Congratulations, new college grads!
You’ve worked hard. You’ve faced some remarkable challenges, including a global pandemic that shut down most of the world for long stretches of time. And now, the time has come to put on that cap and gown, march in that commencement ceremony, and reflect proudly on your achievements.
But as happy and thrilling as graduation day may be, the day after is just as sobering and stressful. I don’t mean to be a spoilsport here—the day after graduation is the day you start looking for a job.
Allow me a few words of advice.
I bootstrapped BairesDev into a unicorn when I was not much older than you are now, building a company of about 4,000 software developers across all of Latin America. We assess nearly 10,000 applications every single day and only hire the top 1%. This gives us unique perspectives on hiring that I’d like to share with you, starting with the most profound bit of insight first.
Here it is: Your college degree won’t matter in the long run.
It’s not fair
I realize this may strike you as unfair and even insulting. After all, you’ve sacrificed so much, including paying outrageous tuition for your degrees. And you did it largely because you hoped and believed that having a fancy name and logo on your diploma would help you score that high-paying job and succeed in your career.
I hate to break it to you, but this is no longer the case. Or, at least, not entirely. Why? Two words: artificial intelligence. These days, AI is improving at a furious rate. You might have been surprised a few months back when social media became awash with short video clips that looked incredibly realistic yet were produced by algorithms. No actors, directors, or cameras involved. The same is true in pretty much every industry: law, medicine, finance, technology—our jobs are all about to be majorly disrupted by AI, which means you’ll need a dramatically different skill set to survive, let alone thrive, in your future career.
What skill set? We’ve identified certain traits that our most successful employees, the ones who went on to ace jobs and advance rapidly, all share. Five major skills stand out:
Adaptability and resilience: Increasingly, the real test you’ll face in the job market is how well you respond when things get tough. “Disruption” is more than a buzzword. This past decade, we’ve seen major industries change overnight, while others grow more rapidly than ever before in human history. Fortunes were made or lost at a dazzling rate. The winners in such an unpredictable environment are going to be the ones who aren’t too attached to their initial strategies, who can navigate setbacks without despair, and who can swiftly devise better plans on the fly. That isn’t something they can teach you at even the finest institutions.
Critical thinking: In the 1980s, American psychologist Irving Janis studied a host of corporate and government decisions gone horribly wrong, hoping to find out why even smart men and women sometimes make very bad decisions. He came up with a single-word explanation: groupthink. Sharing the same perspective might make you feel you belong, or that you’re a team player. In reality, it only means you’re susceptible to making the same blunders as everyone else. This is why some leading business leaders practice the Ten Person Rule: If nine people in the room look at the data and reach the same conclusion, it’s the tenth person’s duty to take the opposite position. This isn’t merely being a devil’s advocate; sometimes, this sort of critical thinking is the only thing keeping us from missing opportunities we should’ve seen coming.
Creativity: This one is the hardest skill to define or cultivate. Creativity is key in problem-solving—a process that can help you or your employers find new solutions and services the market didn’t realize it needed. How to cultivate creativity? This, thankfully, is a simpler question to answer. A few ideas come to mind: Share your ideas with other team members and ask to hear theirs in return, because collaboration—just ask Lennon and McCartney—often boosts creativity. Don’t be afraid to try new and innovative approaches to doing your work. And don’t imitate others. It’s your own unique experience, background, and viewpoint that’s far more likely to help you come up with something new and exciting.
Emotional intelligence: These days, colleges and universities offer amazing and useful classes, but the most useful one, sadly, isn’t available on any quad: How to handle our emotions. We’re expected, as soon as we reach young adulthood, to simply control how we feel, and learn to behave in a reserved, polite, and professional manner. But merely keeping our emotions in check isn’t a very helpful way to go through life, or through a career. What you need is the fine-tuned ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage your emotions, also known as emotional intelligence. This can mean taking a moment to listen to a boss or a teammate and, paying the closest attention to tone of voice, body language etc., figure out what they’re really trying to say. This sensitivity makes for much more than a mere pleasant work environment. It could—and often does—spell the difference between retaining that very talented employee and losing her to a competitor, between landing that great client or watching the business go elsewhere, between thriving and finding yourself on the ropes.
Effective communication: If you’re wondering about the best way to cultivate emotional intelligence, here’s an easy place to start: Learn how to communicate. This may sound like an antiquated, even redundant bit of advice in a world saturated with text messages, WhatsApp conversations, emails, and social media. However, effective communication is more than pressing a button. It’s about being able to listen to what the other person is saying, about knowing what to say and how to say it, about choosing your words so that they will have the greatest impact. You’ll quickly find how important it is to build meaningful relationships with mentors, colleagues, clients, and leaders. This is not a skill we currently develop in our talented young people, but it is a skill that every one of you can cultivate by being mindful of your exchanges, at work and elsewhere.
Congratulations on graduating. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and focus on the skill set that will set you apart. Nurture the skills that allow you to overcome challenges, hit the mark where others missed, drive innovation, and act with awareness. Your degree is an important milestone, but your skills will get you to the top.
Nacho De Marco is the co-founder and CEO of BairesDev.