College degrees and how to maximize them to land your dream job

EPISODE SUMMARY

 

In this episode of Chan With A Plan, host Max Chan speaks with Chris Cornthwaite, who’s the founder of Roostervane to help students build amazing careers with whatever degree they’ve got. Chris talks about discussing assumptions made about how hard it is to land corporate jobs with liberal arts degrees and how to navigate this, the importance of soft skills in the workforce and how networking is the key strategy to even the playing field when it comes to job hunting with any degree. 

 

QUOTES

 

• “A degree is still mandatory for a whole lot of fields, I mean if you apply for a corporate job with only a high school diploma, certain jobs you wouldn’t be able to get in. A degree would still be in a lot of cases the mandatory minimum cut off for actually getting into one of these jobs.” - Chris Cornthwaite [4:56]
• “Universities are increasingly going to be offering internships, so if your university has an internship program, some kind of arrangement, I would definitely consider doing an internship. I think that’s a perfect way to get a foot in both worlds and get some practical experience and in many cases when students do internships, they end up getting hired at that company after.” - Chris Cornthwaite [12:40]
• “I just tell people to network, that’s really the secret sauce [to getting a job] and if you just obsessively try to connect with anybody you possibly can and when I was leaving University after my PhD, I talked to everybody [to find opportunities].” - Chris Cornthwaite [27:23]

 

TIMESTAMPS

 

• [1:05] Meet Chris Cornthwaite
• [3:07] Discussing the assumptions made about the difficulty of landing a corporate job with a liberal arts degree
• [5:57] How universities are trying to connect their degrees to work to make them more valuable
• [7:27] The impact of the pandemic and how it evens the playing field between traditional education at universities/colleges compared to alternative online education such as bootcamps and online courses
• [9:02] The importance of soft skills in the workforce
• [10:47] Setting yourself up for success as a 3rd/4th year student to land a job right out of university/college
• [15:07] Networking tips
• [18:51] Creating thought leadership content to open more career opportunities
• [20:01] Assumptions made by recruiters on Masters of Arts and PhD degree holders when applying to corporate jobs online and how to align your experience to what they are looking for
• [25:23] How to effectively transition from academic researcher into corporate and what to expect
• [27:23] Chris’ experience and strategy on networking and how it has helped him build his career outside of academia
• [30:47] Contacting Chris
• [31:48] Outro

 

RESOURCES & RELEVANT LINKS

 

• Chris Cornthwaite on LinkedIn
• Chris Cornthwaite on Twitter
• Roostervane
• Chan With A Plan
• Max Chan on LinkedIn