Forum Post: the 50,000 feet picture

I know a lot of you protesters are disappointed college graduates who realized that finding a job may not be as easy you had originally hoped. As someone who has founded several small businesses in his lifetime, I will explain why businesses are not hiring and some useful tips to getting yourself into a career despite these hard times. Trust me, its not easy for anybody right now.

First of all, companies are sitting on record cash and are not hiring? Why? You guys think companies hoarding money is a sign of greed? Quite the opposite, a company that is greedy will expand like crazy and bite off more than it can chew. Companies hoarding cash is a byproduct of risk aversion created by lots of uncertainty. I'll explain. You guys are talking about the bailout of wall street (they took a 700 billion loan and paid it back), but whats more worrying to us business owners is that 5-6 trillion USD in unfunded pension liability tsunami that is going to flood over us in the next 5 years, which will either have to be paid with higher taxes or higher inflation (lower real growth). Along with other regulatory uncertainties, these are the real reasons businesses aren't hiring.

Second of all, there is a large skill mismatch between what employers are looking for and what students are learning at the university. Most of the liberal arts/humanities/social science majors are really not in demand and the most you can hope for for such a degree is a government job somewhere or go to graduate school. Be honest to yourself, is it worth putting yourself 100k in debt to get a degree in art history (if its too late, I'll explain how to get yourself out of the hole).

Personally, when I went to university I majored in Computer Science and Economics (the most in demand majors), but even I realized all of the courses were too theoretical and taught you nothing about skills in the real world. Thats when I stumbled onto a real gem, University Extension Programs. These are coursework designed to keep working professionals fresh in their skill set and are regularly taught by retired professionals, offering a fresh perspective from your professors. There is no restriction to these courses and anyone can apply, personally I felt like I learned more in one of these courses than in all of my university years. See http://www.scps.nyu.edu/areas-of-study/divisions-of-programs-in-business/professional-certificates/ for the NYU extension program, all of the top universities have them, you are essentially getting a technical graduate degree on the cheap and its highly valued by employers. Also, these courses are tailored towards working people so they are usually for 3 hours at night on a Friday or Monday.

Now these courses will range anywhere from $200 - $1000, so I'll go over budget management. If you are really starved for cash, Just take the highest waged job you can get that you feel will keep you sane enough to take one of these extension classes per quarter, remember, we are investing for the future. Now if you have a little bit of a capital cushion, I'd recommend working for free and here is why. Working a minimum wage job at McDonalds is not a resume filler, but interning for free is a pretty good one, it'd show experience in a professional environment. So what I would do is depending on your fiscal situation, adjust a sliding scale between the two. Remember, small businesses do most of the hiring and they don't have the spare capacity to do training, so the more experience you have the better.

After toughing it out for a year or two, you should have a good list of contacts with professionals and professors from your extension programs, you will have valuable real world skills and perhaps some work experience (internship, paid internship if its IT related). And you will be well on your way to getting your career started.

I will leave this thread open for further discussions for career advice and Q&A.