College to Corporate transition: Don’t mess it up!!!

Just coming out fresh from college with a white collar job placement is so exciting from any 20 year old young adult. There is immense excitement to start a new job, meet new friends , get a hefty take home salary at month-end . And possibly, if your work location is in different state from your parental home, then freedom of doing whatever you want is such a sacred pleasure.

First job’s Salary gives you the power to spend on whatever you want, be it partying hard, or shopping expensive wearables, stay high on stuffs of your choice. This money gives you the authority to spend on things which you probably don’t need actually, but the audacity, freedom which your first job’s salary buys, holds the power to make a dent in the attitude of a young mind. This young mind can be reshaped easily to make or break things in the start of an extraordinary career.

Significant it is, yet little has been talked about this transition of a young adult from college at early 20's to the corporate world of corporate junkies, cunt managers who are dwelling in corporate politics. Cliché it may sound, but especially in the IT industry, where students’ typically start their IT jobs without any prior work experience, is a sensitive journey which can’t be ignored and demands systematic mentoring to young graduates.

Yet, corporates’ are too busy to realize it and hence onboard freshers’ with a short induction program, which is focused in technology (for IT Industry), or management courses (for Management trainee) depending on roles and responsibilities. Their training is aligned to enable freshers start contributing to project’s work directly.

For instance in my first corporate job, I joined as a software engineer and hence I was given corporate trainings on C++ languages, quality analysis, IT tools which was very specific to my project.

Here goes the greatest miss where these freshers are not ready for the real game of discovering their core work strengths, defining their personality, building a right attitude of ownership, the art of networking and many more capabilities which is significant to build an extraordinary career. There is a dearth of systematic mentoring on leadership, effective communication skills, positive attitude which are the bases of corporate success.

And that’s why, many young corporate employees who were doing fantastic in colleges, have no idea how to pick up their job life. Contradictory many college non performers have outperformed others by working with right team members fortunately.

My Question to corporate industry is — Can we leave the youth’s career to his/her fortune or misfortune without any systematic process of transitioning these young graduates to get them corporate ready?

Shouldn’t there be a defined process aligned to nurture these young minds’ start their jobs by enabling them to discover their core strengths, develop a positive attitude with streamlined career goals !!!

Let there be light that enables these employees to be the brand for themselves…