Advice to grads
Tis the season for graduates everywhere to toss their caps in the air and scream, “I did it.” My Facebook feed is filled with proud parents posting photos of their kids crossing the stage and all I can say is congrats. Actually since I’m a columnist I’m allowed to say more so why don’t I take this opportunity to talk directly to the new college grads and offer my top five pieces of advice.
First up, wake up. By that I mean as wonderful of an achievement as this is please understand you are anything but alone in what you’ve done. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics in the 2017-18 school year colleges and universities are handing out a boatload of degrees. How big is the boat? How about one million associates’ degrees, nearly two million bachelors, 790,000 masters and 183,000 doctorates. So that’s roughly 4 million people getting degrees. And keep in mind that’s on top of all those who got them a year ago and the year before that and of course the 4 million who’ll be getting them a year from now. What this means is your wonderful achievement is by no means unique. I’m not trying to diminish it, just want you aware of the odds when you apply for a job.
Second piece of advice is take one week to celebrate this wonderful achievement and then get moving please. If you are serious about starting your career don’t take the summer off to relax or go find yourself backpacking across Europe. Here let me help you find yourself. There you are. See I found you. This isn’t “Eat, Pray, Love”, it’s work, work, work.
The third thing to tell you may be the hardest to follow but I need you to swallow your pride. There is no job or offer beneath you right now. Any offer that pays you money in your chosen field and gives you a chance to learn and grow is a good offer. If you have two offers on the table obviously take the better one but don’t say “no” to an opportunity because you think you are too good for it or it doesn’t pay enough.
My fourth bit of advice is call in all those family favors. If your mom’s second cousin’s former roommate knows somebody at a company where you want to work get on the phone and grovel. Drop this whole notion of “I’m doing it on my own and that’s that.”
Baloney. The people who get the jobs are those who find a way to get in the room and in front of the person doing the hiring. If they are getting 400 resumes for a position you need an edge so find it and use it. And don’t forget to do the same for someone else once you’ve made it.
Last but not least, don’t give up. Many college brochures sell you on the idea that all you need is a degree and the world will open up like an overcooked claim. That’s not even remotely true. Look back at the numbers I put at the top of this column on how many graduates, just this year, are going for the jobs that are available. It is humbling.
You should prepare yourself to hear a lot of “no” before you get a “yes.” People may look at me and think, gosh he’s so lucky being on TV and writing a weekly column for a newspaper. I am lucky but none of it fell in my lap. If you go back to 1985 when I got out of college nobody wanted to hire me in television news. My solution was to break into the business doing the news on the radio for four years first for almost no money. When I had much more experience I started knocking on doors again and yet again no one wanted to even meet me. .
Then on January 2 of 1988 I called up a local TV station and asked the guy in charge if he could find five free minutes for me sometime in the next six months. I literally said, “You pick the time and place anywhere in the next six months and I’ll be there. All I want is five minutes.” How could he say no to that? The answer is he couldn’t. We met, hit it off and a few months later when a job opened up he gave me a chance.
Every time I give a college commencement address I tell the graduates that I used to get locked out of my house as a kid in Troy all the time. On a hot summer day when you were dying of thirst you had two choices -- sit on the steps in the blazing sun and wait for someone to come home or find another way in the house. I tell them there is always a loose screen window somewhere that you can jiggle open. Same is true in life. Find the unconventional way in and push yourself through.
Congratulations class of 2018, be happy, be proud. Now put down the beer and get going.
John Gray is a news anchor on WXXA-Fox TV 23 and ABC’S WTEN News Channel 10. His column is published every Wednesday. Email him at johngray@fox23news.com.