Well, it's that time again … graduation.

Graduation is the time when students shed their protective layer of irresponsibility in favor of a true mantle of adulthood as they find out for the first time that cutting a class truly does have consequences.

I love this time of the year. It allows me to legitimately write that which I have been preaching all semester (all year, actually) … “there will come a time when students will have to produce real results.”

According to my friend and fellow Duquesne professor Chris Allison, “Don’t show up for ¾’s of your classes and you will probably see your final letter grade reduced by a tenth of a grade point; but continually fail to show up for a real-world job, and see how long it takes before some other guy has your title, your position, and your office!”

You see, the key difference between going to college and joining the workforce is really simple. In college, you are paying them for a service (in this case, an education). While in the real world, they are paying you for your output; for some measurable value, whether that value is tangible or conceptual.

In other words, while in college, you are the customer (and right now, due to overbuilt institutions and a paucity of bodies to fill those institutions, you are a much catered-to customer). While in the workforce, you are the supplier and your employer is the customer.

For many students, this is a difficult mind-transition. Some only get it too late.

Which brings me to another point - pressure.

What do I mean by this?

Well, pressure is what any and all students feel the minute they realize that they are now responsible for paying their own way. (You see, no matter how often professors like myself and Chris say it, it seems as if the student simply cannot get it into his head that his salary is only made possible by the fact that his or her output exceeds the cost of that salary. Notice the word exceeds.)

In college, this is moot. I mean, who really cares about productivity when the money has already been paid by the student to the university. In fact, many universities actually put more effort into measuring the effectiveness of their teachers than these same teachers put into measuring the effectiveness of their students.

And why not? After all, it is the college, and not the student, that is in a competition for tuition dollars. Once a student is in school and committed, the university generally knows that he or she will stick around for at least eight semesters … semesters that each generate some $15-$50 thousand dollars worth of high-margin revenue.

Think about that one. A single professor, who is paid on average about $100,000/year fully-loaded, teaching a class of twenty-five students, each of whom is paying about $2,500 for that class, generates about $62,500 in gross revenue for that class. Now, consider that most profs teach some five to ten classes per year and you get total revenues of $310,000 to $620,000 against $100,000 in costs. Even at midpoint (7.5 classes), I make this out to about an eighty per cent gross margin. And don’t forget that the “bricks and mortar” have been paid for for years!

I digress. (Back to pressure.)

So, the student turned first-time employee only draws serious attention to himself the minute he asks for (and is granted) a large payday. Employers will sometimes accede to a fat paycheck for a kid just out of college, but what they are really paying for is potential, not output.

If the employer is enjoying prosperous times, the student has a bit more time to become productive (again, salary plus bennies plus overhead against output), but if the employer needs the student to start pulling his or her weight right away, well ….

My advice to students is this …

1. Find your dream job … and by the way, this might actually be your dream company. That is to say a company that is small and high-energy --- a company where you can be noticed!
2. Contact the owner or CEO of that company and tell him or her that you are willing to work for less than scale, so long as you can get next to the “heat source” (usually the entrepreneur himself), and you can do meaningful work.
3. Then, let this same person know that you are willing to work for half-scale or even for expenses and health coverage only. Do this as long as the above conditions are met and your performance is rewarded, in spades, once you cross the line into productiveness.

Any employer will be absolutely knocked out by a proposition of this type. You will increase your chances of getting your foot in the door ten-fold (at least), and regardless of what happens from that point on, you will have the absolute best seat in the house, vis-à-vis learning how the world really works!

And, you will rid yourself of pressure. Pressure stifles performance when one is just starting out … but by not having the feeling that every swing has to be a home-run, you will make level-headed decisions as you watch the heat on that other guy. You know, the guy who just “had to have” that big fat compensation package.

I had lunch the other day with Raul Valdes-Perez, and he told me that in his eight years as an entrepreneur (Vivisimo), he had just one (that’s ONE!) person come to him with just such a proposal.

He hired her in a heartbeat and she went on to great success both at Vivisimo and then at her own start-up.

Like I said earlier … “Welcome to the Real World!”