The Fall 2017 StartLabs Application Cycle, and #hustle
The StartLabs team just finished making some of the hardest decisions we’ve ever made as an organization. Over the last two weeks, from Activities Midway to our Info Session, we invited students to apply to join our team, and potentially move on to our next round of in-person interviews. We were looking for two or three new members for each of one of our six departments — Partner Relations, Cross Campus Relations, Internal Relations, Marketing and Media, Finances, and Web, who had right combination of skills, self-initiative, and potential to grow as part of our team. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we received many, many extremely qualified applicants — over three times as many applicants as spots we wanted to fill. Compounding this was the fact that a large majority of our applicants survived brutal applications processes just a few months ago into one of the most selective colleges in the world, and the decisions we had to make weighed a lot upon our collective consciences. For me, the process of narrowing down our applicant pool was by far the most brutal and exhausting weekend of interviews and discussions I’ve had here at MIT.
The unfortunate truth is that we as StartLabs management only could judge the current snapshot of our applicants, weighing current ability and future potential. What thoroughness we had with our application essays and the contents of a 15 minute interview is frankly still not enough to get the full sense of who we are interacting with. The easy way out would be to simply only accept people who do a specific job and do it extremely well — most organizations just don’t have the support network or the bandwidth to support people who are “interested” or “passionate” in something but may not have experience. At StartLabs, we’ve tried our best to see the potential in people, but it mostly came down to our perception of #hustle. We wanted people who could come in and see a bunch of crazy ideas and initiatives all jumbled up together, but instead of being overwhelmed by the challenge or lost without a place to start, being willing to jump right in and start making initiatives to take things to a new level. StartLabs as a team is built around the idea of letting our members take the initiative and bring their ideas to the table, expanding on other team members’ ideas, and executing them to completion.
I know that if I had gone through the application and interview process this year at StartLabs with where I was at a year ago, I definitely wouldn’t have even made it close to the top set of applicants. In a sense, I got lucky: I happened to be at the right place (MIT), at the right time (a budding club looking to double team membership), with the right skillset (interest and enthusiasm in entrepreneurship, & willingness to put in lots of work). Yet, I also remain part of the club, now as a member of the management team, whereas some other members who came in with more directly applicable skills or experiences slowly fizzled out their involvement over time. As much as we’d all love to see the future person we become, it’s only through hard, dedicated, thoughtful work, that one can put themselves in position to be “lucky”. Being lucky is working hard, putting yourself in situations to meet many people, and thinking about what you’ve done, what you’re doing, and what you will do — the art of #hustle.
So to all of those who applied to StartLabs, or whatever other college clubs you wanted to get into, but did not make it: I challenge you to position yourself so you can be as “lucky” as possible. Apply for as many other things as possible. Ask for tons of advice. Go to tons of cool events, and try some new things. Acquire the right skillsets for the things that you’re interested in, and get extremely proficient in them. And once you’ve done all of those things, be prepared to talk at length about any and all things you’ve done. And above all, don’t forget to raise your head and look down the road to the future every once in a while. It will take practice to get to perfection, but that’s what #hustle is all about.
