Getting from College to Career
Virtual Book Review Network interview with Lindsey Pollak, author of Getting From College to Career

How do you get a job without experience and get experience without a job? It's the question virtually every college student or recent graduate faces. In Getting from College to Career: 90 Things to Do Before You Join the Real World, Lindsey Pollak offers the first definitive guide to building the experience, skills, and confidence grads need before they start their first major job search.

About the author: Lindsey Pollak is a writer, editor, and speaker specializing in career advice for young professionals. She is the coauthor of two career advice books and has written for Marie Claire magazine and Metro New York newspaper. Lindsey frequently speaks at universities and corporations across the country. She is a graduate of Yale University. Learn more at: http://www.lindseypollak.com/blog.


LAUREN SMITH: What inspired you to write Getting From College to Career – your own experiences, the experiences of others, or a little of both?

Lindsey Pollak:
Getting From College to Career is the book I wish I’d had when I was in college. It’s the book I wish my younger brother and sister had. It’s a collection of all of the tips, ideas, advice, secrets, strategies and warnings that I didn’t even know I didn’t know.

It has also launched a dream career for me—working as an author and speaker helping college students and young professionals. My senior year of college I was a freshman counselor (resident advisor), living with and advising a group of freshman students. To this day it was my favorite job I’ve ever had—and this book provided the opportunity to continue this work. As a counselor I learned that helping students build confidence and a sense of themselves is just as important as teaching them specific skills. That’s the attitude I brought to writing Getting From College to Career—compassion for this very challenging and scary time of life, and a desire to help each student/reader find his or her own path and not fixate on what a recent graduate “should” do. I think of the book’s readers as extensions of the freshmen I counseled in college. My goal was to be a big sister to the reader—young enough to relate to their time of life and old enough to have some wisdom and perspective to share.


LAUREN SMITH: Do you think today’s college graduates face bigger challenges than ever before; if so why and what are those challenges?

Lindsey Pollak:
In many ways, yes. Demographically, there are simply more young people today, who are more educated and who more aware of available opportunities and global competition because of the Internet. Millennials are building careers in a time of tremendous competition, but also unprecedented global opportunity. I think it’s incredibly exciting!