Graduating in This Economy

  • 1 min read

In Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, it is argued that the year you are born could have a monumental impact on the success you see in your lifetime.  For example, in the 1860s and 1870s, the US economy went through an amazing boom.  If you were lucky enough to be born in the 1830s, then you had an opportunity that others missed out on.   If you were born in the 1840s, you missed those opportunities, and if you were born before the 1830s, you likely were too old and already set in a lifestyle which would have made taking advantage of opportunity difficult.  That may help explain the fact that out of the world’s richest 75 people in history, 14 were Americans born between 1831-1840.

Are we experiencing a shift?

Just as a generation can take advantage of the years they were born, you could also be disadvantaged based on the year you were born.  In this economy, is the same type of shift in place now?

Who would want to be graduating school this year? You’d be entering an economy that is in the worse shape in generations.  Those of us who were lucky enough to graduate before this economic calamity started, have been lucky enough to build up our work experience, pass beyond entry level positions, and hopefully will be able to benefit when the economy finally rebounds.

Because so many people are looking for jobs right now, entry-level positions are harder to come by. People with actual work experience are likely to take those jobs in order to stay employed, so graduating students are in a position where they’re entering a workforce that has no place for them.  When the economy finally rebounds, those who graduate this year will likely have had fewer opportunities and thus be in a disadvantageous position when opportunities do open up.

Is this generation going to be the generation who was born after the most beneficial years?  Will we look back at this time and say you’d be disadvantaged to graduate in 2009? That very well could be the truth, but if you are graduating this year, it’s important to put yourself in the best possible position to make it through this.

-Be open to relocating for your first job, it’s an important one.
-Leverage your internships and work experience to find a solid first job

Picture of Adam Salamon

Adam Salamon

Adam Salamon is currently Partnerships Director at Bazaarvoice, Inc. helping support company expansion, partner evaluation, and strategy. He was a founding member of Bazaarvoice and has helped propel the company from 10 people to one of the world’s top performing start-ups and social commerce companies. Adam has extensive history in sales and business development and is an avid writer on the topics of social media, e-commerce, and marketing. You can regularly catch Adam on his blog, but he also contributes to Brazen Careerist, Personal Branding Magazine, and Bazaarblog. Adam is a proud graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, with three degrees in Government, Middle Eastern Studies, and Hebrew.

TRENDING AROUND THE WEB

The worry that you’ve left something at home is almost never about the thing. It’s about a mind that was trained to believe safety requires perfect attendance, that relaxation is just the space between mistakes, and that the moment you stop checking is the moment everything you’ve been holding together quietly comes undone

The worry that you’ve left something at home is almost never about the thing. It’s about a mind that was trained to believe safety requires perfect attendance, that relaxation is just the space between mistakes, and that the moment you stop checking is the moment everything you’ve been holding together quietly comes undone

Global English Editing
Psychology says the people carrying chronic unhappiness give themselves away not in complaints but in a set of habitual phrases so ordinary that neither they nor the people around them register them as distress signals—until someone points to the pattern

Psychology says the people carrying chronic unhappiness give themselves away not in complaints but in a set of habitual phrases so ordinary that neither they nor the people around them register them as distress signals—until someone points to the pattern

The Vessel
I’m 65 and I look and feel younger than I did at 55 and the honest explanation is that I said goodbye to three things in my late 50s—a friendship that had been a slow drain for a decade, a habit of catastrophising every night before sleep, and the belief that my worth was connected to how useful I was to everyone around me—and my face apparently had opinions about all three

I’m 65 and I look and feel younger than I did at 55 and the honest explanation is that I said goodbye to three things in my late 50s—a friendship that had been a slow drain for a decade, a habit of catastrophising every night before sleep, and the belief that my worth was connected to how useful I was to everyone around me—and my face apparently had opinions about all three

Global English Editing
Research suggests that people who need background noise to concentrate aren’t distracted – they’re using auditory input to regulate a nervous system that was trained in childhood to associate silence with unpredictability

Research suggests that people who need background noise to concentrate aren’t distracted – they’re using auditory input to regulate a nervous system that was trained in childhood to associate silence with unpredictability

Global English Editing
Most people assume the quiet person in the group has nothing to say. Psychologists explain that they’re often running a cost-benefit analysis on every potential contribution and have decided that the social cost of being misunderstood outweighs the reward of being heard

Most people assume the quiet person in the group has nothing to say. Psychologists explain that they’re often running a cost-benefit analysis on every potential contribution and have decided that the social cost of being misunderstood outweighs the reward of being heard

Global English Editing
I spent a decade trying to change myself into someone happier and the breakthrough came when I realized the version of me I was trying to build was just a more polished copy of someone else — and the person I actually needed to become was the one I’d been running from since I was nineteen

I spent a decade trying to change myself into someone happier and the breakthrough came when I realized the version of me I was trying to build was just a more polished copy of someone else — and the person I actually needed to become was the one I’d been running from since I was nineteen

Global English Editing
Load more
CATEGORIES
Explore