“Self-education, I firmly believe, is the only king of education there is” – Isaac Asimov.] Many young talented UK residents find it almost impossible to find a job after graduation. And we are talking not about positions, that require having certain experience, but even acquiring entry-level job appears to be a hard task for some of them. They often seem to blame education system for this. But to tell the truth, colleges and universities provide academic knowledge. The rest is up to students themselves.
Two types of skills
When we speak about self-development, it is important to understand that it is not only about getting professional (hard) skills. Social (soft) skills are as important. There are situations, when employer choses a person, who is confident and persuasive over highly-qualified professional.
It is important to understand what is this particular set of skills would look like. A lot of people consider cooking and ability to survive in wilderness as those that belong there. Well, they are wrong. Of course, those skills may be of use someday, but in order to get a job you need to:
• Be persuasive;
• Be a good listener;
• Be a confident speaker;
• Be able to “feel” a person you speak to;
• Be a team player;
• Be able to control the situation;
Truth to be told, when you apply for an entry-level job or an internship, nobody cares about how much books you’ve read or even how high your GPA is. You may even encounter a stress-interview, so having developed soft skills is a way to succeed. Socializing is the best way to gather those. The beautiful thing is that you can develop such traits in everyday activities like spending time with friends in a bar, playing sport games, meeting new people etc.
Those are harder to get, as they cannot be acquired naturally. But still, you can do it by:
- Reading specialized literature.
You can find a lot of useful books in library, so you don’t even have to spend money on them. The only problem is that you most likely will only get theoretical knowledge and it may be hard to understand some practical aspects of your future work. But still, reading books may and will be useful for you.
- Visiting special trainings.
Trainings are great, real professionals will teach you real things from their own experience. The problem is that they cost a lot. However, sometimes there are free lectures, where you can pick something for yourself.
- Creating your own small business or start-up.
To my mind it is the best way not only to learn something, but actually start working and earning money. Not every start-up is doomed to succeed, but who knows, maybe yours is. If you have an idea for your business, try to bring it to life while studying. There is 90% chance that you won’t have time for that after graduation.
You should never stick to only one of those methods. Try do all of them and you will get synergy and that leads to increasing chances for you to succeed with your goal.
Still, you will need to organize time properly to catch up with everything. Luckily nowadays we have lots of resources that may help you with that:
- Rescue Time – helps you to manage your time
- Edusson.com – helps you with your home assignments;
- Evernote – helps you to organize your workspace;
- Dropbox – helps you to store and share your files properly.
Those are just some of the sites you could use to save time. There are tons of them more.
Start investing in your future right after reading this article, if you haven’t started yet. It is not something you would regret.