4 Significant Facts of Life Transitions from a Student to an Employee

Graduating and starting a career is exciting period in our lives, but it comes with many challenges. As any other significant life change, this transition has its positive and negative sides.

Here are some of the challenges we often experience when adjusting to life outside of books, case studies and exams.

#1 STUDYING vs. EMPLOYMENT

For many years we had professors and clear deadlines telling us what had to be done. We had to write a paper because it was due tomorrow, or we had to study for a test because it was in a week. Now, being employees — those external reminders and clear schedules are less obvious. We get targets and role expectations from our managers, but we need to take the ownership for planning, steering and mastering our execution.

It is not only important to deliver on the objective like everyone else, but also to exceed some expectations in case we have the ambition to grow our career or get a higher compensation. Outcomes of our hard work and positive attitude are now continuously measured and directly linked with our career progression and reward.

#2 MISTAKES COME WITH A HIGHER PRICE

When we were in school, getting a bad grade was not a nice experience, but it was also not a big deal. We just had to learn more and try harder the next time. Now as employees, we can of course make mistakes and learn from them — but the tolerance for mistakes is smaller and it comes with high price in case we keep on repeating them.

Even before getting the first job, we get fewer chances to prove ourselves. If we come for an interview non prepared, we will not make a good impression at the interview and lose the chance to work in that company.

#3 SOCIAL INTERACTIONS BECOME LIMITED

All the students eager to meet people, only had to step outside and choose which group of new people they want to join. It is a natural, easy going process that doesn’t require too much efforts form any engaged party. In the working environment, we usually start from ground zero and need to try hard to build our social networks from the scratch. We are in a way left on our own to meet colleagues and build strong relationships. Those relationships may not always be easy to manage and grow as they are impacted by corporate culture we work in.

There is often a portion of competition present between colleagues in high performing organizations — so finding a proper balance to maintain good relationships requires skills, high self-awareness and strong social knowledge of our organization.