Navigating Early - Mid Career at Startup?

For my fellow connections no matter who you are thanks for clicking to this article. But especially to fellow students that just graduated BIG WELCOME to read these below and hope this would inspire some of you to jump in and apply to that startup!

Where You Come From Doesn't Matter!

"YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE FROM THE ABOVE UNIVERSITY" "Thanks to the Internet Age, COLLEGE DOES NOT MATTER, KNOWLEDGE ALONE MATTERS."

During my first years working at one of the biggest startup in Indo, i quickly identified rockstars within the same batch of fresh graduates not because of where they come from but how they think, what they already know, hard skills that they already possess.

Coming from the above university may have its privileges but it would only bring you as far as passing the CV Screening process. I came from Medan, a city outside of Java island. So as shown here the campus that i went to is not amongst the top 10 in Indonesia. We will rant about education disparity between islands maybe in another post haha.

But this fact alone made me very insecure about my standings and potential vs other classmates that went to these top schools. Should i limit my dreams? goals? knowing that at this point i have already lost at the start line. While i was pondering with this thought continuously, These 2 small action was to my believe what made me as what i am now :

• I would try to search as much as possible as broad as possible what is it with the internet industry. From consumer POV, Business POV, and several different branch of the business. - "Key is start as broad and explorative as possible to learn more about yourself as well what interest you"
• I decided to put my thoughts into practice to rest my curiosity, With Laptop + Internet at hand i found out that there are some skills needed to get in this industry. So i created a Freelancer account and did Simple Website Testing + Website Data Entry for almost 1 year during my college years

(Wow so much cringe and nostalgia looking at this profile created all the way back in 2013)

No Dream will Come True with Obsession and Hard Work!

Question to you reader: Have you done enough today to reach your better potential ?

I was deeply inspired by one of my supervisors talk regarding :

"If you put 101% everyday even though your current enviroment doesn't reward you for that, if you keep it long enough someday somewhere you will be grateful you did "

There are many ways to do your 101% everyday depending on where you are now :

• Be the specialist - You are already full fixed on what you wanted to do and where you want to be and the skills needed to make that happen, Plus the gaps to close it then the old but gold "Practice makes perfect" does the magic. Read up an article about that topic or skill, start your mini project that utilize that skill to be your portfolio.
• Be the generalist - You are similar to me, we don't know/ don't want to make the final decision yet. To you i say its okay its actually more fun in a way read up as many books, articles, online courses with at least >3 different topics in the weeks. Mark 1-2 topics that would go hand in hand with each other and is applicable. Then introduce another 2 different topic next week see what's would work well with previous other topic. "When you find one topic vs other different topic similarities in pattern that's where the magic happen"

Plus: Most of us didn't end up on the right major choice anyway, explore your options learn from other industries as much as possible

Become Genuinely Interested in Other People

Once we graduate from university we all had different 192,848.04 Hours vs others. The baseline here are people would know something that you don't and you want to find out what that is. Nobody likes to hold a conversation to someone who only talk about themselves. So this two mindset would help you a lot in early career adaptation:

• Try to be a good interviewer, genuinely feel that every person is the most interesting person in the world and they have a story to tell. You just need to dig out what makes them so.
• Every person is an expert in something that you are not. Hear and Learn from them

"To tie these two up be sincere in digging for these information, do this and you'll be accepted and welcomed anywhere "

The above interaction when hold frequently would play into your favor in inducing more creative out of the box thinking. Most of the great unconventional ideas happened when the two seemingly unrelated things contributed to a singular success.