<p>Canuck, I wouldn’t advise that student anything until I asked what that student wants to do for a living. There is no banishment- and guess what, even C students from third tier universities get jobs in corporate America all the time. No- the C student from no-name is not getting hired as an analyst at Credit Suisse, and isn’t going to be working on new derivative algorithms at DE Shaw. So tell me what this student wants to do and there are for sure things that he or she can be doing to enhance the odds.</p>
<p>Many of the companies I have worked for look for strong and persistent initiative. That can take many forms. Doing an Independent Study at a U that doesn’t make it easy- that’s initiative. Persuading a professor to let you join a team of grad students heading to Peru on an archaeological dig when typically only grad students can go- and then being able to integrate that experience into the overall education/intellectual aspirations- that’s initiative. Working for three years for the same professor- first, just indexing and proof-reading, then research, then ghost writing, AND being the person who wrote an Op-Ed under the professors name (with guidance and final edits going to the professor, of course) AND being the person who got the Economist or Financial Times to run the Op-Ed. That’s initiative.</p>
<p>Many of the companies I’ve worked for look for peer influencing skills. So being a camp counselor and telling people who are younger and shorter what to do all day is a type of leadership- but not peer leadership. Being president of your fraternity and persuading the frat to eliminate its hazing rituals, or to go dry, or to eliminate dues to make the organization accessible to low income kids on campus- that’s peer leadership.</p>
<p>I won’t bore you. Tell me what the kid wants to do and there are ways to enhance the odds- but they should come out of what the student is interested in, not some blind checklist of “here’s how to get hired by Corporate America”. I won’t tell a kid who loves urban planning that he should have majored in electrical engineering (there are great jobs in urban planning right now BTW- and LEED certification is a fantastic career enhancement down the road).</p>