Career Case Study: My Job Trajectory Through College and Onwards
“Duh, Darcy, anyone can do it with your family connections.”
Uh… wrong. My parents run machinery in rural Fearsville. It’s been pretty blue-collar and comes with zero family connections. No rocketship-career-trajectory paths there.
“School connections, then,” says the naysayer matter-of-factly, not to be outdone. “You somehow got into an Ivy League school or something.”
Again, no. I graduated from a university that is pretty average amongst private universities (and that’s when the administration isn’t bumbling about causing scandal). Sometimes I wonder if my degree was even worth getting, with how little of it I use in my day-to-day job.
“But would you have gotten the job if you didn’t have a degree?”
And the answer was… no. Not because the degree was necessary, but because hiring managers decided they’d only consider people that held degrees.
The Degree/Experience Conundrum
This is a class barrier: to get a good job, you need a degree. To get a degree, you need money. To get money, you need a good job. Once you get a degree, whether through slaving away on scholarship applications or enslaving yourself to Sallie Mae, the goalposts shift.
Suddenly you need experience to get a good job, and you need a good job to get experience – or, at least, the experience that’ll make you seem qualified. Your own career trajectory may stutter to a halt here, unable to shoot back upwards for years… if ever. This experience conundrum is an insidious one, in that it makes you believe working for less – or even nothing – is required to reach these upper echelons of success.
I find it disgusting. I’m actually speaking from experience on this because I also, fell into the trap of unpaid work. While there was one (1) great event I had an incredible time working, the rest of the internship taught (and gave) me little I could apply to my career trajectory.
Yes, I’m a little ticked off that my internships did NOT help secure my first job. The little it did do was show me what work in an office environment was like. I’ve since worked on the other side of the table with interns, and it boggles the mind how little interns know of the working world. It boggles, that is, until I recall my past experiences and remembered how little I got out of them.
My Internships
Yep, that’s plural. I had 3.
Internship #1 was with an education nonprofit my sophomore year. It was affiliated with a major international organization which I really liked. It was also unpaid, but I counted the college credit I got from it as “payment”. That was a consolation prize to an actual paycheck, but I like to think I made up for it with the snacks I constantly swiped. I got to help out with event planning and content creation, but only the grunt work (as is life as an intern). At the end of it we held a fundraiser at a swanky hotel, which was one of the first times I was exposed to a truly rich get-together. Nothing came out of rubbing elbows with these Boston Brahmins, and I continued on without a higher career trajectory.
Internship #2 was with a college in my hometown Fearsville over the summer. It was also my favorite work experience ever*! My work was with an absolutely fantastic all-women team that actually indulged my willingness to learn. I happily took on several projects for them including event planning, video creation, copywriting, and managing some of the financial data. Because I loved them that much I also did little things to delight my team, like organizing the closet they dumped all their extra promotional items into.
I had great relationships with them and had awesome experiences both in the office and out at fundraising events (three in total). This paid $10 an hour, but on the condition that I take a summer course. As a nerd that actually liked summer classes, this was no deal-breaker. While this also did not help my career trajectory, it was a delightful experience that proved female-driven groups are actually an awesome driving force.
Internship #3 also paid $10 an hour in fall 2015, and this one was with another nonprofit that needed me to help connected businesses with their marketing. I got some invaluable marketing skills from it, but it was a poorly run program and not a good experience. However, because this internship had marketing as its main focus I was suddenly able to “prove” I could hold down a marketing job at an actual company. This was likely the main experience the temp agency used to say “She’s got great marketing experience!” and secure me my first post-college job.
Other Experiences
If it wasn’t for the CV I kept adding to in my college days, I would have never remembered working some of these jobs. I’ll add them here so you can see some of the things I did to keep myself afloat as a student.
–Call center fundraising, minimum wage. HATED THIS. The only reason I stuck with it was because of insecurity. The only reason it’s on my resume is because I had a long run with it, spanning 3.5 years, with a great track record in the role. At the time of graduation I had no job except this one that lasted more than a year. I had hoped it would impress someone that I could keep a job for that long. Really wish I could go back in time and hold Baby Darcy’s face gently as I said “Oh honey. Don’t do this to yourself. Leave the screaming callers to some other shmuck and we can go watch TV”.
–Nonprofit work connected with my university, which paid a $5,000 scholarship for a year of employment. Terrible. My worst work experience. I did poorly in my role and didn’t manage to get things back up and running smoothly. My supervisors were frustrated with me, and the office environment went sour. I didn’t know how to ask for help or how to set up some support, so I continued to flounder in the role for an entire year. It’s hard for me to remember this time, as you might read about from my Year of Fear post. Nowadays I choose to be grateful for the scholarship it got me and remind myself of that.
–Tutoring. Ten an hour. Poorly run. Boring. Quit after one semester in 2015 because it wasn’t worth their time or mine.
–Temping in the summer of 2015. $15 an hour. This turned out to be the golden goose for me. I started in a receptionist role, which in hindsight was an unnecessary role for the company in question. However, their team was excellent, much like that from my favorite internship, and I loved working with them.
–Waitressing. This varied by shift, but the absolute minimum was $12-something per hour. Because I was so busy with other things these shifts were few and far between, but always there when I needed one.
–Extracurriculars. No pay. Had fun. Not my best look, again due to insecurity.
–Personal assistant. $10 an hour. My freshman and sophomore years I’d go do things for a lady living in Beacon Hill, mostly walking her poodle and helping her organize her mountains of paperwork. That was a weird gig.
–Research assistant. No pay. I did this for exactly one semester and then never did it again. It was mostly editing a professor’s writing who was brilliant in his field but not well-versed in writing in English (not his native language). I liked the work well enough but it was unpaid, hence my decline for extending the work opportunity.
Now, out of all of these meandering gigs I think the only one that maybe helped me post-college was Internship #3, and even that was only helpful in securing my first post-college job.
Maybe.
Now you know this fabulous career trajectory of mine is more due to luck, not years slaving away for the ultimate reward.
Post-College FTW
And then, through a good reputation with a temp agency, I got my first job: marketing grunt at a real estate company! After I got that role I wised up and learned how to best leverage myself into making more and more. Here’s a rapid-fire summary of my post-college trajectory:
Mid-2016, 22 years old: temping at real estate firm making $15 an hour, or ~$31,000 yearly
Early 2017, 22 years old: I go perm at the firm! Now I make $20 an hour, or ~$41,000 yearly
Early 2018, 23 years old: I’m recruited to a boutique firm at $60,000 yearly salary
Early 2019, 24 years old: Raise to $65,000 yearly salary plus $5,000 split in quarterly bonuses
Mid-2019, 25 years old: Recruited to a healthtech company at $90,000 salary. Big step up!
Why I’m Sharing This
I want to show you that I didn’t get here because I was 100% dedicated since Day 1. You can tell that much from my meandering internships and other work experiences. What helped me was getting out of my fearfulness and preparing myself from where I was at. If you didn’t have a good work experience in college, that’s okay. If you’re still in college, that’s okay. Know that getting to a high-paying job is within the realm of possibility, even if your resume reflects a lost soul.
What were some of the jobs you took on in school to get by?
*My current job, however, is mounting STIFF competition. Once my bonus clears it might take the #1 spot.