You don’t get a job by going to college…

Crippling debt, a lack of actual work experience and a dwindling job market all make landing a job that much harder. The degreed individual that now works as a barista has become a trope.

When the recession hit, a ton of people lost their jobs. The job pool shrunk — it has barely recovered. Every year since more graduates enter the workforce wide-eyed and hopeful. Not to mention the leveraging nature of technology and automation that makes larger revenues possible with fewer employees.

A college degree will ideally teach you the skills necessary to accomplish whatever your job responsibilities are — assuming you pursue a job related to your major. One critical piece school doesn’t provide you is work experience. The classroom will never prepare you for the meeting room. That’s why internships exist. Even then, the job descriptions requiring five years experience for an entry level job must be quite infuriating for the recent graduate.

The class of 2015 is officially the most heavily in debt out of any graduating class ever. The average graduating student with debt will have to pay back $35,000 in student loans. It used to be possible to pay for a year of college with wages earned by spending your summer working at the movie theater or a fast-food restaurant. That’s what my parents did.

How did we get here? Over the last 30 years, inflation rate increased 110% while college tuition inflation rose 498%. The ease of access to loans allowed colleges to increase costs which led to even easier access to loans. Not to mention that taking out loans became more socially typical.

All of this continued in a feedback loop leading to the current predicament.

The primary issue I have with that amount of debt is that it limits your freedom. Your ideal job or opportunity likely won’t appear immediately upon graduation. You might have to work in the trenches or develop some skills. Or maybe you just want to go backpack for a year or two after spending the last 16 years of your life sitting at a desk. When you have that amount of debt, you are forced to get a job, any job (assuming you can) and start paying it all back.

Rat race, here you come.

Head in the Sand

Of course, you thought about all this before you went to that expensive four-year college. I’m not here to lecture you on your choices, merely to point out that these three factors have further contributed to the pervasive belief that college is a requirement for employability and that going $20,000+ in debt is just par for the course.

It’s easy to follow the accepted path and refuse to think about the consequences. That was the theme when I was in college. I would bring up the ridiculous amounts of debt most of us were undertaking to pay for college.

The typical response was: “Yea, I know but I try not to think about it.”

The problem with this type of thought is that you are encouraging kids fresh out of high-school to make uneducated financial decisions that will have lasting repercussions throughout the rest of their life. The socially accepted path just isn’t working like it used to. College isn’t the end-all-be-all as the millennial generation was told.

I’m not here to criticize the decisions of college students or graduates. Nor am I here to lament the current situation. I’m here to share something actionable.

I want to offer a different perspective towards employment that most people were never told.

It might help you land a job.

You don’t get a job by going to college…

…you get a job by being valuable to the company.

Seems obvious, yeah? Stay with me.

We live in a capitalistic civilization. In capitalism, people create companies with the primary pursuit of profit.

Profit is revenue minus expenses.

As an employee, your wage is an expense.

Your work contributes to the revenue of the company.

To justify your employment, you better be responsible for producing more revenue than you cost. It’s pointless to hire somebody that is going to be a net loss for the companies bottom line. That’s bad business.

On the other hand, if you can prove that you will generate more value than you cost, you will get hired (or at least given a chance to prove yourself.)

What does this all mean in relation to getting a college degree?

The equation for a job that most people believe is this:

Degree -> Job

This no longer works. Degree’s aren’t special anymore.

Because we live in the world of capitalism, we better help make the company money. The equation is actually this:

Demonstrable addition to the companies bottom line -> Job

If you can demonstrate to a potential employer that you will help them make more money, you will get a job.

The closer you are to the money, the easier this is to show.

• If you are a high-quality salesman, your contribution to the bottom-line is immediately evident.
• If you are part of the engineering team that builds and maintains the product, your contribution to the bottom-line is obvious.
• If you are on the marketing team that responsible for creating the campaigns that generate the leads for the sales team, your contribution is obvious.

And so on.

You have to follow the money.

When I dropped out of college, I had no idea what I was going to do or what I wanted to do. I simply knew one thing: If I can make a company money, I will be able to find a job. It’s worked very well for me so far.

Closing Advice

You might currently be in college, or you might already be graduated and struggling to find a good job.

Don’t expect the mere fact that you have a degree to open doors for your employment. You need hard skills. You need skills that are valuable to the companies bottom line.

When you walk into that interview, you have to be ready to prove your worth as part of an organization that generates profit.

And how about getting that interview?

Don’t rely on resume-drops. With those, you are just another faceless name.

We are social creatures, and we thrive off of stories. When you are just a resume, there is no story and thus no connection. This is why networking is so important.

Learn sales. If you can sell, you’ll always have a job since you’re right next to the money. Moreso, you have to sell yourself to land the interview and pass it.

Go get ‘em.

Got something to add? Think I’m full of shit and platitudes?

Let me know in the comments. ;)