Lessons I Learnt From Deferring My Graduate Role By A Year

As my 'start-up year' comes to an end and I prepare to join the management consulting world, a lot of my friends have asked me if deferring my start date for my graduate role was worth it. Now a little disclaimer: I knew I wanted to have a year after university before I started applying for graduate roles and it did factor into which firms and roles I applied for. So when I went to insight days or did internships, it was something I enquired about. After graduating in BSc Business, Maths & Stats at LSE in July 2018, I was fortunate enough to be joining a firm that allowed me to defer and I received my start-date for late September 2019.

My reasoning behind taking this year was to work on my start-up, travel a bit and really just take a break. University was a great experience but alongside internships, working part-time (because London is ridiculously expensive) and also trying to secure my degree - I was tired. I also ran a tutoring start-up with one of my friends during the last two years so, like many other students, I felt like my foot had been on the gas non-stop. For me, it was time to take a step off the conveyer belt and do things on a different speed.

I spent most of the time building @StromCollection (www.stromcollection.com): a direct-to-consumer brand focused on creating high quality garments for the modern working woman with great fit in mind. I built a team, have been working on building an affordable-luxury brand and I've done a lot of pitching. We've had a few wins, a lot of losses and made a lot of mistakes - the learning curve has been steep. I also spent time with my family and friends, travelled to a few spots and watched a lot of Netflix, Hayu, NowTV etc. I hope the lessons I share will help anyone considering taking a year out between university and career for personal projects, start-ups or otherwise, make their decision. So here we go:

1.    Be transparent

Transparency and awareness are key. While considering a gap year or start-up year, talk to people. I think a lot of people are scared of sharing their plans before they are cemented. A combination of fear, judgement and uncertainty probably feed into that. But I found sharing my plans let people around me help me navigate a path that wasn’t considered ‘safe’. Doing so allowed other people to make introductions to people who became a really key part of my professional and entrepreneurial journey.  

On the flipside, the firm hiring you is taking on a massive investment so it's important for you to be invested in them too. Part of this is letting them know what your plans are, and a bonus is showing how your time off will be beneficial in making you better at your job. I think most firms now appreciate that an essential part of being a well-rounded, healthy and happy employee is taking time to do the things we love. Sometimes this means flexibility to leave early one evening to go to a salsa class and other times it means taking an extended break to travel the world. What exactly that 'thing' is depends on the individual and the firm, but that open discussion is important in coming to your role after your year off and getting the best start at a long and successful career.

2.    You'll hear the question 'So what are you doing now?' about a 1,000 times.

To be fair, you'd probably get this question even if you aren't taking a year out. It's just a lot easier when you have a concrete 'I'm a [role] at [firm]'. It’s even easier if you have 30 gorgeous instagrammable pictures from all the places around the globe that you've visited. I had neither and I was still learning myself what STR?M was going to be as well as who it was going to serve. My advice would be to get an elevator-style 30 second snippet ready of what you're doing, ready to defend yourself against any inquisitive aunties. Mine went along the lines of: 'At the moment I'm working on creating a workwear brand for modern working women as well as tutoring Economics & Maths to pay the bills'.

This was also really useful outside of awkward family scenarios such as events that I had the pleasure of being a part of. Two events I loved panelling were the ‘Get Into Consulting’ Bright Network and the Financial Literacy workshop hosted by the Forward and Young Women’s Hub.

3.    Have a solid plan (and stick to it).

After having very defined milestones (university/apprenticeship etc.), the freedom of a gap year (or start-up year in my case) can be exhilarating. All those things that you didn't have time for while you were at uni can actually be done now - and new possibilities altogether. Although, time that is unaccounted for is very deceptive. Have a clear plan of how you would like to spend your time - even week to week - so that you don't wake up 2 months before you have to start work and realise how much you still have planned. My checklist may have looked like this:

• Speak to at least 5 prospective consumers in Canary Wharf
• Spend a weekend with my sisters
• Train for the Reading Half Marathon (which I completed March 17th!) 

If you're working on a start-up, I'd say this is crucial for direction. When you're talking to different people about your business you'll get so much varying advice - some of it useful, some of it not so much. If you don't have a plan, you'll get swayed in so many different directions that you won't get much done at all.

4.    Be open-minded

Now this statement will at first appear to be in direct contradiction to the advice I just gave but as we all know, life never really goes to plan. When I started this journey, being the delirious optimist that I am, I concluded that we’d get our money in 3 months and I’d be running a successful D2C brand in about 6 months. Now while that clearly didn’t happen – I learnt a lot. I didn’t anticipate that we’d end up entering the Santander Universities competition; it wasn’t even on our radar. But through someone else dropping out, we got asked if we wanted to participate and next thing we were pitching at the semi-finals against an impressive cohort of entrepreneurs.

Of course you’ll have a plan in mind and it's a great thing to have, but life has a funny way of showing us that we're not always the ones in the driving seat.

5.    Reflect, reflect, reflect.

If you do decide to take a gap year / start-up year, it'll likely be the first time you've stepped off the conveyor belt of life. Up until this point, you've probably completed GCSE, A-Level/IB and University without much consideration because these are the natural next steps your peers are taking. For me this year was the first significant amount of time I have had to reflect on everything I'd achieved so far and carry out an inventory on whether I was working towards making the mark on the world that I envisioned. Sometimes we don't even realise how we've changed or grown because we're so busy going through the motions of life. Take a moment to congratulate yourself on your hard work and envision what your years ahead will look like.

In summary...

To answer Natasha's question, it was 100% worth it. My year has been filled with joyous moments as well as difficult ones. I've met people who I intended to ask a single question and they've ended up having a significant impact in my life. I've seen more of the world and I've pushed myself beyond my own imagination. I’m excited for the next chapter and really excited I could share the closing if this one with you all. 

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