Bridging the Gap Between Graduation and Your Ideal Career
More than ever, students and families are dissatisfied with the ROI from their college degree, especially in creative or business related programs. Landing a job has as much to do with your character and hustle than your skill set, but there’s no “Hustle 101” taught in college.
When universities leave us to learn these skill on our own, we struggle to bridge the gap between graduation and breaking ground on a career. Many of us fail to even recognize the necessity of mastering these social skills, which puts us at a huge disadvantage. Some of our experiences have bred us to view higher education as the villain, an institution with more concern for our parent’s money than what we do after we leave.
The problem is that millennials are underemployed and the driving force behind this problem is the lack of direction and mentorship upon entering the working world. This is what drove us at Eyesight to design, develop, and perfect a course to help young professionals navigate the murky waters of the job market.
One of the missions of Eyesight is to help this demographic of struggling young professionals find their place and access careers that allow their brains to be firing on all cylinders.
At Eyesight, we democratize learning.
We’ve heard hundreds of perspectives from students, parents and employers on how college fails to teach this set of skills and we thought that we had enough justification to peg college as the bad guy. It took the perspective from one of our closest mentors, who is a professional in higher ed, to help us realize that Eyesight should exist inline with colleges rather than in opposition to them.
Tara Gilboa is an Online Learning Experience Designer for the Colorado School of Mines and has a critically acute eye for impactful ventures. She immerses herself in entrepreneurial communities everywhere and is always excited to give her feedback to help a company or venture move in the right direction.
Being a devoted patron of higher ed, she is always looking towards the future of learning and is dedicated to finding innovative ways to empower students to thrive in their careers. Naturally she was drawn to Eyesight.
Tara rejects the idea that the teaching of soft skills is completely absent in higher education like we had once thought. Instead, she simply admits that there is room for growth and believes Eyesight could be the opportunity many students need to succeed, as she puts it, in the “21st century innovation economy.”
Tara has been helping us develop our company since day one, so when we were ready to launch our product for beta, we knew we had to get her involved. She happily accepted and immediately dove in to see what we had created.
When analyzing the course from an instructional designer’s perspective, Tara was impressed by what she saw. It was a huge relief to learn that an educator in higher ed views our product as advantageous for college-aged students.
“The creative self-starter could really take advantage of the wealth of information and guidance that Eyesight’s mentors provide.”
Explore all that Eyesight has to offer to students and recent graduates looking to accelerate their careers.
The benefits she mentioned include the fact that students hear “a variety of industry leaders demonstrate vulnerability as they reflect on how they paved the way for successful careers and making an impact.” The opportunity to learn directly from mentors, many of whom are women, in the virtual “coffee chat” setting is ideal for Generation Z and Millennials alike. The role of advising and having a mentor you can see yourself in are well-researched and accepted to have an impact on student success.
It’s true there is a gap between school and the working world that recent grads are having trouble navigating, but we believe, along with Tara, that Eyesight is a bridge to help make this transition possible.
Don’t settle for what is easiest. Challenge yourself to put your skills to as much use as possible. Instead of hysterically treading water until you find the first piece of driftwood to hold on to, Eyesight can help direct the currents and push you exactly where you need to go.
