From the desk of: Avery Businessman
May 19, 2008
Dear Graduate:
Congratulations on surviving your schooling! Whether you're leaving high school or college, whether you're a teenager or a fifty-something completing yet another degree, your educational accomplishments are finally behind you. You're probably receiving kudos from your friends and family about how hard you've worked, and being given all kinds of advice on what you need to have and take with you as you get ready to enter what we out here lovingly call "the real world." You also no doubt have promising dreams about what you'd like to do in this next stage of your life.
While some of you may continue on with your education, many of you instead will be coming to me looking for employment. That's just fine, as I can definitely use you. But I, too, have some advice to bestow upon you. Unlike your close personal associates, however, I'm not going to tell you what items you need to bring along. Instead, I'm going to tell you what you can get rid of. Dumping a little baggage certainly won't hurt you, and may make the journey easier in the long run. So let's get started, shall we?
Protection. I'm not talking about condoms or birth control. I'm talking about living in the protective shadow of Mommy and Daddy. When something doesn't go your way in the real world, don't expect me to succumb to the pressure your parents might put on me to change my entire operation to protect your fragile ego. In fact, if your folks did happen to show up in my office for that very reason, I'm pretty sure you'd be in my office immediately afterwards to pick up your final paycheck. This is a business, not a babysitting service. Tell Momsy and Pops that it's time for them to back off and let you grow up.
Self-importance. I realize you're a graduate of our excellent school system, and I don't blame you for being proud of your hard-earned knowledge. However, please don't expect to walk in the door of my company and change everything overnight with said knowledge. Learning the basics about how business operates is wonderful, but that's just the bottom level of a highly complex system. There are a lot of things going on in our real world that you never touched on in school, simply because there wasn't time. Knowledge is wonderful, but knowing how and when to use that knowledge is called wisdom. Frankly, you don't have much of that yet, so chill out and be prepared to be a student in the business world for awhile longer.
Superiority. I won't undermine the importance of formal education. Yet many of my employees have gained their education by actually doing the job, and they've gotten really good at it over the years. In fact, some of these people have suggested changes to our operation that have saved us thousands of dollars a year, and they didn't get their ideas from a textbook or a professor. Don't think that having a sheepskin makes you better than some of our long-time employees who don't, and don't treat them as though their primary function is to be your personal assistant. You'll find out quickly that these individuals can run rings around you when it comes to our business dealings. Learn from them. You'd be surprised at what they can teach you.
Stagnation. There are three things that are certain in this lifetime--death, taxes, and change. As I mentioned earlier, we've made some big changes in our organization over the years. Some were by choice; others were forced upon us. None was particularly easy. But that's the nature of the beast. You adapt or you die. I need people who won't get stuck in the mental rut of but-we've-always-done-it-this-way. Be flexible enough to do things differently when we need you to.
Absolution. There's something about working out here in the real world that I'll tell you about up front: People make mistakes. It's in our nature. Sometimes mistakes happen at bad times, but as long as we learn from them and change our actions we're okay with that here. We get in trouble when we believe we're immune to mistakes, and so when something goes wrong it must have been the other guy who did it. If after months of working here you still haven't made a mistake because everybody around you has been screwing up, I'm going to get suspicious. Broken things either need to be fixed or replaced. Be responsible enough to own up to your mistakes, and be smart enough to correct them and learn from them. Otherwise you might find yourself in the unemployment line.
So bring me your ideas, your creativity, your inspiration. Those we can certainly use. Just leave these other items at the door, or better yet, toss them from your life completely. We'll get along much better if you do. Now, I believe you said something about having a resume for me?
