Dave Kerpen offers advice to recent graduates to master 15 simple skills - I can't resist quoting French President Georges Clemenceau who is reputed to have said "Le bon Dieu n'avait que dix!" (The good Lord only had ten!) in response to US President Woodrow Wilson's 14-point plan in 1918. Kerpen's full article is on Linkedin here, and I've embedded his Slideshare presentation below.
Kerpen's "15 simple skills" are as follows:
- Pursue your passions
- Learn how to use the phone to talk
- Value every minute
- Be afraid, then take risks anyway
- Take care of yourself
- Work on your listening skills
- Reinvent yourself
- Read
- Write
- Avoid sensational TV news
- Vote
- Love. Hard
- Form a personal board of advisors
- Show your friendship first
- Be honest and transparent.
I won't repeat here what Kerpen has written, all his points are worth reading and I feel are excellent advice for new graduates. Many are life skills, but all can be applied to developing a career. In 1983 when I graduated from Trinity with a BA degree I had no real idea of what I wanted to do, I wish I had got advice like this. My favourite ones from the list above are "Pursue your passions" and " Write". Like Kerpen, I have found that when you pursue your passions, "things tend to work out". In advocating that people should write, he doesn't mean you have to become a published author, but doing something like blogging "sharpens your thinking skills, and you'll be taken more seriously at any job".
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