Figuring Out The Career To Pursue While in School
By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter
Randy Shain and I discussed selecting a major and figuring out a career direction for yourself while in school. This video works well for both parents and students alike.
I encourage a student to watch apart from their parent.
Hi, I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, and you’re either watching Job Search TV or listening to this as No BS Job Search Advice Radio. If you’ve been listening to me for any length of time, you know from time to time I bring on an expert on some element of job search or careers, because I believe it doesn’t have to be as hard, difficult, painful, or take as long as it does. Because frankly, most of you are amateurs. It’s not what you do. You know how to do what you do professionally, but the process of getting the next job or planning your career, no expertise really, and understandably, I brought on a guest today, or I’m bringing on a guest today named Randy Shane, who I’m going to have introduce himself to you, and Randy is going to be here to help you as a parent, or you as a student, figure out what you want to be in this next phase of growing up for the parent? Anyway, you’re the one. Well, you’re the one who’s trying to goad the student along. But I want to help your son or daughter figure out what the next step is for them in their life upon graduation. Randy, welcome.
Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me,
my pleasure. Introduce yourself to everyone. Let them know what your background is. Let’s have some fun after that, okay?
Sure. So my name is Randy Shane. As Jeff mentioned, I started a business as a private investigator. Believe it or not, in decades ago, I did that for 20 some odd years, going on 30 years, and I decided midway along the way that I really enjoyed working with young people more than I enjoyed anything else. So six years ago, I started a different business, helping coach college students and trying to get them to make the most of the four years that they’re in school.
I found that fascinating when you and I spoke, and I didn’t ask you about it then. But how the heck does one go from being a private investigator into being a coach for students? Like, where does that connect?
It doesn’t. I’m not 100% sure that it does. I guess the the the real way that that it does is that by owning a business, we hired probably hundreds of young people over time, and so from 1993 to 2016 or so, we interviewed 1000s of students. We hired them. We trained them. We coached them. We saw them improve. We promoted them, and we built the business based on that. And so, as I mentioned earlier, some of somewhere along the line, we got big enough where I wasn’t getting an opportunity to work with the younger people as much as I wanted to, and it kind of hit me that that’s really what I wanted to do, and so that’s why I made that kind of shift.
Gotcha. And there are a million ways that you could have worked with younger people. How did this idea of becoming a mentor or a coach to younger individuals with figuring out what they wanted to be when they grew up. How did that kick in for you?
Well, I’d love to say it was my idea, but it wasn’t. So a woman from Rutgers, where I went to school, approached me and asked if I had a few minutes, and immediately gave the you know, are you looking for money? I’m not really interested in that. I feel like I gave you the money when I was there. And she mentioned, no, no, no. This is something different. It’s a mentoring program, and I didn’t really. I knew what the word meant, but I didn’t understand the context of it. And she came into my office, and after 45 seconds, literally, I just said, sign me up. This is perfect. And essentially, that program was what kicked off what I’m doing now. And it was I had to look it up. It was exactly six years ago. And at that time, they brought you in, and they had a lot of people like me who had gone to the school and who they identified as having either talent or the time, or just weren’t weren’t paying attention enough, so they just said, “Sure, you want if you want to do this, we’re happy to have you. And so, I I got a chance to speak in a particular class, and four kids approached me, and I started just coaching, mentoring, and helping them.
And what’s a mentor mean to you?
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To me, it really means someone first and foremost, mentor, coach, the whole thing, is a listener, and so I think I told this story. And in fact, I just texted the young lady who I’m still in touch with all these people. She had said. That I was the first mentor in the program that actually asked her any questions, and I I said, “Well, surely you mean questions about what you want to do and so on, not just is that what you mean? And she said, “No, no, I mean any questions. And so I realized right away there’s a lot of people who quote unquote mentor kids or others, but what they do is just talk about themselves. So we’re on this program. I’m going to be talking about myself because you’re going to be asking me questions. But ordinarily, most of the people that I’ve worked with, and again, some of them that I’ve worked with for six years, had no idea that I was an investigator. It just never came up.
Gotcha. And it’s and thus, what makes you different than the typical coach?
I think there’s two things. So the first one is definitively my background. So because of what I said earlier, I have an inordinate amount of experience as to what businesses are looking for at all stages from before you get a job, meaning that interview prep and your resume and the cover letter and all those kinds of things, but really the interview. And then much more important to me and what I try to impart to the students that I work with is well, what do you need to do to be a good worker? Well, step one is figuring out where do you want to be, because sure you can fool an employer, and I used to say this on interviews into thinking that you want to work there. But six months in, you get exposed and you lose your job anyway. So it makes no sense. You’re you’re much better off trying to figure out where would you like to work, what would you actually like to do, and then try to get a job in that field, and so that’s step one. And I think the second is what I just mentioned before. My focus is on the student, and it’s always on them. We end up having a relationship, of course, because that’s how you get people to trust you. I’m vulnerable to them, I tell them what’s going on in my universe and vice versa, but the focus is on them. I’m not telling them my path unless they ask. It’s not relevant to them. Much more, much more about figuring out what it is and drawing out from them what it is that they’re interested in, and then helping them accomplish that.
And you don’t arrive or act like that template of the parent, the one who tells them what to do, because they know. And the way you describe most mentors or much most coaches for college students-that’s the experience I’ve seen as well, and that’s what I’ve heard about. They act like parents. You know what you should do? Back in the Stone Ages when I grew up, well, I’m going to talk to the adults here for a sec, folks. They’re not listening to you, are they? So if you can keep doing the same thing, and all that happens is you put up a wall between you and them. You’re better off outsourcing it to someone else to do the work, and you’ll get better results. Because I know the students I coach, which is not my primary business, by the way, just to be clear, the students I coach, you know, the thing that I do is I yes, I drive the bus, but in ways that they want it driven, right?
I’m not telling them what they should do, except in the context of brainstorming, where I’m looking for something from them, and it’s a huge difference, parents. And for the students, this is what you should be looking for in the way of a coach, someone who’s actually going to listen and not lecture. You’ve sat in lecture halls long enough, right? And the problem really comes down to. And I’ve got a copy of randy’s book on my phone. I’m just going to read one line from here because I really think it’s fabulous. College doesn’t Rosa. College doesn’t teach students how to discover their innate skills and how to apply those skills to a field of interest in a long in a long-term sustainable way. College also doesn’t teach the persistence and character that’s necessary to pursue the key players and gatekeepers of whatever field ultimately is selected. Folks, parents, students, students-you’re set up to fail. And parents, you think they know what to do because you do it a certain way, and it’s not the same for them. Am I wrong? Am I wrong?
Oh, if you’re asking me, no, I do think, in fairness, it is much harder for any parent, even a parent who was an expert at being a coach, to coach their own kid. So that is automatically something that has to get stated, simply because that’s just a fact of nature. And and so, even if I stunk at this, or any mentor was terrible at this, there’s some value to it, some small value. Even if you’re terrible, just being there, just having an adult tell you something. My problem with most of that coaching is that by dictating and lecturing, the student never learns anything about themselves. They just hear something, and they either do it and resent it, or they do what you just said. They put the wall up and say, “All right, this is crap. Like, what am I? Why am I listening to this person? I’m getting nothing out of it.
Right. So, what should the student be doing here? We’re going to start with the student, sure, and then we’re going to circle back to what the parent should or shouldn’t be doing.
Sure, sure. So let’s say it’s the student is 1617, 18 years old, entering college or launching out of high school. I’m going to give you two options to work with you. Yeah, I think it’s the student who’s entering. Let’s just start with the student who’s going their first and second week in college. So the one of the things that I like to talk about, and in my book, it was a whole chapter devoted to this topic, was how to turn your likes into loves, and one of the ways to think about that is, and and I know kids these days don’t call it dating, you know, it’s we’re hanging out or whatever you want to call it, but it’s like that, and what I mean by that is you have to try a lot of stuff, and so at college there the step one is find all the clubs that they offer, and almost every college it’s a big deal the amount of clubs that are offered. And taking advantage of those is enormous. And one of the things that we’ll get into a little bit is one of the things I try to talk to college students about is well understanding from all the other college students that I’m working with like what these things mean. So one of the things people say is, well, I don’t like to join stuff because I don’t really like to quit, and so I like to try to figure out if it’s going to be great before I start. And so, one of the things that I always tell people is, yeah, no, no, I’m giving you permission to be a quitter. Like this is the one situation when that is an absolute thing to do. Normally, every adult will tell you, don’t quit, don’t quit, don’t quit. You’re not a quitter. Well, that prevents people from trying stuff. So I want you to try. I just spoke with a girl who tried nine clubs because she took my advice. Now, who can be in nine clubs and class? It’s impossible. But she said, “I did what you said. I tried nine clubs. She could come right out and put it that way. But basically, she was asserting she didn’t took nine clubs, dropped five of them and ended up picking the four that she was really interested in. But how did that happen? She just spent some time with each. You spend a little time and then you see, is the subject appealing and are the people appealing? If they’re not, ditch. It’s okay, right? Who cares? And for you adults, this is the equivalent of informational interviewing. You’re going to talk to people who are interested in the same thing your student is, so that they can figure out if this is going to be a worthwhile area for them to pursue.
Right, exactly the same. Exactly the same.
It’s a good strategy. So now that they’re in a couple of clubs, and they’re starting to go to class, and they have no time on their hands to do their homework, and the parents are worrying about their grades because they’re so busy with the social life in these clubs and dating and what have you. What does the student do next? How do they continue to explore things?
Yeah, well, I think that overall, of course, the balance between social and work is up to every student to figure out for themselves, and time management works into that. And most students will tell you that that’s one of the hardest things that they had to learn. There’s no coach that can do that for you. I can sit here and say, I think you should use this system and use your calendar feature and alarms and write it down and plan it out the night before and so on. And that works for some kids and for other kids, they’re like, oh my God, that sounds terrible. So the reality is, again, all I do in that instance is talk to kids about the idea that you’re going to have a lot more time than you think because you’re coming off of a situation in which you got up and you were at school by eight a.m. Give or take a few minutes. You’re there till three, 330 If you played a sport, you’re not home. Until 530 you eat dinner at 630 You got a little homework. Your day is structured for 12 hours, really, right? And then maybe you get a little screen time after that, and you go to bed. You rinse, lather, rinse, repeat. Now you go to college, and you’ve got tons of time between classes. Does that get wasted? What do you do with that? You don’t have to get up early all the time. Fridays, most kids don’t have class at all. What do you do with all that time? They start to realize, oh my God, I have too much time. Like that’s what you hear. I’m lonely. I’m bored. I’m nervous. I’m anxious because I don’t know what to do to fill my time. So I maintain that that theory that they can’t do too many clubs and volunteer and do this and do that and still go to class and do their work. That’s baloney. They have tons of time, more time than they know what to do with.
I agree with you, and I speak from the perspective of me. Yeah, I remember how much time I had. You know, at the beginning, being stuck with the early morning classes because those are the only ones I could get into. Upperclassmen always get the better classes, the ones where you can sleep late, and then when you finally grow into those classes, you wonder what am I going to do with that time in the morning? What do I do? Yeah, yeah. What do I do? Right. Yeah.
And you figure it out. Right. There’s oh, it’s like gas. The tongue gets occupied.
Yes. Yeah. There’s no question about that. I mean, one of the other things we talked about the club thing, and I and I really I mean that. I I feel like that’s something that each semester you can start to join, discard, join, discard. Then, as you get a little bit older, you start to take a leadership position. Maybe you start to delve a little bit deeper. You start to think, are any of these in a field that I might actually like to do for a living? That’s possible too, as opposed to just the fun stuff. I actually myself was in the marketing society for God knows what reason, and I ended up becoming like through that I learned a bunch of stuff that I did use in my first job, even as an investigator, because it taught me to do a lot of public speaking. It taught me to sell things like that that I ended up meeting, dealing with clients and so on, so it’s hard to know how you’re going to utilize the things that you learn, the skills that you’re picking up. But I can assure you that you need those skills and you need those interests. And so, all I say to kids is, I’m not here to make your life worse. I’m here to make sure that you have a structure so that you get to do the stuff you want to do. If you don’t do that, your parents are going to make your life worse. That’s for sure.
That’s a given. And folks, do you notice how passionate Randy is about this? He’s banging that table left and right. His enthusiasm is is fabulous. Thank you.
In case you haven’t noticed, folks, that’s a Knick hat that he’s wearing right now. That’s right.
Representing, despite even the even though the Jordan rules is on, I’m still putting the Knick stuff out there. It’s okay.
And he’s he’s persistent. He’s determined that one day they’ll be good.
That’s right. That’s right. Has anything to do with it, but yes, one day they’ll be good.
Is what we as fans do. So we’re talking here in terms of number one. You get into school. You explore a couple of things that you’re interested in through the club circuit. Your classes are going to be your classes at the beginning, you know. Those are going to be required courses. We can’t change those quite yet, but it’s the idea of using the first two years to figure out what your major is really going to be, in order to ensure you’re pursuing things that might help you land. Got that?
I I have something to say about that actually. Oh, good. Let’s do that. Yeah. So, to the degree possible, and this is based on your school’s requirements, I am a staunch advocate. It’s the one thing I do try to tell kids to do. I don’t tell them how to accomplish this, but I put this idea in their head: take as few core classes as you can get away with. Just take as many classes that seem interesting as possible, and there’s a reason for that. And that is that the last place you want to be is a junior in college and first starting to say, “Okay, I took a bunch of classes that were required, and I still have no idea what I like, and now I have to first start figuring that out, and oh look, there’s a class I would like, but I hadn’t taken anything else in that field, and I can’t get into that. I don’t want to take a class with a bunch of freshmen. So there’s a lot of those kinds of things that happen, and so again, I believe that to the degree you can take take a class, a writing class, take a full. Philosophy class, take a marketing class, take a psychology class, take a language, take anything that’s in the humanities. Even if you are a STEM person, take as many of these humanities kind of all over the place classes and see which ones appeal to you. And then again, if you like something, take another one. If you like it again, keep doing it. If you don’t, if you start to see, hmm, okay, I I like this, but I don’t love it. Discard that. And by the way, as you know, learning what to discard is amazing information for you. It’s crucial because there’s too many. I don’t know what the study. There is a study done about what they call. I call it the diner menu study, which is essentially when you could still go to a diner pre-pandemic, most people get the same thing, even though the diner has 72 pages of stuff. Right? I could get a lasagna or I could get lobster. Most people show up at the diner, and what do they do? They order the same. Why? Because any more than seven choices they’ve shown makes human beings anxious. So having 700 choices is just like whoa. But take a look at a college guidebook that talks to you about what classes your college has. There’s 700 classes, so most people immediately are intimidated. And what I’m suggesting is pick a few categories to start, and just leaf through and read the descriptions. If it sounds like something you’d be interested in, and it’s not at eight in the morning on a Monday, you know, give it a whirl and see what happens. And then just keep repeating that same process. And before you know it, you’ll say, “Hmm, it turns out I really enjoy history, English, philosophy. It’s not going to matter.
And I hearing with a girl from the parents’ vantage point going, “You mean you want me to waste my money on them figuring this out along the way instead of you
know when they were in high school they said they wanted to be this square peg, square hole, go for that.
Right, right. That the connotation.
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That was excellent. So the funny part is, is that of all the people I know in business who hire people and so on, I can’t begin to tell you the the amount of people I can name on one hand who care about someone’s major, absolutely STEM people. This matters. So I’m not talking about if you want to be a doctor, if you want to be a physicist, an engineer. You have to take those classes. Period. And even with them, you have to take those classes and take a lot of them to see if that really is what you want to do. But that’s a different story. I’m talking about the 90% of everyone else. It is not going to matter whether you majored in English or history or philosophy or psychology or sociology or organizational behavior. It is no panacea if you major in marketing or management or business or whatever. That is not going to tell any future employer, “Oh, I need to hire you over that guy. In fact, if you really want to think, if you’re a parent and you’re saying, “Well, what are you talking about? Take a look at the majors of the people who work at the consulting firms. Do you? Which? Which I’m not suggesting most people should do that kind of work because it’s really hard and it’s hard to get into. But they’re considered to be the best and the brightest. Take a look at them. They’re not. They’re not business majors. There’s not. It’s just not what they. That’s not what those companies value. Most companies will teach you their particular thing that they do. That’s not what they need. They need to know: Can you write? Can you can you speak? Can you deal with can you critical thinking? Can you work on a team of diverse people, which means people unlike you by age, by sex, by color, by gender, by sexual orientation, by everything. Can you work with those people? Can you do all of those things? If you can do those four, and maybe there’s four or five things, great. You’re employable now. Those are skills that you have. I can teach you what I do. I didn’t know, and again, this is the 30 years ago thing. I didn’t know how to do an investigation, but I knew how to write and I knew how to do research. They taught me the specific skills that they were looking for, but I knew I had the foundation for that, and that’s all I encourage students because if you don’t walk out with that, but you do have a business major, you’re screwed.
Yeah, and and I I want to leap in on one thing that you said, because you students just heard the term 30 years ago. Don’t be dismissive and ageist. You know, it’s no different now. And I speak from the perspective of I. Was a head hunter and did it for a million years, filled tons of positions, and I listened to what my clients told me over those years, and really hasn’t changed. Yes, you have to have a basic expertise, but they don’t really expect you to know anything. They want to hire someone who they can trust. Trust is the feeling you give them in the room, not just simply the knowledge that you have. Notice hard skill, what you know; soft skill, you know the way you make them feel. Don’t lose sight of that because they’re going for trust, and they got lots of choices. Yeah, I don’t right. I don’t talk to people about the 30 years ago stuff as a way of saying, well, it’s the exact same now. Although, what is the same is that human beings need skills in order to function. I would argue that it’s way harder today. I’m the reverse of every old man that you know. I know it’s harder for students today than it was for me. I got out of school. All I had to do was go to Manhattan. I went to a job interview of a company that wasn’t even looking to hire. I found them in a particular book. I called. I cold called. They said, “Come on in. They were not hiring, but I did an interview, and they hired me anyway. That doesn’t happen now. It’s really hard for you. I’m not. I’m. I’m not saying that we had it harder. We didn’t. We had it way easier. So your parents, when they say you should do what I did, that’s not going to work because that’s where you don’t have that opportunity.
Yeah, you you can’t go door to door and try and find the job because the security in the building.
Correct. Who’s going to let you in? Who’s letting you in? Yeah, exactly. Now they’re taking your temperature too. But one one of the things I wanted to point out too, Jeff, that I think is completely underutilized and used for the wrong reason is volunteering. And so I spend a lot of time writing about and talking about volunteering, and I get it. I know when I say it, people are like, “Oh, I don’t want to do that, right? Like you just whatever. And what I try to point out is two things. One, I don’t want you to volunteer for your resume. In fact, I don’t want you doing anything for your resume, and we can discuss that separately. But as for volunteering itself, I want you to do things that you’re interested in, and if you tell me you’re interested in something, I want to see that you did it. So a kid, an example I use in the book is if a kid says, “Oh, I’m thinking maybe I’d be a teacher, and I’m like, “Well, have you ever like volunteered at a nursery school or a Big Brother program or any of these places where you got to deal with kids? No, I’m like, “Okay, so how? One, how do you know if, from your perspective, you would really want to be a teacher, and two, how would anybody else think that you’d want to do that if you’ve never done any of it? So it’s not like I’m saying volunteer at something that you hate. That doesn’t make any sense. Just volunteer at something that you think might be something you’d enjoy, and then you’ll know. And by the way, it’s a lot easier to get a volunteering gig because you’re volunteering. You’re not getting paid. You’re not getting paid. So there are companies and organizations are always looking for volunteers, always.
You bet, right?
Right, and differentiate between volunteering and unpaid internships.
See, to me, the unpaid internship is a. It’s fine if you can, and I caution. I’m not talking about people who need the money. I get it. I came from that world. My kids, fortunately for them, do not. But if you need the money, you need to get paid. You need to find something where you get paid. But if you are fortunate and you don’t need the money, then the money is not important to you. That’s not the most important thing for you. Then whatever you do is more important. And so, an unpaid internship is usually something more formal, where you still have to do an interview, you still have to sort of pass muster and so on. And I’m not suggesting you don’t do that, but as a freshman in college and a sophomore in college, you’re going to find that difficult to get any internship, paid or not, right? So my thing is stop telling these kids to get internships and just start telling him to do a few things like volunteer and like work. That’s another one. Just get a job. So this sort of segues me into the other piece, which is in the summer of freshman year. What would I? So now you’ve done some clubs and you’ve taken some classes that. Were not core classes, and now your summer’s coming up, and everyone’s panicked because you’re supposed to get an internship. And what do I tell these kids? Go go work in a deli. Go work in the and this all assumes all this is open. Deli, pizzeria, supermarket, any place where you have to deal with the public, the best thing for you. And why is that? Why is that?
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Every worker, every employee, I should say, of every organization I’ve been privileged enough to either own or manage or whatnot, every one of those people who was really good, who were the superstars, all had crappy jobs before. And what? Why was that? They one, they appreciated a job that wasn’t that way. That’s why. Two, they learn certain skills that are impossible to learn otherwise. So if I’m working at a deli and my boss is yelling at me because I’m just not doing it fast enough, and you learn like there’s no HR team you can go to like they don’t care, you know. I’m just thinking what HR in a deli might look like. I mean, the HR in the deli is the guy at the slicer saying it doesn’t really matter if Joe yells at you. He owns the place. What do you think we’re going to do about it? Right. That’s it. If you don’t like it, leave. And so you learn to deal with that, and then you realize that guy just wants that stuff done right and fast. So you also learn to do your job better and faster, and so on. And I’m not saying that you want to work in a deli later in life, although that’s a perfectly fine occupation. But if you don’t want to do that, you better learn the skills that you need to not do that. If you’re thinking, “Oh, this isn’t for me, so but to me, the best part about it is dealing not just with your bosses and your colleagues, but dealing with the public. So having to have two customers in front of you. There’s two people calling on the phone. You got two different phone lines. You got customers in front of you. You’re doing this. Talk about multitasking. Talk about prioritizing prioritizing things. Talk about figuring stuff out. Which is the most important thing to do. Talk about being able to communicate and say to someone, “I’ll be right with you. I’m really sorry. We’re overly busy. I’ll be with you in a minute. Don’t worry about it, and then maybe you throw them, you know, a little cookie or whatever it is at the end for waiting. You’re making little decisions, etc. All those skills you just can’t pick them up anywhere else. You can’t read a book about it, and you can’t listen to me tell you about it because even if you hear me say it to you now, you actually have to experience it to know it.
So we got them through freshman year. Yeah. And what happens when they hit sophomore year?
So to me, sophomore year is more of the same. But you’re dive. You’re starting to dive in a little bit deeper. And what I mean by that is you’re starting to spend some more time on some of the same activities that you started at before, and you’re really starting to discard more. You’re starting to say, “Okay, I freshman year I like this, but now, as it turns out, when I took another class and I joined the club, and I got and I volunteered somewhere, I really determined that path. That’s not for me. And some people have said to me, “Wow, this really sucks! Like I just figured out that I don’t want to end up being. I’ll use the teacher example. I don’t want to be a teacher because I went into a classroom and I shadowed a teacher over the summer, and then over over this first semester of sophomore year, and it turns out I hated the kids. It just wasn’t for me, and so what do I do? That’s not. It’s a terrible situation. And I say, are you kidding? Which would you rather have learned that three years after you graduated, and you took the two years for your master’s, and then you got into a classroom and you hated it? Like, what are you talking about? In in fact, my best example of that is at some schools, nursing programs get you in the hospital freshman year. So you’re a smart guy. Why do you think they do that?
To scare you off.
Yeah, they want to see like people get in there, and they’re like, “Oh, it turns out I don’t like. There’s blood. There’s blood. I don’t like needles or blood, and they just didn’t know that they wanted to help people. They wanted to be in medicine, and it’s not doesn’t make you a bad person that you don’t like needles and blood. I happen to be one of those people who’s not affected by that, but a lot of people are. And so, if you don’t like it, you better learn that quick. And it’s just fine. It’s more than fine to learn those kinds of lessons early, so the earlier the better. So again, sophomore year, as many classes as you can that are not core requirements. Every class you take is going to fill something, by the way, except at Brown and maybe a few other schools which don’t have the. Same kind of structure. Most colleges, you take a class and it’s going to count for this. You don’t even know it until you start adding it up, anyway. So it’s not going to be a big deal. But just take as many of those as you can, and only take the the minimum mandatory classes just to kind of fill whatever you have to. That’s kind of what’s happening sophomore year. I’m also a again going to advocate students, even during school, to get a job, to get a job or to volunteer. One of those in concert with your classes and your clubs. That’s that’s the recommend.
This is terrific. Perfect. And you, as a coach, kind of propel them in some way. In many respects, the story I tell myself about the work that you do is you’re the adult therapist for them.
Without pathologizing it, though, right? Like I do try to be cautious about comparing myself that way because I don’t want people thinking there’s something wrong with them because they need a coach. I’d rather liken it to this. Is what I say to parents is this is going to do two things for you. This is just like when you spent all that money and time and energy on the soccer coach, the piano coach, the baseball hitting instructor, right? You did that to get your kid to college, but now that they’re there, they need a different kind of help. But it’s the same thing: is yes, they should use career services office. Without question, they should take advantage of whatever the college is providing. But it’s not the same as someone who gets to know them, and typical career service ratio is 500 to 2000 to one. It’s very hard, even if they’re great people, right? What are they going to do? Like, and again, they could be the best at what they do, but they can’t get to know that many students. So, a person who’s working with you and getting to know you as your coach, and really figuring you out and helping you figure out yourself what is it that you’re what you want to do, and also who’s not judgmental, right? Who doesn’t have an agenda, and that was something I should have mentioned earlier. It’s really it’s the listening, but it’s the non-judgmental part too, and that’s very hard for parents, and it’s also hard for college administrators and even college professors. So I recommend that students meet their college professors and really meet them in a way where they form a relationship. But even there, the professor sort of is interested in what he’s interested in. It’s not always true that they’re going to help you find what you’re interested in, right?
And it’s funny here. I’m going to talk to the students primarily. You’ve been on a conveyor belt, being moved along the process like your manufactured product in the old days, you got moved from elementary school to junior high or middle school to high school, and now you’re in college, and they’re working up to turn you into some processed meat. I’m sorry for you vegans out there. You pick the replacement product for the process made, so that she can graduate, and all the way through, the message is: do what we tell you to do, or else.
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, I know school. I know kids at schools who are telling me, literally, they’re getting pushed into accounting, or pushed into something else straightforward by the administration itself, because why does a school want you to do that? Because for them, they want to say we had 90-8% of our graduates got a job within three months, and it’s easiest to get a job in these sort of well-defined fields. That’s the theory, at least. No one’s talking about two years later, when all those kids quit that job because they hate it, that’s of no consequence somehow. And so my role and my goal is to prevent that, and that stems largely from the fact that whenever we hired someone who didn’t actually really want to do what we did? Six months in, we were both disappointed, and the person we’d have to let them go, or they’d have to quit, and we’d be looking at each other like, “I really wish we had done a better job of figuring out that this wasn’t for you. Sometimes you can’t tell. Sometimes you can’t tell, and that happens. But that’s what you’re trying. That’s what me. That’s what I’m trying to prevent, and I’m really trying to prevent the kid who calls me up five years after college and says, “I hate what I’m doing, and I have no no, I have no way of getting out of it, and now I’m making a certain amount of money, and I’ve got the gold in the handcuffs. Like, what do I do out of what you call it a conveyor belt, but?” Push yourself out a few years. The golden handcuffs, meaning you’re living a certain lifestyle, and now you don’t want to give that up. You’re trapped. You don’t want to give it up, and you have to wait till you’re in your 60s to do that transition that you wanted to do. Because I’m a guy who was a head hunter for more than 40 years. I want to get out at one point, got a master’s in social work. Was going to be a therapist in private practice, and then I met my wife there.
Oh, and thus, once we decide to do the house and the child, yeah,
I put it off yet again. So it takes a long time to do these transitions. And what Randy and I are speaking about here is trying to head off the problems that are going to leave you numb for most of your life and dead from the neck up, while you’re just doing this job that you loathe, right?
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Which unfortunately so many people have to do, right? And I and I suggest to people that I’m not saying that you won’t switch jobs every few years. That’s that will happen, and that’s okay. You’re switching though when you stop learning and when you stop to when you stop getting any everything out of where you are. Once that happens, well, then it’s probably time to move on. But if you’ve picked up enough skills and the relationships you have with your coworkers are solid, you’ll be able to move on, whether it’s in the same field or a slightly different one or a completely different one. If you’ve determined that, boy, that is not actually for me. That is okay. It’s fine. It’s just you. You have to then have a in your head what are you going to be doing. So I worked with a young woman who’s lovely and got a job in retail, and I don’t mean like folding the clothes, like retail, like trying to be ultimately be a buyer. They call it, and we really thought that that’s what she wanted to do. She had worked in retail through high school, through college, really enjoyed it. Seemed like something she really wanted. No one, everyone was talking her out of it. I said, “It’s this feels like something you want to give a shot at because you’re going to regret it if you don’t, right? And and that was her response was absolutely. She tried it for two, three years. I’m losing track of time here, and decided. I think it was two years, and decided, you know what? I’m not making the impact that I want to make. I really, I’ve been always thinking about being a teacher. I want to be a teacher, even though it’s a major switch. And I, of course supported her in that notion. We got to work immediately. Like, what does that mean? What do you have to do? You have to go back to school. You still have to support yourself. You’re going to get some help with your parents. There are they going to support you? How is that going to work? And we gathered up a plan, and now she’s midway in that process and loving it, right? And this is she’s really found herself. So it was, but she does not regret the first part. Why should she? She learned about herself and she scratched that itch, and now she determined that just was not. That just was not for her. That’s okay. It happens.
Changing jobs, folks, is the new career path. It’s not working your way up the ladder at one organization because the stories about people who started in the basement of a building and worked their way up to the C-suite. You read any of those stories or watch any of them on YouTube anymore? Nah, doesn’t exist.
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Yeah, that’s garb. That’s garbage. That doesn’t happen.
Right. So don’t fall for your parents’ line about you. Don’t work your way up until you have to change jobs,
right, right, right, and it’s fine. You are doing that. That’s what I try to say to parents. You’re not just explain to your kid that you’re telling them to do what they should be doing, except they just are probably going to have to switch companies to achieve that. When you work your way up. You learned. You met people. You learned. You met more people. You learned something else. You put that into practice. You became more valuable, and then you moved up. Well, now sometimes you have to move up somewhere else, but it’s the same idea. So the idea isn’t stupid. It’s just your execution of it, which can be a little bit behind the times. One of the things that I just didn’t want to forget in this conversation is that that for for parents reading the the book that I wrote, I have gotten tremendous feedback from parents, which I did not expect. Where did you get to you promoting the book? This allowed me to change my conversations I was having with my kids, and I was like, “Well, what do you mean? And they’re like, “Well, now I don’t feel like I have to lecture them. Now I just say, ‘Look, I read in this book. Take a look at this thing, and it talks about this. Would you maybe you could try something like that, like volunteer, like.'” The volunteering thing, etc. It says here, don’t do something for your resume, which I’ll touch on in a moment. So just do the stuff you’re interested in, and all of a sudden the kid’s like, “Oh, you’re not telling me what to do, you’re not lecturing me, you’re giving me some ideas, but you’re letting me choose within those ideas the way that I execute on those ideas, and that’s a big deal. You’re not telling me which club to join. You’re just telling me I’d like you to join a few clubs. That’s the most you can expect. I’m paying for college. I’d like you to join a few clubs. That would be very. I think that that would be an important part of your experience. I’d like you to volunteer. I don’t care where. I’d like you to get a job. I don’t care where. You figure that out. If you need my help, you come to me, and that’s it. That changes everything because now you don’t need to nag. You don’t need to tell them what to do. They are not hearing you nag. They’re just hearing you make some. There’s some ground rules and some structure.
And why shouldn’t they do it for the resume?
Oh wait. hang on a second.
Sure.
Can you hear me still?
I hear you fine.
Okay, because my something happened to my this, so I’m going to take that off.
No problem. So why shouldn’t they do it for the resume?
Yes. So I said that now twice. Thank you for picking up on that. This dumbest thing that any student does is they have made the assumption. It’s not dumb. I shouldn’t say that. The sad part is students have learned from middle school to high school, from grammar school to middle school to high school, that all you need to do is get good grades. Then you get into college, and the idea is to get good grades and do things for your resume because that’s what’s worked for you in the past. That’s what’s allowed you to move along on the conveyor belt that The Big Game Hunter has talked about. However, when I ask you a question in an interview and I say, Jeff, it says here that you were part of the you know the badminton club. It turns out that I used to play badminton in high school for money because we were gambleaholics. What do you, you know, what what’s your favorite thing to do in badminton? And you’re like, I don’t know, I didn’t, you know, I only went once. Well, now I’m like, well, then why did you, why did you put that down or something? And badminton might sound stupid. It could be anything.
Anything I ask you about, if you have no real knowledge, forget knowledge, no real experience doing that, you sound like a jackass. Unfortunately, it’s worse to do that than have nothing on your resume. I’d rather you hand me a blank slip of paper than that, and I see it all the time. People obviously did something because they thought it sounded good, but they didn’t really participate in those activities. So when I ask them about it, they don’t know what to say. And what you get, you feel exposed at that point because you are, frankly. So I always say to people, you do something for yourself. Get the job to learn the skills because you want those skills because you know you need them. Join the clubs because you’re interested, not because your parents say join the finance club instead of the marketing club because who cares about marketing, or who cares about badminton in my example from before? No, join the things that you are interested in and participate in them, because the second reason is when I go on an interview, who knows if someone’s going to say, “Wow, you were in that particular. You did this particular thing. You you studied this Mandarin. You took this Mandarin or you know Chinese art class. Why’d you do that? Turns out that was my minor in college, right? Like that happens all the time, because what am I looking for as an employer? Someone who’s a human being who I can like being around, right? Like it’s not just can you be good at the work, and it’s not just that that’s important, and it’s also critical that you want to work with our particular company. But more than either of those two things is: Are we going to like you, or are you going to be someone that we’re going to think is a total jerk off? And if it’s the latter, we don’t need you.
Exactly right, Randy. We could keep going on forever, and I can’t.
We actually can’t go on forever. Yeah,
that part is true as well. How can people find out more about you, the work you do, the book you have, things along those lines?
Sure, sure. So the book is called 173 Pages Every College Student Must Read. Here we go, on Amazon, I am. My company is called One On One Mentors, and you can find me just Google One on One Mentors with my name, and you’ll see it. The website is One On One Mentors do com, and call, text, email, whatever. Everything is sort of designed to be. Super easy, and I try to make the whole process one where the student ends up walking away feeling better prepared, more productive, happier, and also super happy to get their parents off their back, and the parents super happy to not have to do that. No parent, you’re a parent, I’m a parent. We don’t want to nag students. You think that we want to do that stuff? We hate that. It’s in the job
description. Are you kidding? I’d
rather have any other conversation besides that one. Yeah,
me as well. Randy, this has been great. Thank you.
Yeah, thanks a lot for having me. I really appreciate you putting me on.
You’re welcome. And folks, we’ll be back soon with more. I’m Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter, and you can visit my website, thebiggamehunter.us. I’ve got 1000s of posts about different elements of job search material that you can watch, listen to, or read that’ll help you find work more quickly, particularly for you adults, hire more effectively, magically deal with workplace-related issues, a whole host of different things. And if you’re interested in one-on-one coaching with me, at the website you can schedule time for coaching or schedule time for a free discovery call. I’d love to help you. Got a question for me? Wizio.com. That’s wisio. com forward slash The Big Game Hunter. Ask your question, you get a three to five minute video back from me with the answer to it. Lastly, subscribe to my channel on YouTube. Click the small icon in the lower right or the picture of me in the upper left, and you’ll get more from me. Hope you have a great day and be great.
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