<p>I've always wondered, how difficult is it for Berkeley grads to get full-time jobs after graduation? I'm particularly interested in hearing cases where the job holder had no work experience during college.</p>
<p>I'm an Economics major with lots of meaningful extracurricular activities and passionate interests... just wondering how much my lack of work experience will hurt me when it's time to start my career.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. :)</p>
<p>experience is good. </p>
<p>network is better. </p>
<p>grades are best. </p>
<p>god-tier grades are bester.</p>
<p>god-tier network is besterest.</p>
<p>god-tier experience is besterestest.</p>
<p>rich daddy > all, though</p>
<p>My brother graduated from UCB’s School of Public Health last year, and just recently got a job that is somewhat related to his major at a health organization. He worked at an electronics store a few years back for a short while, but I don’t think he has much experience, other than that (I wouldn’t really know, we don’t talk much). It’ll definitely take a LOT of interviews to score a job that you like and that pays decently enough. Being a Berkeley grad has to somewhat make up for lackluster work experience, right?</p>
<p>He started searching after summer school, though. He had a temporary job for a few weeks that was totally unrelated to his degree that paid almost $10 less an hour than his current job (full-time, pays approx. $23/hr as entry-level, but not a worthy career, he is still looking for the right career). Just kill the interviews and shine when the time comes and hopefully you’ll land your dream career! :)</p>
<p>Times are tough now, especially for people with no experience. One thing you’ll learn in searching for jobs is that experience trumps almost everything else.</p>
<p>Let me put it this way: rather than finishing my BA right after high school, I started working in politics. I now have 3 years of experience, and I’ll be transferring to Berkeley in the spring. I’m currently on staff for an elected official making $20 an hour (full time), with benefits. Not bad, especially when you consider that most of our (unpaid) interns are graduates of UC Riverside or Irvine (the closest big schools in the area)–one of them was valedictorian. They have better educational credentials than me, but no experience.</p>
<p>My advice: get some experience and build some connections. Those are worth far more than your degree, for better or worse. A degree is useful for “checking the box,” so to speak, and for the cases where you don’t have a connection with the employer. The Berkeley brand does mean something. Even so, an employer will choose a high school grad with 4 years of experience* over a Berkeley grad with none.</p>
<p>(*Of course, it may not be possible for most mere high school graduates to get the jobs that college grads seek, but this assumes that the person did–as I have–because of solid experience at a lower level during and immediately after high school.)</p>
<p>you’ll learn being book smart is different than being street smart.
getting street smarts take balls. getting book smarts take brain.</p>
<p>if you can master both, i applaud you. hell, most ho-hum people can’t even master one.</p>
<p>w.r.t. nick_scheu’s post, it’s bittersweet to agree but i’ll try to add some sort of additional perspective here.</p>
<p>first off, whatever route he took is not conventional and definitely not for everyone. there is a certain providence in being able to have a vision for the future and understanding how important a career founded upon a strong educational background is. </p>
<p>though you should focus on your studies, don’t be lulled into not working (part time, full time, internships, summer gigs, etc). how can you justify your idle summers to employees, or low-unit semesters with only a few EC’s under your belt. how do you QUANTIFY an intangible “passion” if your passion hasn’t already driven you to find hands on experience in the work place or at least as a major leader in a school organization?</p>
<p>but that is as far as i will agree with nick. now to pick at the logic.</p>
<p>
aren’t they getting the experience now? you have 3 years under your belt of work, they have 3 years of school under their belt. they will spend a few years interning, you will spend a few years schooling. sounds like a zero sum game, and if anything, school helps for work understanding in some cases, work helps for school understanding in rare cases. since when did application precede theory?</p>
<p>
may i ask where the this awfully lucky high school grad got his <em>first</em> year of experience? flipping burgers? got a gig from a relative or other connection? other job that just NEEDED someone? if a high school grad can start SOMEWHERE, how much more a college grad?
just by actively engaging in the college experience, an alert and aware student will have an extensive network ready by graduation.</p>
<p>
a degree is more than a piece of paper, it is supposed to represent how much you’ve grown as an individual, both intellectually and socially. don’t underestimate it. but a golden network could even help the stupidest of high school drop outs. once a net falls, you only have whatever legs you’ve built up for yourself left to stand on. make sure you think about what kind of legs you want to have when you’re standing alone.</p>
<p>again, this is all related to the idea of opportunity costs. working, schooling, sleeping, socializing, etc etc. you cant have all at once. as you can see in nick_scheu’s next post in this thread if he chooses to address this question: how old are you? (and do you have any educational background beyond HS [community college, etc])</p>
<p>"experience is good. </p>
<p>network is better. </p>
<p>grades are best."</p>
<p>I hope you are kidding about this unless you are talking about how to become a professor.</p>
<p>A degree can be just a sheet of paper if you can’t explain what you learned during an interview. Even if you do, if you explain it like one of those professors, the interviewer will quickly lose interest in you.</p>
<p>Working 3 years after graduating high school might be overkill, but i think it is important to spend at least one summer visiting a company or two just to see how it is different from school. You don’t need to go to Oracle or Microsoft and do one of those dream internships (although that would be quite nice), but just chilling at the company (even though you’re not doing any work) and sitting there and feeling the 8-hour work day is already a lot of experience.</p>
<p>A lot of people believe that they have to get a legitimate internship that goes on for at least 2 months and do some serious project as a team and do the internship no later than the summer of sophomore year. A lot of people get scared that their grades are just not good enough for the company to hire them so plenty folks don’t even try and ask the question that if it’s okay “where the job holder had no work experience during college.”</p>
<p>I’ll be blunt: it <em>might</em> not matter, but you will be judged that you didn’t do anything in college no matter what grades you got. </p>
<p>Frankly, no one learned anything too significant just after 2 years of college and the few lucky ones who actually got an internship at a very well-known company had the skills to convince to sell themselves. (whether it be writing a resume that somehow stands out or having some innate skills at interviewing or just having your dad/relatives to help you out)</p>
<p>So what is my point? Let’s be clear, no one is THAT smart or THAT dumb. Everyone gets a job at some point in their life no matter where they graduate so it is all about the impression that you make. Your grades and previous experience working at an electronics store may be good to get your first real job. But after that, it is all about how much you perform and the money you make for the company, or better yet, how much you are important to the company which includes your networking skills and ideas you output. From there, you can advance within the company or start another new career since people will recognize you if you are doing things right. (just like a good restaurant gathers a lot of people w/o necessarily advertising)</p>
<p>Now do you think your grade in Econ 101A is that too important?</p>
<p>While you’re still in school, definitely try to do some externships/internships for experience and resume padding. Even if they aren’t paid, I think they’ll really be worth it. At least that’s my plan. My friend who’s a sophomore did that, and he seems to have plenty of jobs opportunities even before graduating.</p>
<p>Sounds like people trying to justify getting bad grades in school.</p>
<p>^ Only time will tell if you are right. It’s just not fair to many folks who got crushed in their first semester in college for all sorts of reasons that it is impossible to catch up those who started out well. </p>
<p>I just want to get good enough grades to get cum laude or get into the 5th year master’s program. Otherwise, I just don’t see the benefit in the long-run. In the short-run, yes, it feels awesome to get that A and beating 80~90% of the people in the class.</p>
<p>How about we hear from people who HAVE graduated from Cal, with no work experience, and how hard it was for them to get jobs. Not people who had work experience before cal, and people who are still attending.</p>
<p>^^ anyone can have a great start and choke or start rocky and then have a clutch finish, indeed many do. you have a good goal for yourself and i don’t think anyone would argue it’s impossible for anyone to catch up to anyone. but if you’re a consistently poor performer, then even when someone “ahead” of you slips, you won’t be there to overtake. anyway, good luck to you on your goals and i’m sure a good gpa will be a factor for getting you to where you want to go.</p>