Graduated And Without Job? Here’s What You Must Do

It may well happen that you are just graduated and, after months, still looking for a proper job. It's not all your fault. As a consequence of current economic climate new positions might be scarce and it's still really hard to find one.

What to do then? First, don’t be desperate. If you can’t find a job just remember that most graduates are in the same situation. It’s as sad as that. But don’t let that take you down, use this opportunity to work on your personal development and building up for better job prospects in the future.

Below you can and I really encourage you to read Seth Godin’s short and thought-provoking post on what he calls the “Graduate School for Unemployed College Students.” Seth gives you a very demanding list of things you could and should do while you are still looking for a job. Taking a year off your plans to do what Seth says is, if you have the possibility, a great idea. Read the post to see what I’m talking about!

Seth tells you to do everything on the list, something that, though possible, is still really hard and demanding to achieve. But, in the end, if you want to be really successful in life and excel over everyone else (and, thus, also have better job opportunities in the future) you should do most of what Seth says.

"Graduate school for unemployed college students

Fewer college grads have jobs than at any other time in recent memory—a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers annual student survey said that 20 percent of 2009 college graduates who applied for a job actually have one.  So, what should the unfortunate 80% do?

How about a post-graduate year doing some combination of the following (not just one, how about all):

• Spend twenty hours a week running a project for a non-profit.
• Teach yourself Java, HTML, Flash, PHP and SQL. Not a little, but mastery. [Clarification: I know you can't become a master programmer of all these in a year. I used the word mastery to distinguish it from 'familiarity' which is what you get from one of those Dummies type books. I would hope you could write code that solves problems, works and is reasonably clear, not that you can program well enough to work for Joel Spolsky. Sorry if I ruffled feathers.]
• Volunteer to coach or assistant coach a kids sports team.
• Start, run and grow an online community.
• Give a speech a week to local organizations.
• Write a regular newsletter or blog about an industry you care about.
• Learn a foreign language fluently.
• Write three detailed business plans for projects in the industry you care about.
• Self-publish a book.
• Run a marathon.

Beats law school.

If you wake up every morning at 6, give up TV and treat this list like a job, you'll have no trouble accomplishing everything on it. Everything! When you do, what happens to your job prospects?"

It may seem that it is a lot of things to do, but just as Seth says, if you wake up early, give up TV and pointless Internet surfing, you can make it. You have to take it as a real job because that is what it is. After a few months of doing this seriously it may sound even stupid to you to spend eight hours in an office doing something you don’t want and spending most of the day making money for someone else.

I didn’t take this so seriously from the very beginning, but the more I’m immersed into it, the more responsible I’m becoming. Give it a try! I hope it serves as as inspiration and, if you are just graduated, don’t worry! Until you find the job you want, better work on doing this! Seth’s list is very clear but you can tweak it a bit and work on what you feel is going to be the best for you.