Finding the ‘No-Job Experience’ Future Superstar
The Surprising Thing I Hire for on a College Student’s LinkedIn Profile
When we studied the careers of 3,400 Forbes 30 under 30 alums, we found something surprising. More than 84% of the group had an observable “creation step” in their early careers. We found 9 common activities in this group that we call creation steps.
What is a creation step? It’s an activity where a person created something, typically without expecting any economic gain, like a book, a podcast, a video series, an event/conference or something similar. One of my favorite examples and stories of a creation step is how Daily Show correspondent and comedian Hasan Minhaj “invested” in Youtube videos as his own ‘comedian graduate school.’
One thing that surprises people that is NOT included as a ‘creation step’ is a startup — for this group most of the alums started the company *after* this creation step anyways. It’s so difficult to judge startup success (unlike with a book or an event series you put on) that you can’t tell if the startup was good/bad/other.
So my hypothesis was this: if I can find an observable “creation step” in college students, perhaps I can at least get a pool of students who *could* become superstars.
Could You “Hack” the Creation Step Predictor?
Using the theory I wanted to recruit college students with ‘creation steps’, I set out to see if it was possible to observe reliably.
Remember, I’m not looking for a single needle in the entire 15 million college student population haystack — I’m hoping to find a small pool to draw from. And then I wanted to see if there was something reliable I could observe in a college student to “predict” or “forecast” who could have big potential things ahead for them.
I started with what I knew: maybe I could hire authors or podcasters? Turned out it’s a little challenging because so few college students create books (per some experts fewer than 30 college students per year publish books). Also turned out podcasting is pretty unusual for college. There are more college-aged people doing video and Youtube series, but those who are rarely add them to their LinkedIn. The fact that I was limiting myself to what I could observe on LinkedIn actually ruled out most of the potential creation steps as they are rare to find with any reliability.
Creating, it turns out, is rarer in college students than you’d like to think.
But there was one thing…
Students who created their own student organization.
Bingo.
While it’s certainly not a common occurrence among college students, it’s certainly more observable and something you can find with some frequency on LinkedIn. And it’s one of the things we observed with regularity among our Forbes 30 under 30 alumni population: They created conferences or event series.
Not every student listed them the same way, but when we spotted “founder” as the role the student listed tied to a student organization, we were in business. Lots of founders of startups, but a more narrow group founded a student organization. To see if my hunch was right, I reached out to three students were were all self-described founders of their campus/student organizations.
The best news: It was surprisingly refreshing to speak to them compared to college-aged startup founders.
Why?
They actually could provide evidence and information about their club that helped me understand them (the founder) better. They could answer basic questions like:
- What events have you done?
- How often do you meet?
- How many members do you have and how many of them came to the last meeting?
- What kind of speakers have you recruited to come?
- Did you order Pizza or Chinese food?
Now on the flip side, try asking that to a college-aged startup founder, and the results are all over the place. Are they just spouting hot air or are they onto something? And on the other side, every conversation becomes a dance of “are you an investor and do you want to fund this?”
But a club? When I find out how many members came to the last meeting, I get a sense of the student’s ability to recruit. I can ask who some of the speakers are, and get a sense of the student’s ability to network. I can ask about the things their club does, and get a sense of the student’s applied knowledge.
And so if I’m looking to hire someone that *could* one day become a star with the right degree of coaching and luck, I look for the students who take that risk and found a club. Perhaps I’m a little biased because in college I started a fraternity on campus — but I also look back and can clearly see the value of that experience over being in a leadership role in any other. The 1-to-a-group move isn’t easy, and certainly takes a certain type of person.
If you want to hire someone without any observable experience you can point to who *might* become a superstar, look for what they’ve created. I’m a believer in (and facilitator for) college students and recent graduates creating books, but that activity remains exceedingly rare. Founding a company in college could be interesting, but it so noisy. But maybe the best thing I’ve seen is someone willing to create a new student club. Then ask them how it’s going. You’ll at least get an answer that you evaluate yourself.
Below are three students (and their respective ‘founded clubs’) that popped up in my searching and passed my screen (if you want introductions to any of them, just ask and I’m happy to do it).
