Graduates — Seek Jobs, Not Excuses
Entitlement and employment do not go hand in hand.
If you really want a job, spend more time building your portfolio of work and less time building your portfolio of convenient scapegoats — collecting them like Pokemon cards, always on hand to counter rejections.
If I were to list all of the embarrassing drivel posted on supposedly professional social media networks, this article would be longer than War and Peace, so for today, I’ve just selected a few of the highlights that particularly grind my gears.
You Are Not Your Twitter Heroes
You’re doing yourself a significant disservice by soaking up the mostly-fictional whining of people with secure jobs, decades of experience, and nothing better to do than criticise the very industry that made them what they are today. The only way to make this worse is to open your LinkedIn profile and repost said whining near-verbatim to thousands of potential employers.
These “thought leaders” can get away with posting nonsense. It makes them feel subversive and stay visible; on a good day, it may even give off the rebellious contrarian image they’re so desperately going for. They get a few likes and retweets, their brain’s dopamine loop continues, and they move on with their day.
You, on the other hand, are just shooting yourself in the foot with a shotgun by parroting their tripe — in fact, you’re doing something much more damaging. You’re shooting all of your remaining potential employers in their collective feet, then demanding they still respect you enough to hire you when you’re not respecting them in turn. If you hope to have a career in the web industry, follow the oft misquoted but still completely sound advice of Dorothy Parker — if you don’t have anything nice to say, close the New Post page.
Employers Don’t Owe You a Chance
Even if you list it under Skills on your resume, unfortunately, you don’t possess the ability to defy basic economics principles, no matter how enthusiastic and eager to learn you may be. Working as a professional isn’t like your first casual job at a fast-food chain, where “apologies, we’re training a new burger architect today” and a complimentary drink refill will smooth everything over with a customer. Cheap cheeseburgers aren’t quite the same as multimillion-dollar enterprise ventures. Sure, companies exist with too much revenue and clients who don’t care what they get for their money — they’re most commonly sighted congregating with pixies, unicorns, and the occasional leprechaun.
Not a day goes by that I don’t see job-seekers post a variation of “When I’m running my own company, I’m going to hire candidates with no industry experience and give them a chance — employers, take note!”. Without fail, these claims are followed by thousands of replies sharing their well-meaning but misguided agreement. If you’re ever successful enough to be hiring staff, you’ll make your decisions based on reality. When it can make the difference between whether or not you stay in business and continue to pay your existing employees, your priorities will change.
“Inexperience leads to mistakes, mistakes lead to missed deadlines, missed deadlines lead to lost clients, and lost clients lead to…the bread line — The Force of liquidation, you will face, mmm.”
- Yoda (if he ran a business)
If you think I’m exaggerating, try it and see — but if you feel like risking your money, I suggest going to the casino instead; you’ll have better odds.
Leave the Comedy to the Comedians
I get it — you see the experience and portfolios of those much more senior than you and feel like you have impossibly large shoes to fill, but that’s not a free pass to act like they’re clown shoes.
Pointing out typos or numerical errors in job ads has, and never will be, clever or witty. Consider being inquisitive and helpful instead — qualities businesses actually seek in an employee. Privately raise your query with the advertising company; they get to fix a potential error, and you can apply for the job, known as the candidate who bothered to put in a little bit more effort — everybody wins. All this without publically making a fool of yourself to boot.
The Muppet Show was cancelled many years ago, stop auditioning to be one and demonstrate your value instead.
You Say You Want a Revolution
No industry is perfect, and the web is no exception, but if you want to change the things you don’t like about it, it’s much easier to do from the inside. You’ll likely find that once you are on the inside, those issues you keep hearing about either don’t exist, or they’ve been exaggerated beyond the point of recognition.
There’s only one way to find out — close Twitter and prioritise your own career, rather than wasting time bolstering the egos of those who have already established theirs.
