I have not posted in a long time, having been busy interviewing for post-graduation jobs, but I just received an email from Forbes asking a question that was eerily relevant to the situation many of my peers find themselves in – it read,

“Recently, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported a jump in the unemployment rate to 10.2%. Some economists think we could be looking at 10.5% by early next year. Given these grim forecasts, how do you counsel recent college graduates and others entering the job market for the first time in this employment climate? Is there any advice or strategies you find particularly useful?”

After interviewing for a number of finance jobs, I wound up with several offers, including two doing equity research at large buy-side firms – exactly the position I wanted. Forgiving the somewhat cliched headings (I hope the descriptions make up for it), I found the following things beneficial, and hope they can be used in your personal situation:

Know what you want
It sounds trite, but the number of students who don’t have a good idea of what they’d like to do after college is surprisingly high. If you don’t know what you want to do, why should an employer hire you?

In my case, I identified investment management as a dynamic, intellectually challenging field that would hold my attention and challenge my analytical abilities early on. Do some introspection and examine what skills you have, then figure out where they’ll be put to good use in an enjoyable way. There’s no substitute for putting in the time to think.

Show your passion
Once you’ve identified what you want to do, capture it on your résumé by involving yourself in a relevant activity. If you actually want to be in a certain line of work, this won’t be a huge imposition. Should a readily apparent method of accomplishing this not be handy – there might not be a club at your school, or a field/service trip, a study program, etc. – then get on the internet. Find people doing what you want to do, and contact them. If everything comes up empty, start a website– it doesn’t have to be a grand production, just steady documentation that you’re trying to learn about something.

I started my website because I was bored during exam week freshman year. Through it, I’ve been read by tens of thousands of people, invited to write for much larger publications, and had opportunities to meet and talk with dozens of incredibly helpful people in the finance industry.

Put in the time
As the first point said, there’s no substitute for actually investing the time positioning yourself to get hired. The word choice is intentional; learning about what you want to do really is an investment in your future. A willingness to study countless hours for classes in tangential (at best) subject areas while spending no time planning a destination after college is simply short-sightedness and poor strategy. Whatever is fundamental to the job you want to be hired in, you should be actively learning right now.

I’ll often be talking to other students who want to enter finance, and they’ll ask what books I read to get to the level of knowledge they think I have. Though I don’t give this answer, I conservatively estimate that I’ve spent more than 6,000 hours reading anything and everything about investing, financial markets, etc. that I’ve come across. That translates to 3 full years of 40 hour weeks, and I think that is on the low side.

Is that time commitment necessary for everyone? It’s just something that I did – and it does have its drawbacks beyond the obvious skipping of college bar happy hours. At least two jobs I interviewed for didn’t extend me offers because they felt my level of background knowledge would have made me a poor fit for their entry level program. I’m encouraged by that long-term, however, because it should help me at places which are more flexible and offer greater responsibility sooner.

Go deeper in certain areas
Knowing what you’re interviewing for is too broad a suggestion and should be a given. To stand out in an interview pool against similar students who have similar course work, dig deeper into a few specific niches in the field you’re interviewing in, so that you know them better than anyone else your interviewer will see that day. My areas were railroad business models and valuations (I was lucky that Mr. Buffett made his acquisition when he did, my thanks to him), as well as credit default swaps – esoteric, yes, but very effective because I know them well.

Having familiarized myself with countless companies over the past several years, it was also much easier to discuss General Electric (GE), Freeport McMoRan (FCX), supermarkets, agriculture, pharmaceuticals, and certain retailers, depending on the sector background of the person interviewing me. All of those made appearances, and I happen to have done research into each of them previously.

Create and sell a narrative
In the end, a résumé is piece of paper with data points. The goal of an interview is to turn those data points into a story that’s easy to remember because it’s so compelling. On paper, I’m a finance major with a good-but-not-great cumulative GPA who is also the vice president of my school’s investment club. In an interview, I can talk about major market events that occurred pre-housing bubble, display an odd fascination with poorly-performing small-cap railroads, and can relate my involvement with investment club to at least one stock in the universe of the person interviewing me. That turns the relatively boring data point of “extensive investing study” into something worth remembering – everything on your résumé should come with a catchy, memorable story mentally attached.

Since I’ve probably taken away valuable time that can be used to start with #1, I’ll conclude by saying that there’s no substitute for working hard, that the time invested is worth it, and that jobs are not impossible to come by if you’re willing to set yourself apart by prudently picking a direction and then following it with everything you have.

A final note – writing this made me reflect on the journey. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for humoring my odd interest from a young age, caring so damn much that I do well, and putting your wants behind an education that couldn’t have been easy to afford.

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