Chuck Grimmett

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Tag: Career Advice

  • A letter to David Hogg: You are better than college

    Photo courtesy of ABC News

    David,

    First, I want to extend my sympathy for you and your friends at Marjory Stoneman Douglas HS and Parkland. No one should have to go through something like that, let alone be thrown into the public spotlight and questioned and mocked by people who disagree with you. You are a brave, impressive dude.

    That’s why I don’t think you need college.

    A college degree is a signal. The thing is, this signal is not as valuable as you think. It’s a signal to the world of the value you can create in the market. It conveys information about your ability, skill, and intelligence. There is a lot of noise in the world of work, and it’s hard to figure out who’s worth working with. A degree cuts through some of that noise and puts you in a smaller pool of competitors.

    College persists for the ambitious — and thus the self-reinforcing data about successful people having degrees — because of a religious-like belief in it’s necessity. But it’s not necessary at all.

    Not long ago a degree may have been the best signal most people could get. There weren’t many ways to demonstrate your value to the market, so a degree was one of the better bets.

    Things have changed dramatically. Technology has opened up the world. The tools available to you now have lowered search and information costs, and you can create signals of your own that are far more powerful than a degree. Now, a college degree is one of the weakest, least common denominator efforts to doing this and is easy to surpass.

    You told Axios that you are thinking about taking a gap year. That is a great idea.

    I encourage you to continue throwing yourself into activism, organizing, and speaking. Learn how big events are planned and operated behind the scenes. Learn what different kinds of messaging works best for certain audiences. Continue refining your speeches. Make personal connections. Build email lists, communities, and followings. All of this will help you gain the experience and skills that future employers will value. Don’t spend the next four years in a classroom, wasting the valuable opportunity you have now.

    You have forward tilt. You have natural sales skills. You have organizing skills. You have some marketing experience. You know how to work in fast-paced environments. You have a drive and focus that most people your age will never come close to.

    At Praxis, we work with hundreds of bright, ambitious young people and help them launch careers without degrees. They’re better than college. You are too!

    Sincerely,

    Chuck Grimmett
    CTO
    Praxis

  • When is the last time you sent a Thank You note?

    “Send a thank you note” is one of those pieces of common wisdom we always hear, yet an astonishingly low number of people actually do it.

    Let me give a recent example of how a thank you note (even a digital one!) can shape someone’s view of you.

    A Tale of Two Groups

    Over the past few weeks I emailed the same message to two different groups.

    Group A is generally earlier on in their careers. Group B is generally more established in their careers. The email content, open rates, and link clicks were the same, but what stuck out to me was how differently the two groups acted after logging in. Only 2.4% of group A sent me a note afterward, whereas 55.5% of group B sent me a note afterward.

    Building Social Capital

    The majority of group A read and archived the email. The majority of group B took the interaction as an opportunity to build some social capital.

    I didnt expect a reply and I don’t think less of those who didn’t reply. I don’t want to be presumptuous and think I’m important enough to warrant a reply. Heck, there are dozens of emails I just read and archive without responding to every single day.

    That said, those who did reply gained some social capital with me. They stick out because they did something very few others took the time to do: Send me a nice note. With a 30 second email, they changed the way I think about them. I haven’t met any of them in person and I don’t interact with them on a daily basis, but I’m willing to go out of my way for those who did actually reply the next time they need help with something.

    There is a strong correlation between those who replied and career success (even early in their careers). They know that consistently doing little things to build social capital makes asks and connections easier in the future. Most in group B (and a few in group A) have learned this lesson and made doing little things like this part of their standard operating procedure.

    Even though sending a thank you note is common wisdom, few people go through the trouble of actually doing it. With Praxis, I work with a lot of bright young people. Most, even the ones who excel, never send a thank you note. The minority who do stand out.

    What opportunities are you missing because you didn’t take 30 seconds to say thanks?

    A big thanks to Isaac Morehouse for regularly encouraging me to follow this principle and for his notes and suggestions on an early draft of this post.