Are we still going to keep on weaning on the promises of today’s failed systems? Systems not equipping us with the guides to find stable alternative careers?

Stony Brook University’s Graduate Career Association, GCA, is mobilizing working professionals and connecting them to you, because today, it’s harder than ever to get the job that matches your degree.

Over the past decade, the number of graduates earning a master’s degree increased by 49 percent, and you can expect the possibility of getting the job you’re looking for is slimming. Now, it’s all about how to find the job that matches your skills.

Here’s what you can expect from GCA once you get started:

• Events like our first Post-Doc Panel Q&A, you can ask post-doctorates from government, industry and academia backgrounds about their experience, and how that can apply to you
• Networking with professionals and getting mentorship opportunities

This is a two-step investment where you’re getting the chance to market yourself.

Then, there’s your course of action:

• Find out where you’re the strongest
• Draw in the employers

What makes you stand out to employers in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Medical fields?

I read this article from Bloomberg that public policies are wrong for herding students into STEM fields.

“It misses the complexity and diversity of occupations in a modern economy, forgets the dispersed knowledge of aptitudes, preferences and job requirements that makes labor markets work, and ignores the profound uncertainty about what skills will be valuable not just next year but decades in the future.”

How do we resolve this?

Well, the key is to be diverse—having those valuable skills that are useful for the shifting labor market.

“The most valuable skill anyone can learn in college is how to learn efficiently -- how to figure out what you don’t know and build on what you do know to adapt to new situations and new problems.”

So what do you say to joining the GCA? We are already on a diverse campus, why not go further?

Challenge yourself to stand out, project yourself and find your vocational identities.