5 Ways to Navigate the ‘Great Transition’ of Post-Education to Full-Time Work

23 Feb

Dramatically reduce your feelings of anxiety and sense of imposter syndrome

The ‘Great Transition’ to full-time work is jarring.

It can feel like you are stepping out from a cool room with a controlled environment into a harsh Australian summer with no sunscreen.

You feel naked and unprepared. And possibly sunburnt.

For the first time in your life, you have no real structure or clear goals. You have no roadmap to help you or a curriculum telling you what your workload will be like.

The once safe environment provided by the classroom is gone. You are no longer surrounded by a classroom of people roughly the same age as you or a teacher who wants you to succeed.

You now have colleagues you are competing with and a boss who has KPIs to meet. You have more responsibilities and no one who can help you solve your problems.

I know what you’re feeling now: scared, anxious, tired and a growing sense of imposter syndrome. If you haven’t experienced any of these things yet, don't worry. They are coming.

The uncertainty is crippling so you nostalgically long for the days of structure that university provides. The care-free atmosphere and the freedoms you once enjoyed are now just a distant mirage.

That period of your life is over. It is time to grow up a little bit. The only certainty we have in life is that it will change. And a great life is defined by how you respond to these changes.

Why the great transition is harder now more than ever

Transitions in life are hard. But the transition from full-time education to full-time work is one of the most difficult steps you can take as a young person.

You are going through a multitude of changes in other areas of your life too. You might be leaving home for the first time, starting a long-term romantic relationship or finally starting to challenge parental expectations.

While these individual challenges are occurring, there is a bigger change happening in our economy. The way our system is designed does not help young people.

COVID-19 has only made this period more difficult. A weak labor market, especially for young people, means an increase in competition for jobs and a decrease in job quality.

Many entry-level jobs that young people would have taken to develop their skills and experience are gone or have been taken by people with experience desperate for a job.

I’ve got friends with Masters-level degrees in engineering and marketing who are struggling to find even basic entry-level jobs in their fields. They are forced to take any job they can find with more debt than ever.

History tells a grim story too.

In Australia, our labor market has never fully recovered from the 2008/09 recession. It took almost a decade for the levels of employment to reach close to their pre-GFC numbers.

Researchers have found that failure to successfully navigate this period can lead to what they call economic ‘scarring’ on your lifetime earnings. Setbacks that you faced during this period might result in you never being able to recover economically.

You might be thinking: Michael, tell me the truth. Are we fucked?

No, you aren’t fucked. But your journey will be a bit more difficult. You’ll need all the help you can get.

1. Read books. And lots of them

Remember when you played games when you were younger and used cheat codes to level up your character?

Well, you can do the same thing for the most important character in your life:

You.

Books are the legal cheat codes for hacking your personal growth. They are available to everyone. Accessible via the internet, smartphone or local libraries. You would have to go out of your way to avoid encountering books.

Any experience, skill or capability you want to develop can be done via books. Someone else has already taken the time to think and write about it and made it available for you to read.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, a person who can read but chooses not to has no real advantage over a person who wants to read but can’t. The foundation of your learning and knowledge should start with books.

2. Find peer mentors

Good peer mentors can help shortcut your learning. They are old enough to have wisdom about your journey but young enough to understand your context and mindset. A rare balance to have.

I’ve made it a point to cultivate relationships with people 3–5 years older than me. They provide almost a roadmap for what my life could look like when I am their age and great advice on how to navigate specific situations.

Peer mentors are everywhere. I am sure you have access to family or friends of friends you could reach out to and chat. People will find it flattering and will want to help you as much as possible.

“It’s almost always better to learn from peers who are 2 years ahead of you than mentors who are 20 years ahead of you. Life evolves and most insights get outdated” — James Clear.

3. Build your network

Whether you like it or not, your net worth is the value of your network and it really is all about who you know more than what you know.

I don’t usually start off with back-to-back cliches but I believe so heavily in investing in your network early and consistently.

The job I have now and the board opportunities I enjoy were not advertised publicly. They were referred to me by loose ties in my industry and mentors. Without cultivating my network I would not be where I am today.

From my own experience, the best networks for job opportunities are loose ties. These are people who you wouldn’t necessarily consider friends but passing acquaintances.

A well-diversified network will result in a well-diversified opportunity pool.

Like wealth, your network compounds over time. Once you reach a tipping point, your network starts to grow exponentially.

You’ll have more opportunities than you know what to do with. People will be reaching out to you to be part of your network. Every person in your network roughly doubles your odds of success.

4. Build an online presence

I’ve been using LinkedIn as a way to document my professional journey.

I regularly post 4–5 times on my LinkedIn page about books I am reading, learnings from recent projects or celebrating any career milestones with my network.

It felt really uncomfortable at first. Sometimes I felt I was oversharing. I also thought I might receive some blowback from some colleagues. But since doing this for about 2 years, I’ve started to really experience the benefits of it.

People regularly mention how much value they got out of some of my posts. I’ve received job offers, paid speaking events and opportunities that I would never get before.

Heck, I was even recognized on the streets once by a stranger who regularly followed my posts. The power of the internet to connect and collaborate should not be underestimated.

Use that leverage to your advantage.

5. Start a side-hustle

Building a diverse skill set and earning a little side income through a side hustle is a win-win. Whether it is a YouTube Channel or blogging, there are so many ways to sharpen your skills and make money.

Think of any passions or interests you have. Which ones could you do before or after work? Which ones would you happily do on the weekend? Which hobbies could you do for 12–16 hours a day and feel refreshed by it?

Start there.

You don’t have to reinvent the wheel to start making money from your passion. Nowadays, you’ve got so many online platforms that will allow you to create and start making money almost instantly.

Having a side hustle that produces money will teach you more about a business than studying it ever will. You don’t learn about yourself in theory, only in practice.

So while finding a regular 9–5 job has become harder, starting something for yourself has only become easier. The next best option from finding an opportunity is creating a meaningful one for yourself.

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Michael Lim