It was about two weeks ago that the university sent another graduating class out into the world. Unprepared and ill-advised, they are entering the most challenging job market since 2008. It might be be worse than that as we are only in early stages.
I work around these young people that are hoping to enter the workforce. I have for over 20 years. I’m not faculty at SFSU but I teach from time to time and host workshops and company tours for the more serious students. Most of what I do, really, is talk with students. Most of these students haven’t been advised very well…if at all. They are aimless and have unrealistic ‘goals’. I labor fruitlessly to fix that.
To put this bluntly: Most students leave school useless and nobody needs that.
The students talk to me about the need for joining clubs and getting good grades in stupid classes which is all just performative. They imagine that an internship is going to magically land in front of them. They think that simple possession of a fraudulent diploma is going to get them a fancy job. None of that is true. I doubt that it’s ever been true outside of a select group long ago.
At the same time, I see nonstop queries to the hive on r/EngineeringStudents/ and r/MechanicalEngineering from those looking for paying work, wanting to advantage their chances of finding employment out of school. 99% have been fed a fantasy about who they are and how the world works from those that know the least, academics. Be careful of academics these days. Most have never had a real job and few have done anything outside of a schoolhouse.
I made a comment similar to this in response to the eightbillionthpost:
Forget resume. It’s all about portfolio. Portfolio, portfolio, portfolio.
Most good projects can become great portfolio pieces. Cost and scale tend to not be the primary ingredient to a great portfolio. The difference is perspective, execution, and documentation. If you can execute like veteran technician, give perspective like a seasoned engineer, communicate like you would to the CTO, then you are ahead of 99% of other applicants…even if it’s just a 10 component board or 10 lines of code.
That seemed to sum this up pretty well. If you take nothing else from this post take that.
What these young people need….what they must have…NOW…is portfolio.
A resume is where you’ve worked. A certification (degree) is an attesting to your supposed training. Portfolio is neither of those. A portfolio is what you have done. A demonstration of your ability, in real time, in real life.
A big problem in todays labor market is that few people are capable of demonstrating that they have any value, especially those coming out of school. The people that can do this get their application moved to the top of the pile. They do this with documentation of their projects and portfolio.
Look at this from the employers perspective, your diploma doesn’t mean anything anymore, most are fraudulent. The value has been destroyed by decades of college and universities graduating the stupid and incompetent for profit. The diploma, now, just checks a box on a form and nothing more.
What are they looking for?? Evidence! Can you do anything? Are you disciplined and motivated to actually make something happen…without your mommy or teacher holding your hand? Why would anyone hire you?
This advice extends to all students. I don’t care if you are an accounting, zoology, mathematics, or ‘communications’ major. You need to do something in real life, communicate what you did, and have it be meaningful to people that matter. If you can’t figure out how to do this you don’t deserve to graduate or be employed.
How can you do this?
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- Start by sitting down and writing. Just write. Write about projects you’ve done. Make lists. Who did you work with? What did you learn. Just get something down in plain English that says something about the effect you’ve had on earth.
- Produce a web page. It can be free hosted such as Google Sites or pay to have a self hosted site with some kind of CMS (like WordPress). My site is self hosted at InMotion Hosting.
- A web page doesn’t need to be made public, just shareable. You can set it up so that only those you’ve invited or given a password to can view the page. This is up to you but you need to be able to share from it at a moments notice.
- Set up a YouTube channel to hold your videos. Mine at @pverdone. There are several reasons for this. It saves bandwidth and storage on your own page. YouTube is the #2 website in the world and being searchable and findable there can be very helpful.
- I believe that GitHub is a good resource if you work primarily on coding projects. Otherwise, it’s not a good place to focus on. Non-coders hate GitHub.
- At the least, pdf documents in a Dropbox can be shared quickly and easily.
- Make sure that you have an adult email address. Mine is peterverdone@google.com. Makes sure that this is easy to find and click to. This isn’t rocket science. You want folks to call you.
- Make drawings of things you can draw. Just make it a habit. A clean and clear drawing communicates well.
- Make various types of graphs, line, bar, spider, etc. Show data in different ways.
- Did you need to do math? Show it. Make it pretty.
- Critique your own work. Was the problem solved? Were the end costs aligned with projections? What metrics can you provide?
- At the end of a project discussion, evaluate what you would do different if you did the project again.
- Talk about your mistakes. Top people acknowledge mistakes openly so that they can be learned from and improved on. Show you can do this.
- Make a personal logo to use. While I’m not a fan of folks commodifying every part of their lives, a little personal brand identity can be useful with communication. Make this vector artwork using Adobe Illustrator or Inkscape.
- Show the type of work that you are interested in doing. This will force you to get better and make it obvious that you can do that work. Simple stuff.
- If you have nothing at all to show, regardless of your studies, do a Velleman Kit. Talk about what turned you on. Dig deep into the details and have this inform your next kit choice. Move on to some advanced Arduino based projects, documenting and discussing as you go. This will help your find your place if you do it well.
My website serves as my portfolio and project notebook. I can reference technical detail of something that I worked on 25 years ago but also share any of the several hundred projects I discuss with others. In an instant, I can jump right back to 2020 and get into significant detail about my Cyberdyne frame fixture project or a 2023 CNC ICP project or even a 2001 racing skateboard truck. This compounds to any discussion that I have with anyone in front of me…even those I’ve never met and find it online.
For the engineering students:
School doesn’t teach engineering. It can’t. Engineering is an art that one learns from self and masters. They do this by repeatedly solving (or failing to to solve) real problems.
What school does ‘give’ you is tools that you may need later. Good engineers spend a lifetime learning new tools to practice their art. School is just the start of this, not the end.
If you don’t value tools, you probably won’t ever do much. You shouldn’t be hired.
Remember, Students at the best universities are already 3 steps ahead of you…they actually want the good jobs that you dream about.
As you may know, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is referred to as a ‘selective’ school. It’s also one of the best engineering universities in the world. Few of those who apply are chosen to enroll. Those are some of the best of the best.
You may not know that they have a ‘maker portfolio‘ section that their applicants must submit to be considered. They require projects that have actual working demonstrations, not virtual. That means that the project must have been produced IRL and function. Few graduating from lower universities ever get to the level you see from these high school students.
https://mitadmissions.org/apply/firstyear/portfolios-additional-material/
Caltech, Columbia, Tufts, and Carnegie Mellon require the same submissions. I’m sure that many other schools encourage such inclusions.
It turns out, many of the video versions are shared on YouTube. More, acceptance and rejection might also be noted in the title. While many of these demonstrate an elite level of performance at a modern high school level, the average high schooler would be working at a slightly lower level.
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Maker+Portfolio
For your employment portfolios, you should imagine where many of the folks that made these videos will be 4 years farther along and with considerably more resources and guidance to advantage. That is who you will be competing with for an ever-shrinking pool of opportunities.
This post relates to my other post on accountability mechanisms. That’s some valuable guidance.