Putting your degree to work
I've been reading a lot of threads that talk about the frustration of young people with new degrees being able to find jobs due to lack of experience. There are several factors working here. One is the expectations of what a degree will immediately do for you. Higher learning institutions have become paper mills financed by the DOE. The feds give out six figure student loans like they are candy with little or no regard to what that degree will generate in potential income. It's great for the schools as it makes them money. They will go so far to tell you "hey not getting a job with that BA/BS? come on back and for just a little more money you can get that MBA and land the really BIG job". So now the student has a false sense of security and a lot of debt.
The next issue that comes up is initial earnings expectations. Recent grads have to understand that you worth in salary is tied to what you will make your employer for what you do. Most of us spend our time in our first job learning how to apply our education to what our employer NEEDS and WANTS rather than having our degree get us a big check. Expectations are skewed as well as in most cases what you have been told by your recruiter, school, etc, do not line up with your employer. Let me put it bluntly you are not worth what you think you are worth in the beginning. Until then you are basically a trainee and the company is losing money on you while you learn. Commonly companies view this as a training investment. Like all investments there will come a time were the company's ROI is measured and many times it will have negative consequences. Zig Ziglar addresses this in his book "See You At The Top". He states you need to learn that you will have to make a whole bunch of people rich before you will be rich.
Armed with that information you may end up taking a position in an industry or company you never dreamed you would work for. You get your foot in the door and try to make your employer money. If you do you may get to use your degree or maybe not. I've known many attorneys over the years that passed the BAR and never practiced one day. I took a collection job 34 yrs ago after being an industry I thought sure I would be in forever. I've made a very good living during that time and lived in 10 cities in the US. I have a good number of employees that make six figure incomes that have no degrees. They learned it was not about what that piece of paper that was bought said, it was about what they accomplished while they were employed.