I have concluded that so many of us students believe that we are biding our time until the gates open at the end of our college careers. But that’s it! Notice how I said career. We are not waiting for the gun to fire so that our race can begin, we are transitioning careers.  Our career so far has been to gain supple knowledge and build a foundation around our fields of choice.  Therefore, we need to prepare ourselves just like we would if we were changing a job or moving from one position in our student organizations to another – carefully!

No move in our life has been more important than this one! But, take a breath, everything should be alright. We all have gained the knowledge that we should have. We all have what are known as transferable skills. This is what I really want to emphasize. We should know by now that each of us are good at certain skills, what most of us don’t remember is that the skills we have unintentionally learned in school are usually the best for transition periods.  I have laid out a few skills that you might not know you have, and there are a whole backpack full of them that I probably  wont even mention.

• Networking – Believe it or not a good social life in college can actually help you transition into the workforce. Meeting people and building a matrix of relationships and friendships is an excellent way to get comfortable with meeting and expressing your ideas to others. So keep that in mind next time you sit down to lunch by yourself – instead, find someone new and eat with them. It will pay of trust me.
• Mentoring – Ever had that one professor or student that you just relate too better than anyone else? You know, the one that took you under their wing when you were an underclassmen/women. Well you probably learned quite a bit from them. You learned how to communicate and ask questions about school, work and  life. That’s not too far off from mentoring once you get going in your entry-level job.
• Time-Management - As students we live and die by the due date. That’s a good thing. If you’re one of those people who stayed up all night to finish a project or re-type your final draft hours before you had to turn it in, then you are likely to understand the value of a deadline (maybe not quality of work – but that’s a different topic). Once you can handle the pressure of the deadline then you can handle quite a bit.
• Multitasking – I bet there has never been a college student that has worn many different hats at once or juggled multiple assignments – that’s just crazy talk. No – We’ve all had our moments where our life can’t get any busier.  Although, the ability to handle the stress that is involved with multitasking is a significant indicator that you can handle the stress of a career. There will never be a time when your life won’t get in the way, so deal with it.
• Team Building – I always thought that it was weird when my youth soccer coach would tell me, “You’re gonna need these teamwork skills some day!” Now that I’m older, I found out that he was right. Team building skills are a learned trait and something that takes time. No matter what role you played on the team, if you have the ability to communicate with your members you can make a positive contribution. Remember how much better those group projects were if you were on a team that communicated well, had strong leadership and great participation? Yeah….
• Education – Whether you know it or not, you have the ability to learn new things in a very short amount of time. Just think about it. Four years ago you walked on to campus thinking that college was going to be a cake walk. During your journey, you learned everything from Calculus to Humanities to the Theories of Modern Communication and it defiantly wasn’t easy. Now more than ever your mind is in gear to learn. TAKE ADVANTAGE! You’re not always going to have this ability. Your mind is at its learning peak right now, so it’s time to expand your knowledge.

While these are just a few things that us college grads have going for us, it’s a reminder that we have abilities beyond what we learned in our internships or from our textbooks. We have the ability to be flexible and strong-willed. Keep that in mind next time someone asks you if you have any other skills that might benefit their company.

Take for instance if a recruiter were to ask you,”How much experience do you have in strategic communications?” Be realistic, don’t boast about the three campaigns that you did in your senior seminar, it just makes you come off like you’re entitled to the position. Rather, play it like so:

1. Answer the question by saying something like, “I was able to gain some knowledge in strategic communications as a senior and I would love to be able to learn more about the practice. It would add on to my  knowledge from my three strategic campaigns I completed as a senior.
2. This may lead to a follow up question- (that’s a good thing) – The recruiter then may ask you.” Oh really, Can you tell me more about your campaigns. This would seem like an open door to start boasting about all your accomplishments. GUESS WHAT – IT’S NOT. Remain calm and stay grounded. This might be the hardest part of all but if you can do it correctly you just might become memorable to the recruiter. Try saying something along the lines of, “I was able to fall in love with the addicting field of strategic communications when working on these campaigns. I know I have much to learn, but in one of my  campaigns I was able to complete a plan that carried  the organization though a crisis situation and it concluded with a positive outcome.” Obviously, you can go into details about what your strategies were, but keep in mind that fine line of being over-confident.
3. Once you have finished that part of the question, it is time to seal the deal. Follow up with a complement and a question. The reason for this is to show that you are more interested in the conversation than with telling every last accomplishment of your college career. Be sure to remember that you’re in the field of communications and to make sure you are connecting with people. Say something along the lines of, “Knowing your companies great reputation on strategic communications, is there any process to help me work collaboratively so that I can maximize my learning?”

If you can manage to make it through an open-ended question like that, then you should be able to make it through almost any question that might test your ability to stay grounded. Remember that after reading this, it is not the all knowing guide to how to answer questions, it is rather a reminder to us college grads that we are not yet professionals. We need to take one step at a time and please remember to be confident in who you are, but  watch out for crossing that thin line of being overconfident.