What Color Is Your Parachute? (22 page)

So, with the current financial realities of college in mind, how can you make the most out of your college years, particularly in terms of finding work you’ll love? As you did in high school, you’ll continue to increase your awareness of the work world and hone your job-search skills. The difference is you’ll do these things with more depth—and probably more focus too, because you’ll be much closer to the day when you’ll need to go out and use that work awareness and those job-search skills to land a good job. Now, instead of writing a report on a job you’re interested in, you’ll research an issue of concern in the field where you hope to find work. Let’s say you want to be an infection control
nurse. Instead of writing a report on what a nurse does, you’ll research new techniques for infection control in hospitals—research that will be valuable when you apply for jobs as an infection control nurse after college. You can use many of your class assignments for career investigation. Your job-search skills may be put to concrete use as you seek a summer job or internship in infection control. When you do information interviews, the information you gather and the contacts you make may lead to a job after graduation.

But what else can you do to make the most of college? Let’s look at your college career in terms of what employers look for in new employees. (Actually,
all
high school graduates, whether college-bound or not, should learn these skills, because they’re highly valued by employers.)

Cultivating Qualities, Developing Skills

As you select your classes, major, and extracurricular activities, keep in mind what employers look for in employees. In this section, we’ll look at the five most desired qualities and skills.

Communication Skills

Excellent verbal and writing skills make it possible for you to communicate well with colleagues, the public, or clients. If you want to improve your writing or speaking, take a speech class (you can always give a speech on the work you want to do) or consider joining a local Toastmasters group. Take a business communications class. If your college has a learning center that offers help with time management, studying, writing, using a computer, and other important skills, take advantage of the resources there, too.

WHAT ARE EMPLOYERS LOOKING FOR?

Surveys of employers in the United States report that the following are the most important employee skills:

*
Employers don’t ignore your GPA, but they see it as mainly a measure of your persistence, commitment, and academic aptitude—how well you can jump through academic hoops. (If, however, you plan to go to graduate, law, or medical school, your GPA will be very important.) This doesn’t mean you should ignore your GPA and just coast academically, but if you don’t have a stellar GPA, you shouldn’t worry that it will prevent you from getting a good job. Do your best academically—and also work on cultivating the qualities and developing the skills that employers consider to be the most important.

Honesty and Integrity

Employers want employees they can trust, just as clients, customers, or patients want to be able to trust the people to whom they entrust their business, their money, or their health. Integrity demands that you take responsibility for your
actions (or inactions), words, and life. Employers want to know whether you are a person who follows through on what you say you will do. Think of examples from your life that show when you have said you will do something and then followed through, even though keeping your word may have been difficult. Have you ever returned a lost item, even if some part of you wanted to keep it? Have you continued working toward a goal, even when it wasn’t easy? On your last job, did you work every day and every shift assigned to you?

At one time or another we all fall short of being completely honest or having integrity. If you find that you have particular difficulty being honest or acting with integrity, seek out assistance through your college counseling center, a trusted adult, or a spiritual adviser. For more about integrity, visit:
www.eruptingmind.com/examples-importance-personal-integrity
.

The way we have funded higher education in this country has had the unintended consequence of indenturing an entire generation of students who now comprise the “educated poor.”

—ROBERT APPLEBAUM, lawyer and founder of ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com

Teamwork Skills

If you’ve ever worked on a class project with a team and one person wanted to run the whole show, you know how frustrating it can be. In the workplace, lack of teamwork is not simply frustrating; it’s also costly for the employer.

Seek out opportunities to work on a team. You may do this with class projects or in extracurricular activities such as athletics, drama, journalism, or student government. The more you enjoy an activity, the more likely you will be successful at it. You may find team-based extracurricular activities that deal with your interests, such as robotics, student organizations for international relations, or being part of your school’s stagehand or media crew. If you have the opportunity to take a class or workshop in conflict resolution, do it.

Interpersonal Skills

Sometimes interpersonal skills are simply called “people skills.” These are skills like being able to make conversation with strangers, welcoming people into new settings, resolving conflicts, and listening to the concerns or problems of others. Interpersonal skills come quite naturally to some people and are more
of a challenge for others. If they’re a challenge for you, watch people to whom these skills come easily. See whether you can adopt some of their ways of relating to people. Check with the career center or the counseling center at your college for resources or resource people who can help you build stronger interpersonal skills. Throughout your college years, take opportunities to develop these skills; for example:

• Be a dorm proctor or adviser.

• Serve in student government, on the dorm council, or as a club officer.

• Give tours of the campus for prospective students.

• Work with children—and their parents—at the college child care center.
Like many other skills, people skills can take practice—and using them can be fun!

Strong Work Ethic

In general, a strong work ethic means that you’re willing to work hard; you’re dependable, responsible, and punctual; you take seriously the work you do for your employer, and you do that work as well as you possibly can.

As you do your information interviews and job shadowing in college, observe the work ethic in operation at each place of business. Be aware that what’s expected at one place of employment may not be expected at another. You need to find a good fit between your own work ethic and that of your employer. (That’s why, when you have a job interview,
you
are actually
interviewing the
employer
as much as the employer is interviewing you. You want to see whether this is a place where you want to work, just as the employer wants to find out whether you’re the person they want and need.)