Would you rather get rich or make the world a better place?

Work in a non-profit or a corporation?

Are you pursuing your passion?

Have you found your purpose?

I used to ask myself these questions. I’ve since learned they are the wrong questions.

At the age of nineteen, I had my first life crisis. After high school, I took a year off and lived and worked in Germany and Cyprus. I’m an adventurous spirit and felt a deep need to experience something outside of academia. In that year, I worked on a horse farm with rough and tumble German men, was almost arrested in Cyprus during a women’s peace march intended to unite the Greek and Turkish inhabited island, experienced office politics, built my first database, and became an almost fluent German speaker. To say it was a great experience that I was fortunate to have it would be an understatement. I was transformed, fueled with a sense of something bigger than myself.

What followed was a full-blown meltdown. I came home in August, signed up to start University in September. Within 24 hours, I sat at the dinner table with my parents and wept. Yes, there was some jetlag and culture shock at work, but the pain I felt was something deeper. I felt lost.

“I don’t know what I want to do with my life.”

I wanted to have an impact on the world, but I had no sense of how to make that dream happen. I wanted to have a clear purpose in life. And I wanted it now.

That was in the late ‘80s. Most of my peers from Montreal and Toronto were already fully immersed in university life — doing homework and drinking beer. Being around them made me feel even more lost. But I stuck it out. I studied German and Business at university, put my crisis of purpose on hold, and graduated on track.

Why does my breakdown at nineteen matter? I’m getting there.

In 2013, I was conducting research for a company I was considering starting. (To shortly summarize 24 years, I have a successful track record in technology and education.) I wanted to understand why college graduates were struggling to land jobs (the data showed that 53% of college grads are un- or underemployed). One of the most compelling insights from my research was something I didn’t expect: Millennials have an intense desire for purpose and meaning in their work.

The problem was, they were stuck.

They were impatient and wanted to change the world today. They wanted to find their dream job a month after graduation. Many of the grads I spoke to thought they would have to work in a non-profit to find meaningful work. And because it is incredibly hard to break into great jobs with little experience, they were waiting tables, babysitting kids, making lattes, tuning skis, applying to graduate school, doing AmeriCorps, and waiting to hear back from job application after job application.

I get it. I’ve been there. But here’s what I’ve learned in those 24 years about purpose.

1. Be patient. The path is not linear.

The stakes feel high, but they aren’t really. Don’t worry so much. You won’t find your perfect dream job right after college. I don’t know anyone who did. I realize now that seeking a purpose at age nineteen is a privilege. And as well intentioned as I was, I was also naïve.

The cold, hard truth is that you aren’t yet in a position to find your purpose. You will find work that is impactful, but this will take time. You’ll need to develop skills and life experiences.

After my breakdown at nineteen, I graduated, became a consultant, co-founded an e-commerce company at twenty-seven, took it public, joined a Fortune 100 corporation, then was recruited by the former head of UNICEF and the Peace Corps to be the COO of a global education and international development non-profit. I advised entrepreneurs starting ed-tech companies, and in 2013, I co-founded and am now CEO of a company called Koru that helps college graduates land great jobs after college and has raised $12 million from top venture capital funds.

Sounds tidy, right?

We all have bios that sound like a clearly planned path. We all also have a true story that’s far more messy … and interesting.

My path took lots of unexpected turns, and I made plenty of mistakes. And those mistakes were the most useful things to keeping me on track. Painful, yes. But they taught me lessons I needed to learn.

2. Don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides.

Companies don’t hire people. People hire people. And those people do not want you to be someone you are not.

Right out of college, I took my first job as an analyst for an oil and gas company. I lasted two months. As it turns out, a company that sees the conservation of oil consumption as a strategic risk was not the place for me. Why did I take it in the first place? Because I was in a competitive business program where everybody was taking jobs like this.

Know yourself and trust yourself.

The best advice I can give you is to be the very best (and authentic) you that you can be, and to not let what other people seem like on the outside affect that you. Hold it close. Keep it authentic. And share it with those around you.

3. Curiosity is more important than passion.

“Follow your passion” is the number one piece of advice I hear people give to college grads. In my experience, it’s not helpful.

Instead, find something that unlocks your curiosity. Hiring managers at great companies consistently tell me they look for people who have taken their curiosity for something (anything) to a superlative level. It shows you will pursue an idea or a problem down multiple paths to the dead ends, and back again. It shows you are substantive and thorough and interested.

4. Commitment and grit is how you learn. Stick with it.

When I talked to college grads during my research, they would say, “I’m just not sure what I want to do.”

Every choice has trade offs. Inform yourself about them, assess the pros and cons, connect with your strengths, and move forward.

Don’t get stuck.

You’re not ever going to be 100% sure and there is no perfect option. Just get to a point where you’re 51% sure that the job is right, be sure you are curious about some aspect of it, and commit.

Then, be sure to be gritty and hang in there when things are tough or boring. You will suffer in your early jobs. The job you took won’t be the job you have in a few months, things will change, your boss will quit, you will be re-organized. These things are normal, especially in companies that are growing and thriving. Realize that there is opportunity in challenge, and make lemonade. Make yourself indispensible. When you aren’t learning any more, then you’ll know it’s time to commit to something else.

The average job tenure for someone in their twenties is eighteen months. Be above average. Unless there’s a moral or ethical disconnect between you and your job, be gritty and stick it out.

5. Get comfortable failing. Fail often, fail, fast, and fail cheap.

The path through college is pretty straightforward. Assignments have specific instructions, and success is measured with grades.

Here’s the thing about high-growth companies. They don’t have assignments. They often don’t even have clear job descriptions. What they have is a buffet of problems, all waiting to be solved.

You’ll be expected to take initiative, jump in and figure stuff out on your own. Not because you need to get a good grade, but because the problem demands to be solved.

And with that, you’ll need to reprogram yourself to be OK failing. (Because you will.)

In the most innovative, interesting, fast moving, dynamic environments, success means figuring out what you think might work based on an assessment of available information testing it out, seeing if it worked (it often doesn’t), figuring out what went wrong, course correcting and doing it again. That’s innovation, and failure is an essential part of the process.

In your career, you’ll test out a lot of things. By testing (and failing), you’ll learn the lessons you need to learn. You’ll find out what you’re good at, what you’re curious about, and what gives you purpose.

How does it all end?

Just so you know, that nagging desire for purpose and impact never went away. I now run Koru, and we have a mission I care deeply about: to level the playing field for college graduates by giving them job opportunities based on what they show they can do. I work with a team of people I adore, in a company that’s based on a set of principles deeply connected to my values. I’m very proud and am extremely passionate about it.

It’s not all joy. I still spend a chunk of my days doing things I don’t love. There is no perfect dream job. I work very hard and make tremendous sacrifices.

I don’t know if I’ll get rich, or make the world a better place. But what I now believe is that purpose itself is not the end game. It’s not even a tangible thing.

But I am fully committed to a problem I care deeply about, and I’m insatiably curious about the myriad of potential solutions. I am my genuine self and I am motivated to be my best self every day. I am in service of something bigger than myself.

And if that’s as close as I get to finding my purpose, I’m OK with it.

…

Kristen Hamilton is CEO of Seattle-based Koru, the leading talent marketplace focused on landing college grads in jobs they love. Before serving as Koru’s CEO, Kristen worked as COO of a global non-profit, launched mobile media devices for a Fortune 100 company, and helped take Onvia, which she co-founded, public.