Grads are great at sucking at most things. They’ve spent the past four years partying full-time and submitting the odd assignment on the side.

So it’s no surprise that many feel they don’t have any useful skills to contribute.

And they don’t.

What they do have is the opportunity to build career capital; the skills, connections, credentials, and character that’ll allow them to make a difference in the future.

Here’s how.

The 5 Components of Career Capital

Career Capital can be best understood as a summation of the following five components.

1. Skills and knowledge.

What will you learn? How useful will it be? How fast will you learn?

Ask yourself these questions. The right learning environment will be one where your abilities are adequately tested with consistent feedback provided by peers.

Is this an internship? A new job? More study?

2. Connections.

Who will you work with and meet? Will they include potential future collaborators on impactful projects, supportive friends and mentors, people with influence, or people who will help you expand into new circles?

Opportunity cost is an important consideration here.

You may conclude that you’ll learn most effectively in post-grad study, but what kind of connections will you make?

Will a job at the right company give you access to mentors or colleagues with influence? Is there more potential leverage in this or another degree?

3. Credentials

This isn’t just formal credentials like a degree. Rather, anything that acts as a good signal to future collaborators.

If you’re a writer, maybe it’s the quality of your blog. A coder? Then maybe your Guthub.

Think about how these credentials showcase your efforts to cultivate your interest in your path or profession of choice. Employers love passion projects!

4. Character.

How can you develop virtues like generosity, compassion, humility, honesty, good judgment, and respect? These traits are vital in building trust, working with others, and minimizing harm.

Think about the kind of person your future collaborators are involving themselves with. Is this someone you’d work with if given the opportunity? How can you make this future version of yourself more desirable to work with?

5. Runway

Your runway is how long you could comfortably live with no income.

We all need a roof over our heads. Post-grad study is great, but if it means you’re eating two-minute noodles for years in your parent’s basement, is it really worth it?

This is perhaps the most ‘real’ consideration. Whatever you choose, it needs to pay the bills, and this should come as no exception.

The Best Career Capital?

Build useful skills.

What does this actually mean?

Gain abilities that are valued in the job market - making it easier to bargain for the ingredients of a fulfilling job.

getting good at something usually involves a combination of the following 3 ingredients:

1. Choose a useful skill to learn.

What are the in-demand skills in your field that you have the greatest chance of becoming good at?

Is it communicating ideas/sales? Community building?

Does this build on a preexisting talent of yours? Are you intensely interested in the field of choice?

Ask yourself these questions.

2. Practice.

3. Increase your chances of being in the right place at the right time

It’s much easier to get to the top of a new, rapidly growing field than an established one like law or medicine. Likewise, being part of the right scene can be a huge factor, so if you’ve stumbled across a community, person, or organisation with momentum, sticking with them may pay off.

In short, try to maximise your rate of useful learning.

Putting Everything Together

So how does one put everything together and apply this to their career?

Ask yourself the following:

1. Which skill sets might be the best fit for you to build longer term?

2. Given the longer-term paths you’d most like to take, what next steps might most accelerate you toward them?

3. Go over the steps for gaining career capital and note three that might work for you. A few ideas to get you started:

   • Are there any opportunities to work at a high-performance, growing organization?

   • Do any graduate study options make sense?

   • Can you do something where you can learn a useful, transferable skill?

   • Is there an option where you might achieve something impressive?

4. What’s the most valuable career capital you already have? Identifying this can give you clues about what you’ll be best at and help you convince employers to hire you. Review each of the categories:

   • Skills and knowledge

   • Connections

   • Credentials

   • Character

That’s it, cya.