According to the Federal Reserve Bank of NY, 27% of college graduates work in a field related to their major. As a college student, surprisingly, Iâm not surprised.
Companies have in-depth training programs for a reason. They arenât expecting fresh grads to come in with a plethora of knowledge ready to run a company. They want your unique spirit, perspective, energy, and young insight to bring about new ideas that arenât already thought of.
Everyone has something to add, especially those who are not afraid to venture out and try new things. Only listening to those with a concentrate interest and path is boring.
Consultants follow the same practice. Companies hire consultants with a fresh perspective to come up with a game plan on how to reinvent their company and solve internal problems not knowing anything about it coming in. They donât hire experts and specialists whoâve worked at the firm. They hire and pay big bucks for a unique, nascent, and different perspective to make a difference.
Imagine if we all studied and worked in the same way?
No progress, creativity or innovation would be made. We need new insight not the same expertise.
As human beings, we are made to change. Move around, spend time with different people, and travel and taste the world. We may be sedentary stubborn creatures fixated in our quirks, but outside of those habits, we crave change. Real change outside of the classroom as well.
The traditional institutionalized education and health care system are known to be outdated. When it comes to current events and studentâs perspectives, needs, wants, values, desires in todayâs world, they arenât always illustrated or solved in the classroom. In this fast-paced digital consumerist world of startups and entrepreneurialism, work-life home balance, and value on mental health, people have reconsidered their lives since the pandemic began and that also means taking a different course than what they initially intended for their careers.
Weâve all fallen into this trap. We planned our life to the minute, in a linear concrete way and before we knew it, life happened. Thankfully, if you live by the motto, âthings happen for you, not to youâ you donât start blaming the universe and believing you are a curse and instead become hopeful about the future and realize lessons are ingrained in every failure, setback, mistake, and so on and so forth.
I find students my age forget this completely. They are so tied up with a specific major, path, title, pay grade, etc. that they forget what real learning is all about.
Exploration and taking your time.
To Be In Business
Everyone should be in business and know about it. A business student wonât be the only one working in the business world.Â
As a student who concentrates in FinTech and entrepreneurship, Iâve learned about what makes certain initiatives/promises/businesses stand out and what they prioritize that less well-known/impactful ones disregard. One of the major principles lies in their concept of connection and what it means to conduct business.
Companies that empower the world and truly make lives easier believe business is an investment, not a transaction. It is about bringing humanity into the picture and serving peopleâs needs not about profit. Money will come once you solve a real problem people have.
This starts with an emphasis on EQ, one of the skills not taught in a traditional academic setting.
Being flexible is an underrated skill. No one will completely be to your liking but you must adapt as best as you can to everyone and that means keeping an open mind as a generalist, not a close-minded specialist.
These are one of the greatest traits one could exhibit because they arenât obsessed with brand equity. But I canât blame people. We are programmed to choose 1 person to live with for the rest of our lives, 1 school, 1 major, 1 subject, and 1 food option. With an abundance of choices and not enough time, we will always regret our decision! We will always feel we arenât making the right one and regret is the worst feeling holding us back.
So how do we overcome this?
I encourage you to know a decent amount about a lot instead of a lot about a little. This doesnât come about from sticking to a business path for life because then you will quickly realize the best performers, Fortune 500 CEOs, leaders and change makers of the world are well-rounded.
Seems cheesy and cliche but is most common amongst the people we look up to.
Sure, no doubt you want to focus on your strengths and scale them from there instead of focusing on your weaknesses. Everything comes down the opportunity cost and following what our teachers told us about nailing down the weaknesses is unproductive. But what they were right about is trying out different things and in the real world that needs to be amplified by 110% to get the most bang for your buck and not waste any of your precious time.
If you are sold on wanting to become a financier, it would make most sense to most to go down the business route as soon as you can right? As an innocent gullible teen, you would tell yourself thereâs no other path that would make more sense in the field.
Art, economics, architecture, psychology for business?
Many believe only a business degree will help them build the best business in town. The only problem is that business is part of everything. Sure you can excel in the business side of things, but your ideas wonât be as in depth or as far reaching as someone who comes in with a variety of unique experiences.Â
Business isnât just business. It is beyond the metrics and spreadsheets. Basic math is usually involved anyways. Weâve come to rely on robots, machinery and algos to do the complex calculus for us.Â
Itâs a connection instaed.
No doubt this is scary. A company would much rather lean on the safe side and hire a former CFO or CFA to fulfill the CFO position at first but in hindsight they are missing out on exceptional candidates with unrelated interests because the truth is, anyone can learn anything. But most are unwilling to make the change and risk to see what someone else can do. At the top level, people skills are the key driver.
What we learn in school might not always get us through the door or help us find our true drive in life since we are constantly judged and our performance is based on arbitrary metrics and grades that are usually not indicative of true performance. In the real world, performance is measured through impact from our personality, influence, negotiation, and perspective that really shines through and makes a difference.
Some say the skills theyâve learned in Kindergarten, the universal basic people skills are the most applicable and important to life.
The real learning starts outside of the classroom, in the random fields, the places that make you you, that bring out your quirky side, make you question your beliefs, and teach you about things that wouldnât have been found in a text book.
Why are we so scared of branching out into a different field?
The younger you are, the more flexibility you have to do so!
Business 101
Where you thought you would be 5 years ago today is most likely far different from where you actually are. Sure you could be an expert in business but that doesnât mean youâll be there forever. Fields merge, expand, shrink, collide, innovate, and no job stays the same. You get to curate your own major at work and that involves a variety of other tasks and skills needed beyond what you studied in school.
To be exceptional requires self-mastery. Have a system in which things work for you not against you. For example, when I was learning to play tennis circa ten years old, sure, I couldâve paid a coach $120 per hour + tip to teach me but that could only happen a couple times a week. The rest of the time I had to play with someone at a different level which was tough and annoying for the player. Instead, I recorded a video myself hitting against a wall. It helped me improve my form, grip, serve, and almost every aspect of my game able to play with experienced players within a few weeks.
Or at school, I have a method of making sure I connect with students to professors every day because thereâs nothing more important than being curious. This isnât about networking, itâs about getting to know people in a genuine, calm way and expand my perspective. My colleagues know incredible things I could never learn in a book. I want to get to know them as this is the most opportune time to do so on campus.
By focusing on self-mastery, you can hone your EQ (emotional intelligence) and people skills in no time. At the end of the day, anyone can go through a training program, but what differentiates leaders arenât their accolades, titles, positions or even experiences, it is their social, leadership, and communication skills.
The truth is, we spend more time with our colleagues than with our own family sometimes. Although that shouldnât always be the case, it is and so when your colleagues are evaluating you, you need to show that you are more than just your major or title.
You have a personality, are compatible, trustworthy, dedicated, unleash grit, reliable, and sincere which will make the most impact. Work smarter not harder.
Curiosity Is Mandatory
Iâve worked in corporate America for a couple years now since junior year in HS and being a curious creature has come to be my ultimate superpower. As a young teen not knowing what I was doing at age 16, 17 I would simply ask my managers and team if I could listen into meetings and help the floor around with managerial tasks.
What I quickly picked up on that were really valuable traits and made me an asset to the team werenât my Excel or powerpoint skills, although vital as well, but my people skills.
Whenever I could sense my team was overwhelmed, I made sure I was there by their side. If they wanted a coffee or just to talk, I made myself available and expressed it. Most importantly, I always asked to do the work no one else wanted to do to always be reliable and handy.
I wouldnât say those are things you learn at school. Itâs unfortunate but true and important to consider as everything is a peopleâs business. People want to feel supported and good. Thatâs where the real business is made. Donât be so into the books that you donât apply any knowledge to your life.
Business Is Everywhere
After speaking to my various connections, circle of friends, colleagues, acquaintances, neighbors, mentors, and people I look up to in my own life, I can affirmatively say that sticking to one path is dangerous.
Being open to exploring new things and not being so rigid in life are so important.
When I was a senior in HS, I knew I wanted to be part of the business world. I had worked in the financial world part-time in the semester and off-seasons for a year already and started several small businesses prior to that experience but knew I had no chance in getting into business school.
I thought I was a true failure but slowly realized that being able to go to an individualized school was the best opportunity for me. Not only it allowed me to take classes at other schools which all included business in some sort of way from music to medicine, it opened my eyes to all kinds of people.
Business is a peopleâs business and becoming comfortable with getting to know people from all walks of life with random interests helped prepare me for my journey today. I believe liberal arts student have one hidden talent theyâve mastered. They apply themselves best when they are out in the wild, the real world.
As much as we all want to be specialists and drill into what we can do to show extensive experience and mastery to be the best at the very top, people arenât looking for that. They are looking for you.
What you can bring to the table outside of work and what perspectives youâve come in with because thatâs where real growth is made.
Do you think Howard Schultz of Starbucks, Michael Eisner, Former Walt Disney CEO, or Carly Fiorina, Former HP CEO followed a strict business path to build the best businesses they could?
Certainty not! They all focused on electives and random fields to shape their understanding about the broader world. Impressively Carly, studied Medieval history and philosophy as an undergrad!
How does that apply in her life today?
When asked in a 2001 USA Today interview whether her degree was of any use, Fiorina stated how studying the transformation from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance helped her approach the ongoing technological revolution: âWe have, in fact, seen nothing yet.â
Everything youâve learned can be applied to business in some sort of way. If you donât think so, expand your horizons and open your mind to the revolutionary insights you can apply to any field from a separate one.Â
Youâre missing out if you arenât.
Stay curious, open, humble, and dedicated to whatâs outside of your comfort zone and especially field of study to reap the ultimate rewards.