Oh, college. The social nature of meeting new people, the thrill of learning and working on fresh challenges, and the excitement of working with small teams to do big things - these are all common in college, but may not translate into the working world. But if you want that college atmosphere to continue into your professional career, there are a few great career options for you.
Social media manager
Flex your hashtags, write clever Tweets, and help grow a business using social media. The best way to avoid punishment for browsing social media all day at work is to make it your job. Take all that time you spent in lectures coming up with clever Tweets and engaging with friends and communities online and apply it to a job doing marketing through social media. Use your 140-character chops to convey a company’s culture and attitude to a massive audience.
Community manager
There’s no better way to engage with an entire community than as a community manager for an exciting consumer company. You can chat with happy customers, provide enthusiastic support, and come up with fun and creative ways to reward, retain, and energize the community that makes a business great. This is a great job for college grads who got heavily involved in activities like Dance Marathon, student programming councils, and social and political clubs.
Software developer
Do you fondly remember pulling all nighters doing assignments for your morning classes? Enjoy solving hard logic problems, working well under pressure, and meeting tough deadlines? If you find the challenge of learning how to code fun and exciting, pair it with your pressure-cooker skills to get into programming. While working as a software developer for a company, you’ll learn something new every day while working on harder and more rewarding problems.
Event planner
If you loved putting on events for your fraternity/sorority, inviting big-time musicians to play at your college’s yearly festival, or enjoy the thrill of building an event from the ground up and having it go off without a hitch, then you should consider making it your career. Event planning is a great career option for college graduates who held leadership positions in clubs.
Content marketer
Were you part of your school’s newspaper? Did you have a regular column printed every week? Or are you an active blogger for a club or college community? If so, you should take a look into careers in journalism and blogging. Take your passion and talent for writing and use it to join a company’s content marketing team. There, you’ll build your writing chops while learning how to use content to sell products and services.
Fundraising coordinator
Fundraising for nonprofits and foundations is a great career path for college graduates who have fundraising experience for college clubs and charities. The perfect person for this job excelled at getting together a ton of cash in a short amount of time for charity drives and events. They’re knowledgeable and passionate about developing and executing dynamic fundraising strategies. You can use your experience to help great non-profit organizations raise the money they need to run programs that impact millions of lives.
Talent acquisition
In college, you may have been recruitment chair for your Greek organization, or an active part of membership recruitment for any club or organization. If so, you should consider a career in talent acquisition. If you know how to sell a sorority, fraternity, or club to potential members, it should be easy for you to sell a company to candidates. After all, in both cases, you’re selling the culture, perks, and benefits that each organization offers. You know how to judge a person’s motivations and qualifications, and you understand what makes an opportunity enticing to them.