This post was written by Janet Aronica, a rock star PR grad from St. John Fisher College who is the Boston entry-level career examiner and intern at SHIFT. Follow her on Twitter and check out her blog.

A Degree Isn’t a Job Guarantee

This NY Post article has me razzled. A 27-year-old graduate of Monroe College is suing her alma mater because she can’t find a job. I’m sorry, Gradzilla, but a career services counselor isn’t your Fairy Godmother and a bachelor’s degree isn’t a magic wand. Just because you went to college does not mean you are entitled to a job.

From a young age we are told that if we go to school, study hard, get good grades, and go to a great college, we can be anything we want to be. Politicians and some well-meaning yet self-preserving educators alike pound the inflated-importance of college into our heads.

This message has a negative impact on just about every student. The truth is that college is overrated. Not every student can graduate in the top ten and get into a really “good school.” Consequently, those students feel discouraged about the prospects of future success just because of their academic track records. On the flip-side, those who do get the grades and get into “good schools” can’t rely only on their education to get ahead. College isn’t the golden ticket to success. It is a stepping stone.

Here’s my story: I went to school. I studied hard. But no matter how hard I tried, I sucked at math and sucked at science. I’m not sure which one I sucked more at. I clearly remember third grade, little Janet, scoring less than 50 percent on some addition/subtraction homework and sitting there wondering what the eff was going on when the teacher rambled about tadpoles and ecosystems. Honestly, I still suck at math and I still suck at science; I always need a calculator to figure out what to tip and quite frankly I don’t always understand what they are talking about on the Weather Channel. (So I smile and nod, flip my hair, and blog about it.)

No writing award or A in English or history class could overcompensate for the less-than-stellar grades I got in math and science. My GPA was around a 90 percent. It was decent, but wasn’t awesome enough to get me into my dream school. In high school, I was surrounded by the idea that failing to get into *the* college (an ivy league or something close to it) was a self-imposed life-sentence to mediocrity. Heading to your safety school? Get ready for a lifetime living at home with mom and dad. Scored less than a 1500 on the SAT? You might as well sign up for welfare.

In contrast, many kids succeed academically. Some have to work extremely hard at it. For others, it comes quite easily. Either way, we throw them up on a pedestal, toss academic awards their way, accept them into prestigious colleges, and fill their heads with a false sense of security.

Millenials are all-too-often criticized for their supposed sense of entitlement. I think the alleged “you owe me” factor stems from a lifetime of homework, standardized testing, over-nighters and intense pressure to scholastically achieve – all leading to the allusive light at the end of the tunnel: graduation. Students come out of college, pockets empty, heads full of theoretical facts and knowledge, slapped in the face with the fact that getting good grades and getting a good degree from a “good school” just isn’t enough. Everything you ever worked for doesn’t cut it. That’s not entitlement you sense. It’s disappointment.

To peel back another layer of the issue, I think there’s a point to make about the financials behind the frustration. Many internships are unpaid. Extracurricular involvement is unpaid. Membership in professional organizations and attendance at networking conferences usually costs money. Personally, I was able to do multiple unpaid internships and be an extracurricular junkie because I got a lot of financial help from my wonderful parents. They’re generous, and career-wise they are in a position to help. But what about the students who are paying for college on their own? Many students work full-time just to pay for the education. How do they fit in anything other than class work?

I feel for students like this. As for those in this situation, in my humble opinion, I would suggest going part time and taking an extra year or two to finish the degree. Even if it takes longer, it seems to me that it would be a much wiser investment to come out with a degree and have the time to work, intern, and network – as opposed to rushing through and graduating with no industry experience at all.

Times are different for graduates these days. A degree doesn’t give you an extra edge in the job market when just about everybody has one. You need internships. You need real world experience. You need to network. No one will hire you (legally) to write a term paper. You need to gain skills that will apply in a setting outside of the classroom so that you can contribute something a company can pay you for.

When it comes to college, the old saying is true: It isn’t where you go – it’s what you do with it.

College is a business. Businesses want to make money. To make money, businesses market themselves to you to sell you a product or service. Colleges want you to pay tuition, so they sell you degrees. To get you to attend and pay tuition, they market their brand to you. They brand themselves with promises of prestige, job placement, mentorship, challenge, fun, experiences, status, and success. And you know what? College can be fun, but you can’t have fun if you don’t go to the party. College can be challenging, but you can’t be challenged if you don’t go to class. College can offer status, but you can’t earn status if you don’t network with the alums. College can offer prestige, but that means nothing if you don’t leverage that reputation and apply for a job or an internship.

I’m a fresh graduate, and hindsight is 20/20. What I know and feel about education becomes clearer every day. By this time next year, I’m sure that my understanding and appreciation for education will change, and deepen. But what I know for sure is this: I wouldn’t give back a single night that I cried over my math homework or a single sunny afternoon I spent after school getting extra help from my chemistry teacher. It taught me that things don’t always come easily. Because of my issues and inabilities with math and science, I’ve always expected that I would have to go the extra mile to get what I want – so I do. It prepared me for the challenge, and sometimes failure, of searching for internships and jobs. In the end, I don’t think I needed my dream school.

This post contains video. If you’re reading via email or RSS, please click through.

This video is a response to the comments I received on my post, ‘Don’t Burn Bridges’ is Bad Career Advice, that was also featured on Brazen Careerist.

One frequent comment talked about the idea that you will someday need a reference from a previous employer to get a job. I argue that you may not need that type of reference, especially for “cool jobs.”

Job dissatisfaction? Having trouble paying your rent? School graduation? Some events triggering a career decision may be in your control – like school graduation. But others, like layoffs or disability, are not. Either way, you can make progress towards choosing a career that meets your needs by looking at what motivates you.

First, make sure you do the suggested exercises in our article, “Learn More About Yourself.”

Second, think about how your career needs fit into respected psychologist Abraham Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs”. This diagram of the hierarchy, courtesy of Wikipedia, may help you prioritize and put your career criteria in perspective.

To give you some ideas, I applied career choice to Maslow’s hierarchy, from the bottom up:

Physiological: physical and mental ability to do the job, income helps you meet your physical needs (food, water, shelter)
Safety: positive job outlook and security, doing what is morally comfortable
Belonging: being part of a team, professional network, community
Esteem: pride in your work, your career, and confidence in your abilities
Self-Actualization: reaching your potential and maximizing your life experience

See how your matching career options fit with Maslow’s 5 categories of needs. While no career is perfect, your final career choice should meet your needs in all these areas.

This blog post was graciously submitted to BizzyWomen by The Career Key Blog, run by Juliet Wehr Jones, J.D.  The Career Key™ gives you expert help with your career search and career choices — career change, career planning, job skills, and choosing a college major. Our career assessment helps you find a career by matching your personality with careers and providing you complete and accurate information about each career you choose to explore.

Penelope Trunk’s latest post on steps to figuring out your next career move only makes sense because most people don’t want the responsibility of change. They will read what she has to say, feel a bit uncertain, but will nod along anyway.

This is good for those people, most people. Most people either don’t have the balls or are not well-equipped to do what they want.

The can cross off the “career-equivalent of winning the lottery,” because that dream was making them feel anxious anyway. And while they love to write, they can see that it gives them some sort of peace to admit that they may not really love it if they never make time for it. They’re good to go with the cubicle.

This is all okay. It’s called settling. And it’s a viable option. A good one that will make you happy.

Some others, well, they’re not settling. They are different from most people. This is the group that seems to find the prize in the cereal box every time. They’re leaning into the wind and winning, and the book industry is making a good deal off the fact that most people want to be just like them.

Along with the crowd that is Oprah, I’m currently reading, A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, in which the author predictably states that the book, “can only awaken those who are ready.”

It is both a shame and a triumph that the most banal statements are always the most obvious, the most difficult, and the most necessary.

The only way you can be ready is if you’re ruthlessly transparent, authentic and honest. In the book The Fifth Discipline, Peter Senge argues that a commitment to truth is a “restless willingness to root out the ways we limit or deceive ourselves from seeing what is, and to continually challenge our theories of why things are the way they are.”

This is much different than knowing that you’re afraid to talk to your crush because you have unrealistic expectations of the happy movie ending.

Rather, it’s an advocacy and inquiry that rivals trying to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or if you’d prefer, finding the one good-looking guy at the bar on a Friday night.

There is a shortcut, the sound of settling. It’s comfortable like a blanket over your shoulders, spaghetti in your stomach, sex in the dark.

Settling leads to mediocrity. It’s the acceptance of the “good enough” status quo.

Successful people know that the gap between our vision and current reality “can make us feel hopeless. But the gap is also a source of energy,” Senge argues. “Truly creative people use the gap between vision and current reality to generate energy for change.”

In encouraging yourself to rely more on your concepts of reality, rather than your observations, and in discarding your dreams and goals in order to be realistic, to settle, you lose this creative tension.

That’s why Generation Y is uniquely positioned to create real change in our next career move. We’re idealistic and yet keenly aware of the world’s scorecard. We understand, as Senge argues, that “the juxtaposition of the two, the dream and the present reality, [is] the real force for change.”

Fall into the gap.

There’s buzz in the media that Generation Y is finally being put in our place. The recession won’t play favorites and Gen Y will see just what Gen X and the Boomers have been talking about. Besides this being ridiculously sad – honestly, are we really a society that beats down optimism? – it’s also completely erroneous.

The Economist reports that “the touchy-feely management fads that always spring up in years of plenty (remember the guff about ‘the search for meaning’ and ‘the importance of brand me’) are being ditched in favor of more brutal command-and-control methods.” (h/t The Schiff Report)

Except companies that operate according to the latest trend and resort to command-and-control methods are neither Gen Y-friendly, nor anyone-friendly. You cannot have one set of values one month and a different set the next, because what makes individuals productive in one economy does not change in another.

If you value an open, collaborative approach, that shouldn’t change when times get tough. Especially when Gen Y values are so beneficial to everyone.

The Economist goes on to say that Gen Yers “have labored under the illusion that the world owed them a living. But hopping between jobs to find one that meets your inner spiritual needs is not so easy when there are no jobs to hop to.”

Except that those who can perform will always be able to find a new, exciting position. And Gen Y knows how to perform, especially under pressure. We’ve been multitasking since we could make a to-do list and we readily embrace change. We came of age during 9/11 and as Nadira Hira argues, “corporate America often appears just as scary and unstable (and untrustworthy) as the world at large, if not more so.”

Just because we’re experiencing an economic meltdown for the first time does not mean that we’re going to hide in the corner. We’re not going to settle. Really, we’re not surprised. We saw all this growing up– lay-offs, bankruptcy, politicking – and it’s exactly why we wanted to change the workplace in the first place.

As the Financial Times reports, “today’s younger generation are better prepared for economic hard times than their parents or grandparents: they were not expecting jobs for life… switching jobs and reconsidering careers are second nature to them.”

So, stop listening to those who say Gen Y won’t survive the recession. Here are four ways to really feel secure in today’s economy –

1) Turn down job offers. My mother was horrified and I was elated when I turned down a job offer a couple months ago. But it is one of the most empowering career moves you can make because you get to practice negotiating, you get feedback, you’re in control and you have the option of using it as a bargaining position later.

2) Get paid what you’re worth. I’ve increased my salary 60% since my first position out of college. If you’re keeping track, that’s a 20% raise each year. Silvana Avinami, a self-proclaimed strategic job-hopper reports on Brazen Careerist that she does even better than that, averaging a 30% raise with each hop (see comments).

You simply cannot do this by staying at the same job unless you’re there for a very long time. You just can’t. “Loyalty is about delivery,” and when you deliver, you should be rewarded accordingly.

3) Over-perform. You probably don’t love what you do. And if you don’t like your job, even a little, you’ll start performing badly. That’s bad because high performance is the key to a successful career.

“It makes sense,” Penelope Trunk argues. “If you don’t need to get another job anytime soon, then you don’t need to perform well in the next six months. You can coast. Job hoppers don’t coast or their resume will look bad.” Job-hopping allows you to find out what you like and figure out your strengths by forcing you to make an impact quickly.

4) Risk everything. Because safe is boring and maybe that’s good when times are easier, but they’re not. Safety doesn’t create innovation. But innovation does create new jobs and new opportunities. Innovation creates new markets and cures for illnesses and ideas that make us excited to get up in the morning.

You really want to help the economy? Put yourself out there. Risk everything. Do it for you, your family, your friends. We’ll all thank you.

Recession proof.