Apple training is really strong).
These examples each have two points of reference (e.g. psych+blog, team captian + TfA, Apple+video), and each show a trajectory. Yes, there are skills, but they relate to the more important thing — potential. As a new graduate and job seeker, you need to think about how to tell that type of story about your own life.
In addition, set your sights on awesome jobs at interesting companies. Be prepared to assess your interviewers as much as they’re assessing you, by asking them personal questions to understand their narrative.
And if you find people you fall in love with, don’t let them go if you can help it — people are worth far more than a paycheck early in your career.
So, what can you do when you fall in love with a job? Make sure you’re a good candidate by taking action before you even apply.
Show your potential by taking action on it.
One notion the NYT articles nailed is that there are a lot of job-seekers, and many are looking for companies to teach them.
This is most definitely true, but unfortunately many candidates don’t demonstrate the “potential” they claim. It’s one thing to talk about your potential during the interview process, but how can you show it in a way that makes you a sure bet?
- Take inspiration from Sam Mallikarjunan’s story that I mentioned earlier.
- Come bearing “gifts of insight” that show you’re thinking deeply about how to improve the business.
- Teach yourself something proactively using CodeCademy, Lynda, or HubSpot Academy.
- If you’re interested in operations, start a small venture on ebay? Startup cost is <$100 and you’d learn a ton about business operations and finance in the process.
- If you majored in journalism, set up a WordPress or Squarespace site with examples of your writing.
There’s a classically liberal arts message in all of these examples, too — show, don’t tell. Read that one again — show, don’t tell.
I interview about a dozen entry-level candidates a week, and no more than 25% have taken that mantra and turned “potential” into action. Businesses care about action. Find that one extra step that 75% of your peers aren’t doing, and do it. It doesn’t need to take a ton of time, but it does need to happen, and you do need to care.
Action vs. inaction, not skill or age, is the real competition. Those that show potential vs. promise potential inevitably get the job.
The 9 steps to show your potential + skill (and get an outstanding entry-level job)
Here are the steps I recommend to show your potential and land an outstanding job:
1.Find a job you want. If you’re planning on entering the job market 6 months from now, today is a good time to start at this. Cast your net wide looking for roles — check out the normal job aggregation sites, but also look at websites of companies you respect or have heard about. Haven’t heard about any companies you like? Search something creative like “best places to work in _______” and see what comes up.
2.Identify the 4 core elements for the job’s profile. By reading job descriptions, looking at LinkedIn profiles of individuals already in that job, and generally snooping around the Internet, you should be able to build a profile in your mind that matches what the company is looking for pretty well. Yes, you’ll have to Google a little…but you will have to work much harder in any good job you get.
Pick the top 4 skills that appear consistent in people already working the job you want, or similar ones.
3.Critically rate yourself vs the job’s 4 critical elements. Do you have any shred of a narrative in your resume for those skills? Be honest with yourself, and take feedback from people around you, people you respect, or even recruiters for the position if you can get an informational interview.
In a classroom setting, you might call this a “gap analysis”. Do it here, on yourself, critically. Rate yourself on a 1–4 scale for each of the 4 critical elements you identified in #2 above.
4.For skills you haven’t started exploring, start to connect the dots. There will be skills you lack for many jobs you want. But you can’t just hope a company trusts your “potential” enough to take a risk on you. Figure out how you can start to acquire these skills on your own. You have a few months before you’re formally applying for the job, right? Use that time to start that blog about your cat, expand your depth of experience through non-profit programs, or build your portfolio. This is all about growing your ability to show, not tell, during an interview.
5.Pursue your side projects with passion. You’re trying to make up ground — don’t be a slouch. And you’re working on skills you give a damn about, right? Make the best cat blog out there, or the best portfolio site, or take the non-profit post that challenges you the most personally. Invest yourself in these side projects and companies are more likely to recognize your commitment by investing in your potential.
6.Revise your resume with your new projects that highlight your skills. Not only do your recent forays make you a more interesting person to hire, but they demonstrate your ability to take initiative and realize some of that “potential” you have. Unrealized potential is an uncashed check, and your goal here is to start to show companies that you can take action and put all that liberal arts, retail, or whatever experience to work for you.
Don’t feel like you need to oversell it on your resume. Again, you don’t need to prove perfect aptitude, you just want to show that you took action on your potential.
7.Apply and pitch the narrative of your potential + projects + skills within the context of the job. Take note that this wasn’t the first step! Good candidates do their research and show up prepared — it shows hiring managers you can think, prepare, and work toward a goal. That’s important in business. Some people call this drive. If you can do it outside of a job, you’ll sure as hell do it once it pays your bills.
8. Assess your interviewers with good questions. Try to get to know the people you’re interviewing with and generate a discussion in the time you have. Trust me, interviews have time built in for this. Ask yourself:
- Can you learn from them?
- Do they seem like they’re a good cultural fit for you?
- Do they value what you value in an organization?
Sure, you’ve put in a lot of work up to this point but don’t be afraid to pull out of the process if you feel like the people on the other side of the table aren’t up to your expectations. You’ve got a good narrative now and you can take that on the road to new, similar jobs at new, better companies.
9.Talk about money, but don’t be a crazy negotiator. Good companies have a lot of leverage on you because they have lots of applicants for few positions. I’ve never turned down a candidate for negotiating, but you can tell when a new graduate’s lawyer parents seeded a few carefully worded questions.
The experience you get in an exceptional first job is worth far, far more than the $3k bump you might see from a competing offer.
Yes, there is a compound earnings argument at stake, but that doesn’t really come into play for another 5–10 years as you’ve established yourself in the industry. Get in on a good note, get that experience, then negotiate your future compensation when you change companies.
Yes, this is work. So is, you know, working. The reality of today’s job market is a complex and competitive one, but not an insurmountable one.
For smart, motivated people that are willing to put in the time to understand the job market and a bit of “extra” work to differentiate themselves, the possibilities are wide open.
Good luck out there!
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This is an updated version of a post I originally published back in 2014 on my own blog.
