

No Jobs? Young Graduates Make Their Own - ashwinl
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/business/12yec.html

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terrellm
My wife and I were in a similar situation when we graduated college - she had
a degree in agriculture development and I had a degree in information systems.
Back in 1999, we couldn't have had two farther apart career paths -
agriculture in small towns and technology in the major cities.

Instead, we decided to create our own jobs and blend our skills together. The
result was several agriculture software programs that have been sold in over
55 countries. This business has been our main source of income for the last 10
years and allowed us both to work from home and raise our family.

Living near College Station, TX (home of Texas A&M University), I volunteer to
work with students often and am seeing more and more students that want a
financially rewarding and satisfying career while maintaining a lifestyle
balance. In many cases, entrepreneurship offers the best chance of achieving
this goal as you are in a position to decide which opportunities you pursue
and which you pass.

~~~
lkozma
Very encouraging story and congratulations. Just out of curiosity, what does
agriculture software do?

~~~
terrellm
Thanks for the compliments.

Today it's primarily my wife (support & some marketing) and me (development &
marketing) running the business and we have two home-based support reps. Our
main product is a cattle software program that lets ranchers keep track of
their cattle including information such as breeding, calving, purchases &
sales, medical treatments, pedigree/lineage, etc. Once they have recorded this
information, it helps them make management decisions so they can be more
profitable. Our website is at <http://www.CattleMax.com>.

~~~
presidentender
A rancher once attempted to hire me to develop a replacement for CattleMax. He
wanted to pay me the cost of a CattleMax install. You are safe from
competition (from me).

~~~
smokey_the_bear
A rancher once attempted to hire me to build additional things on top of
CattleMax, so that he could implement performance based pay for his milkers.

------
WillyF
I didn't particularly like the way this article covered the topic, but it's
probably just sour grapes because I wasn't included in it. I did exactly what
they're talking about, so here's my story on how it happened and how long it
has taken to actually be a suitable replacement for a job.

I graduated in December '05 (a semester early) from an Ivy League school with
a degree in Industrial and Labor Relations. I had interned in HR for two
summers with a company that I was really excited about. Because of
relationships I developed there, I had multiple job offers, even though I
didn't go through the on campus recruiting process. Fortunately, during my
internships, I realized that HR wasn't for me (I'm sure the HN community can
understand that). After committing most of my college years towards pursing a
career in HR, I felt a little lost when I decided that I wanted to
something—anything—else. I felt a pull towards entrepreneurship, but I didn't
even know the startup world existed when I graduated.

So, I took a contract job for a few months while I stayed on campus for the
Spring semester. Then I moved back in with my parents and took some time off
to "think." And some more time off. And then a little more. (I also had a
girlfriend who was still in school, which played a part in my unwillingness to
commit to a job. We're still together, so I'm happy with my decision to ) When
I finally started searching for a job, I realized that I didn't really want
one. I wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I had no idea, no experience, and no
clue of what was possible. So I looked for jobs that might prepare me for
entrepreneurship in the future.

From December of '06 to May of '07 I committed myself to searching for jobs,
while I also spent time learning about industries that interested me. I landed
a decent number of interviews, but nobody wanted to hire me. I think that they
could smell my bad attitude, and they also figured that someone with a résumé
as good as mine but still on the job market after a year must have something
seriously wrong with him. I was in a rut, my girlfriend and parents were
losing patience with me, and I was extremely unhappy. I just wanted to be a
productive part of society.

I had wasted most of what I had going for me when I graduated, so I decided
that the only way that I could "get it back" was to start my own business.
Luckily, by May of '07 I had been job searching long enough to know how broken
the job search process is for grads who didn't have a clear idea of what
career path they wanted to pursue.

After learning about Woot.com, I came up with the idea of one job a day, and I
took things from there. I learned everything that I could about online
recruitment, and I started building my site and my business. I had built
websites in the past, but I pretty much had to start over. My parents were
still supporting me to some extent, but I decided that I'd only use my own
savings. The idea of taking money from someone else to start my business
seemed ridiculous to me.

Oddly enough, I landed an interview with a startup in the job search space
just as I was starting my company. I was surprised to learn that CEO would be
interviewing me, and he didn't seem to like it when I told him that I was in
the process of building a startup in the same space. (I needed to tell him
something about how I spent the previous year.) He kind of got angry at me,
and I obviously didn't get the job. Three and a half years later, his
company's ad platform is one of my main revenue sources.

So, I started One Day, One Job - <http://www.onedayonejob.com> \- in late May
of '07 and launched it in November of '07. I had to bail on the idea of
selling daily job postings, and I instead decided to write about them from an
editorial standpoint. It was the only way that I could build an audience
without selling aggressively with nothing to sell.

After two years the company was "profitable." Three and half years in, I'm
finally making enough money to cover all of my personal expenses. If things
keep up, next year should be great. I get calls from VCs occasionally, and
I've had multiple acquisition offers. More importantly, I've reached hundreds
of thousands of college students and helped quite a few of them do what I
couldn't—land an exciting job straight out of college.

I made a lot of friends who were doing the same thing along the way. Most of
them failed and eventually used their experience to land a full-time job. I
stuck things out, and it's finally starting to pay off. I couldn't have done
it without a supportive girlfriend and family—I guess they're my "investors."

To make a long story short, I'm a graduate who made his own job. The added
twist is that my job is helping other people with their job search. Maybe that
makes me like the people who make money teaching people how to make money. I
often get called a "job search expert," but I'm really just an entrepreneur
who uses the lessons he's learned from starting a business to teach job
seekers how to improve their approach.

I wouldn't say that creating your own job is as much of a trend as the Times
makes it out to be, but there are people like me who have made it work.
Missing out on a salary for 3 years is really hard, even if you know deep down
that the equity you're building is valuable. The quickest return on investment
is in the form of experience. Even after a year of running my business, I knew
that if I quit I could have jumped into much better job opportunities than I
could have right after I graduated.

I'd certainly recommend creating your own job to any graduate who isn't happy
with his or her options, but I'd also make it clear that it can take a long
time to make it work—and for many it never does.

------
meterplech
Slate has a weekly segment on the New York Time's bogus trend of the week
(<http://www.slate.com/id/2259817/>). Not 100% sure that this is the case, but
this article didn't really ring true to me for two reasons:

1) All of my friends majoring in engineering or CS or anything tech are
already deciding between multiple job offers all over the country. AFAI can
tell there is a huge shortage of qualified candidates for tech positions; at
least companies are recruiting heavily at my somewhat well known state school.
I have talked to friends in other disciplines and it is definitely harder for
them- but they are usually the ones much less interested in entrepreneurship
as well.

2) While I see a much higher level of enthusiasm for entrepreneurship in
general, I really don't see any higher level of students taking the plunge and
actually doing it. Most people (like me) are deciding that given the high cost
of college and their lack of savings/debt the prudent thing is to save as much
as possible by working. Again- those who are considering entrepreneurship tend
to be tech students with job offers they are turning down, not turning to as a
last resort.

In short, the recession seems to either be ending, or just not particularly
relevant for people with tech degrees, and I would obviously love there to be
a ton more students diving into entrepreneurship when they graduate, but I
think the trend is overstated in the media.

~~~
ig1
There are lots of opportunities for non-tech people to be entrepreneurial
online. The internet's made it much easier to sell products and services at
virtually no cost, it doesn't matter if your a designer or a drop-shipper, the
tech is mostly prebuilt and out there for you to just use.

As tech entrepreneurs we should be figuring out what's stopping non-tech
entrepreneurs starting their own business in their area of expertise/passion
and figuring out how to build the tech that will enable them to do so !

------
WiseWeasel
Those hitting the access wall can access NYT articles through Google News, by
doing a search for the headline:
[http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&...](http://news.google.com/news/search?aq=f&pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=No+Jobs%3F+Young+Graduates+Make+Their+Own)

~~~
jonknee
... Or by registering for free and signing in. You won't have to do anything
else until you delete your cookies or change computers/browsers.

~~~
nickpinkston
Use BugMeNot.com so you won't need to register either!

~~~
jonknee
Until they delete the account and you have to go through the hassle again. I
find it much easier to just register and log-in once per browser.

~~~
nickpinkston
They show the success rate, the first one worked for me, and actually NYT is
one of the most popular on their list of sites.

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petercooper
This behavior harks back to an older time when people similarly had little
choice but to start their own businesses or work freelance. For the past
50-100 years, in urban areas being independent or an entrepreneur has looked
like a lifestyle choice given how many jobs were available, but now it's
become a necessity again, just like it used to be. I'm not sure this is a bad
thing at all.

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yesno
Somehow my belief regarding statistics numbers (such as unemployment) that
came out from the government has declined year-to-year.

On the other hand, this article is an eye-opener that software is becoming a
commodity for certain segment of business.

------
foljs
As in "No Jobs? A handful of young graduates, less than 5%, make their own".

