The Hidden Power of Young Professionals

Welcome back to my LinkedIn newsletter where I share tips, ideas, and strategies to help you become more effective in business and life.

Download my free guide to??7 Myths to Working Effectively Across Cultures

One of the biggest misconceptions I see among young professionals is that their youth and relative lack of experience is a liability. But it doesn’t have to be.

Young people often focus on what they lack, while overlooking the powerful resources they do have at their disposal. For example:

1. You have time.?You might not think of time as a resource, but when you have a spouse and a family and a wide range of other commitments and obligations outside of work, you will see that time is most certainly a resource—and as a young person who perhaps doesn’t have these various commitments, you actually have an advantage over your colleagues. So, the key, of course, is to use it. Take on extra work to dive into topics that will be useful to your job. Take on extra assignments senior colleagues might mention at a meeting and do whatever you can to do really well on these assignments. And take time to develop you network. Find opportunities to get advice and cultivate a network of mentors. In short, the time you have early in your career is a precious commodity, not to be wasted. And, if used properly, it can be a tremendous advantage in setting yourself up for a positive career trajectory.

2. You already have networks.?As a young person, you might not necessarily think of them as networks, but those friends you hung out with in college, the ones you went to spring break with and worked on the school newspaper with, those are your network. And so too are those family friends you know, and those friends from summer camp and your baseball team. You get the idea. Really work hard to keeping up these relationships, especially with people in careers you might be interested in one day. I can’t tell you how many people found their second or third jobs by doing exactly that—seeing what friends from college were up to in their mid-20s and finding a great opportunity from these connections.

3. What you learned in college can actually help you—a lot!?Think about what you learned in college, even outside of your classes. You learned communication skills and have probably put together your share of PowerPoint presentations and delivered presentations in front of an audience. You also probably have some good communication skills, understand and respect diversity and have learned to work and live in an inclusive working environment. You are probably a quick study (you kind of have to be in order to survive college), have learned how to evaluate issues from multiple perspectives and write about them succinctly and persuasively. You have some solid research skills and can relatively quickly and reliably determine the state of knowledge in a particular field. In short, even before learning a thing about your field, you already come in well-prepared to make a significant contribution. So, recognize what you already can do and use it to your advantage.