Graduation Advice: Develop a Craftsmen Mindset

This June many of TutorZ’ students will graduate. For them I am dispensing a piece of career advice: Develop a Craftsmen Mindset!

To be sure, most of TutorZ‘ 2017 graduates have worked hard in their years of study. They have and earned their degree. That all very fine, congratulations! After a summer with friends, partners or travel, expectations are high to find the perfect job – they think their true calling within their grasps. So, many of these students not only expect to earn a lot of money but also to be fulfilled by their new assignments, they seek to find their true passion right at the beginning of their career.

While finding your true (professional) passion is a virtuous undertaking it is prone to fail! Really? No? Yes! Sorry, to break it to you. Now you might retort: But school teachers were preaching for years that finding your passion is the key to happiness; success and money will follow consequently. And they might even add: Marsha Sietar even wrote a best-seller on this subject “Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow”.

My answer is yes, that’s all true and quite unfortunate. The problem of Sietar’s passion-first approach is that it makes graduates focus on what their new work environment can offer to them instead of being focused on providing value. By definition, junior employees are tasked with smaller assignments – these come later. A long list of seemingly demenial task is a recipe to chronic job frustration instead of pathway to passion.

Other sources of frustration include corporate bureaucracy, not yet being accepted by piers, less than expected salaries and being left out from insider chats in the hallway. A graduate’s new job looks now looks like a huge mistake than his vocation.

For these reasons, listen to Georgetown University professor Cal Newport career advice: Become undeniable good at your job so that they can’t ignore you. In other words, develop a craftsman mindset, rather and a passion mindset. Craftsmen work hard to offer value to their employers and customers. They learn, practice and train. They understand that pain and frustration can be a part of the job and don’t get discourage by it. They develop their skills and make their customers happy. Craftsmen become better and better at their work to the extend they feel quite satisfied and eventually can become passionate. So the craftsmen mind sent trumps the passion mindset.

In short, a craftsmen mindset prevents graduates from become overly frustrated and enables them find their true vocation quicker than their passion-centered colleagues.