correct me if i’m wrong

Last week, Charlie Hoehn released a free e-book entitled, Recession-Proof Graduate: Charlie Hoehn’s Guide To Getting Any Job Within A Year Of Finishing College. The premise is that today’s generation of college graduates are entering a job market that functions unlike that of any previous generation. By defying conventional wisdom and taking risks, Charlie has established himself as an Internet marketer and film editor that worked with a Who’s Who of popular Internet personalities, including Seth Godin, Tucker Max, Ramit Sethi, and Tim Ferriss.

I loved this book.

Charlies provides a voice of reason in to a generation that is inundated with more knowledge on a daily basis than previous generations thought imaginable. Discerning that knowledge — especially when it comes to career decisions — is hard. The themes are those I’ve encountered myself, struggled with, and written about: knowing when NOT to take advice, leveraging the Internet for networking, and increasing your productivity and comfort levels to remain competitive.

The motivation for this book is largely based on observing peers that are frustrated with the conventional job search. The points that really resonated with me are:

1. “Shotgun blasting  your resume.” The importance of your network is greater than ever before.  Social networking on the Internet allows us to connect to the smallest niches in the world. The people that comprise these niches are the ones you want to work with. We are no longer constrained to geographic boundaries. Not only can we connect to groups of people with which we are more strongly aligned, we can do so with less work. Better and cheaper. Win-win.

2. The misconception of “no good jobs in a recession.” The opposite of this is true. Recessions eliminate bad jobs. Recessions are simply correcting mechanisms for the market. They inevitably bounce back, and the nation grows stronger as a result (proven by United States GDP data from the last 200+ years). We are continually pushed toward greater automation, and there’s no automating challenging, creative jobs. The clearest contemporary example of this is the dearth of the Big Three U.S. automakers. They were ousted by car companies that not only paid their employees less, but had greater automation and hence could increase profit margins. I feel this example is rudimentary enough name not to cite data, so if you want to challenge it, feel free.

In short, my greatest sympathies go out to those that are affected by the recession, but these people are forced to attain higher skill levels to remain competitive in the job market. I think most people would agree with this; whether our nation will foster personal growth and education for these individuals is another issue.

3. “Grad school is stupid in 95% of all situations.“ The pursuit of a graduate degree should take place if and only if it’s 1. intrinsically-motivated or 2. absolutely necessary in your industry. Aside from that, the pursuit is illogical, economically-speaking (the only exception I might grant is an MBA from Harvard or Stanford or Wharton, simply because brands of elite schools have such a strong reputation).

This book’s weakness is that Charlie doesn’t address his audience directly. His advice reads as though it is universally applicable to all college grads, although it’s primarily suited for the business school crowd.  Doctors, lawyers, and most engineers are still part of an old-school world.  I would say those in the liberal and (non-mass-media) fine arts are in-between; they can be smart and leverage the niceties of the modern world, but can’t completely rely on it. Those in software engineering, marketing, advertising and mass media can anticipate careers in a world that’s completely been re-invented in the last 15 years.

Additionally, the latter half of the book pertains even more narrowly to Charlie’s discipline, marketing.  As a freelancing software engineer, I suspect my approach would be somewhat different, although I don’t have enough experience to determine what that difference would be.

To be fair, this book is merely a precursor to a longer, more thorough study of gen-Yers. Find out more information at Hoehn’s Musings.