Twenty-Something Without a Career

So you are 20 something and you don’t have a career. You are wondering what to do next. You are a bit frustrated, pretty broke, and kind of negative about the future. Maybe you are still living with your parents or you are struggling on your own. Maybe you have a post-secondary education or maybe you don’t. If you do, you’re in debt. If you don’t, you wonder if you should go back to school.?

Maybe you have a car and if you do, sometimes it runs well and sometimes it lets you down. Maybe no one gave you career advice and your network mostly consists of family and a few friends who are in the same boat you are - yay. But, you know you want a career and not just a job. You just don’t know where to start. Well this article is for you. Read on and write this down.

Know who you are. Let me take that back. You won’t know who you are until you are forty and even then you probably won’t know. So focus on what you do know:

• What are you good at?
• What do you like and what do you not like?
• What have you tried?

Here is where I recommend taking some personality tests. Some good ones are Myers Briggs and StrengthsFinder. Start there. If you don’t know who you are, let someone else tell you.

What do you want to do? Okay, so you don’t know. That’s fine. No one truly knows what they want to do or at least not for a while. What ideas do you have? Are you interested in nature, helping people, building things (or destroying things), planning and designing, small business, cooking? Write down some ideas. The more the better. What patterns emerge? What do you gravitate towards?

Okay so this is where people tend to get stuck. All the ideas look good or unrelated or maybe you are thinking ‘how would I make a career or even a living of that?’. Life is one big experiment and someone wise once told me that if you are seventy percent sure of something, that is good enough. One hundred percent sure doesn’t exist. So if you are seventy percent sure, GO FOR IT. Commit one hundred percent to making it work and if it doesn’t, pivot and commit again.?

Alright, now that you sort of know who you are and what you like as well as sort of know what you would like to do, let’s get to work. This is the COMMIT part.

Talk to some people who are doing what you are interested in. Okay, I know that you hate talking to people with a passion and if you do have to talk, you would rather text. I get it. You are not going to get the answers you are looking for through text and emojis. Sorry. Start looking on LinkedIn for someone who is doing what you would like to do. When you locate someone send them an invitation to connect with this line:

“I came across your profile and would love to know more about what you do. Would you be open to a 15 minute phone call later this week? Thank you in advance! [your name]”

The reason for the fifteen minute phone call is this - it is short enough that most people will accept and also short enough that if talking to a random stranger on the phone gives you hives, you will be okay. IT IS ONLY fifteen minutes. If the conversation really goes badly, you can politely thank them for their time and never speak to them again. Period.?

Schedule the phone call and actually talk to the person. Okay, so you don’t know what to say and don’t want to sound like an idiot. Plus you are so nervous you can’t eat for two days. Here is how the conversation is going to go down:

“Hi so and so. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. I am a recent graduate [or whatever it is that you are doing] and am looking to take the next step in my career [don’t worry if you don’t have a career]. I would love to hear how you got to where you are.”?

Now let this person talk. In fact, you just need to keep asking them questions until the time is up. At the end of fifteen minutes say ‘thank you so much for your time’. If the conversation went well add ‘would you mind if I contacted you again’? If it was the worst conversation of your life say ‘have a great day’. DONE. Now do this ten more times. I am serious. Ten times.

Update your LinkedIn Profile. This is such a basic step and one that so many people don’t do well. Fill the WHOLE THING OUT. If you took one language course, put that down. If you volunteered somewhere, include that. Include what you studied and where, any awards you won, your skills, projects you worked on, things you have written or produced. Make sure to include all relevant work history and 3 bullet points about what you did at each job. Now the fun part, include a headline for yourself. What do you aspire to be? Put that in the headline. Include a description of yourself. If you don’t know what to write, summarize the things you are interested in and what you are aspiring to.

Add people to your LinkedIn. Add everyone you know, ever worked with, went to school with, family, friends, that person you met on the bus or at summer camp. Add people you don’t know but would like to know. You would be shocked at how many people accept an invitation from someone they don’t know. If you want to increase your chances of them accepting, include this note “I came across your profile and would like to add you to my professional network”. DONE.

Get a recommendation on your profile. This could be a former teacher, someone you worked with or volunteered with. Write the majority of the recommendation for the person. I AM SERIOUS. People don’t know how to write a good recommendation so before you receive a piece of crap that you don’t want to include on your profile and are too embarrassed to ask them to revise, write it for them!

Create a resume. Okay, so no one likes creating a resume. Get a free template and FILL IT OUT. Include any work history, volunteering, your education and what you studied, your skills (ask a friend what your skills are if you don’t know), any languages you speak. Include the same aspiring headline as your LinkedIn profile. Your LinkedIn profile and your resume should always match by the way. Then make a pdf copy (never send an editable version of your resume when applying for a job). Your resume should be one page. Even an executive at a company has a one page resume so you can do it too.

Start applying for jobs. LinkedIn is a great place to start. A very large percentage of jobs are filled through people so your best bet is to find a mutual connection at that company OR send it to someone who you think may be the hiring manager. Not sure how to figure this out? Start searching for managers at that company on LinkedIn. If you aren’t sure if you located the right person, who cares? Send it to that person with this note “I came across [insert role] at your company. I would be grateful if you could forward my resume to the hiring manager. Thank you in advance”.?

Apply for a lot of jobs. Practice makes perfect.

Interview. Okay so now you are really sh*tting your pants. Relax. Interviewing is a skill that is developed over time. Interview as often as you can. If it goes badly or you don’t get the job, reflect on what you would do differently and interview again. Don’t get ahead of yourself or freak yourself out. Focus on ‘winning’ the interview and nothing else.

Rinse and repeat. If you get stuck return to knowing who you are and start again.

A few side notes. Sometimes people treat twenty-somethings like crap. It’s very unfortunate but it happens. It is not okay. Let someone know if they made you feel uncomfortable and invest in a good punching bag. Let that garbage go. Also, if you still live with your parents, you should punch your punching bag at least once a day for good measure. Living at home is HARD. Punch away.

Also, I mentioned LinkedIn here a lot. LinkedIn is currently the mecca of jobs. You should be on there.

Lastly, being twenty something is an amazing time in your life, but also one of the hardest. Take it one day at a time and follow these steps until you get something you want. You CAN do it.