Build your human capital portfolio to secure your best career

Here’s news that any college graduate or first-year student should ponder: According to recent data, you might make 12 jobs changes in your career — and that number appears to be rising. 

Today’s college graduates are essentially their own human resources professional, said Erik Porfeli, interim dean of Ohio State’s College of Education and Human Ecology and a career counseling researcher.  

Consider a successful Big Tech worker in Silicon Valley.  

“They're basically going from one project — say, developing one piece of software — to developing another software at another organization. And they're stitching or latticing the learning that's taking place in one organization to get the job at the next organization. That gets them the job at the organization after that,” Porfeli said.  

“You are generating your career yourself in relationship to all these opportunities,” he said.  

College can — and should — be approached with the same mindset: maximizing varied coursework, co-curricular opportunities and relationships with faculty, alumni mentors and peers will be invaluable once your diploma is in hand, higher education experts say.   

The key is to expand your skills as you grow and evolve personally, while also adapting to changing work environments. Whether you are an incoming student, just graduated or are looking to find your next career move, here are some expert tips to follow. 

Search broadly first, then laser focus 

When searching for work that fulfills you, consider the multitude of possibilities. 

“A major tenant of career exploration is to explore broadly, as broadly as you can,” Porfeli said. “And as you're engaging in that in breadth (of) exploration, you're then cueing in on opportunities that seem more appealing to you, more suiting to your talents.”

• Onetonline.org (the Occupational Information Network through the U.S. Department of Labor) provides detailed descriptions of nearly 1,000 occupations in the United States and an interest profiler to help you determine a possible career fit.  

• Ohio State students can explore their interests, skills and values by taking FOCUS 2 Career self-assessments. Or they can meet with a career counselor, learn about internships and summer jobs by signing up for Handshake.

After cueing in on careers that appeal to you, go deeper. Read about them. Find people in the field and talk to them. “You might go down that road for a bit and then back away and then explore the broader options again and then cue in on something else.” Eventually this “dance of exploration” will lead to both potential careers but also a better self-understanding. 

“That's not just about exploring a career option deeply as much it is exploring yourself deeply,” Porfeli said.   

Sample the “buffet” of experiences in college 

College is less like ordering from room service and more like choosing from a buffet, says Matthew Mayhew, William Ray and Marie Adamson Flesher Professor of Educational Administration, who focuses on higher education and student affairs. 

University campuses offer “a vast, rich and sometimes overwhelming array of options,” Mayhew wrote in a series of articles about parenting a college student for Forbes. “Success is not guaranteed by payment, but by students’ willingness to actively navigate the choices.” 

So, sample widely, Mayhew said. Discover subjects you are passionate about. Reducing college to efficiencies — shorter degree programs, fewer general education courses, ultra-focused degrees — might cost employers the innovation they seek.  

“College should be about the robust experiences that we offer,” Mayhew said. “And that includes all the clubs, all the sports, adulting, growing into your own self, growing into awareness of what your strengths and limitations are, being able to extrapolate … lessons learned in one major to another major, and then even beyond that, to a co-curricular experience.” 

Those experiences can add dimension and nuance to a job interview, Mayhew said, but more importantly shape you into a more well-rounded individual who can handle on-the-job challenges.  

Diversifying your skill set pays off — in college and beyond 

Students who expand their education by double majoring are valuable to employers. So valuable, in fact, that they are 56% less likely to suffer from income fluctuations like job loss and pay cuts, according to research by Drew Hanks, associate professor of consumer sciences, and colleagues.  

 “We looked at specific majors because majors provide a certain set of skills and knowledge that people then take into the job market,” Hanks said. “If you have a broader diversity in your set of skills, then it seems to be protective when there (are) these earnings fluctuations.” 

And the more diverse the majors — a degree in education plus one in math, as opposed to a second major in another social science — the more protective the double major, the research shows.  

Hanks, an economics researcher, compares it to diversifying a financial portfolio.   

“You can invest in a bunch of tech stocks, and you're diversified within the tech industry, but you're still subject to tech variation,” he said. “Whereas if you go broader into a different industry, then … you have greater diversification” and protection if the market has a downturn. 

“It’s the same kind of concept we're observing in the labor market: If you diversify your human capital portfolio or the skills and knowledge that you bring with you, then that seems to reduce impact from earnings risk,” he said. 

Not only that, but double majors have been shown to be more innovative, according to Mayhew’s research.  

“If they're motivated to look for different experiences, perhaps that motivation is translating its way to actually thinking about taking an idea and pitching it to a new audience or taking a new process and spinning it so that it affects something differentially,” Mayhew said. 

Research has not been done to see if minor degrees or cognates (a set of related courses meant to build interdisciplinary skills) have the same effect on innovations or earnings.  

“But the story we're trying to tell,” Hanks said, “is (that a) diversified set of skills — eventually on-the-job training or something that helps you develop a broader set of skills — could potentially be beneficial.” 

Take a chance: Expand your network 

Today’s college students and new grads sometimes struggle to foster connections, especially with faculty members or alumni who could help with academic difficulties or securing jobs.   

“There's is some research talking about the anxious generation,” Mayhew said. 

However, “it's not only what you know, but who you know that can be really impactful,” Hanks said.  He understands the hesitancy.  

“Different faculty have different personalities,” he said. “But just don't be afraid. They're people, too. If you are interested in a particular area, and you feel like this person would be fun to talk to, (or to) get to know a little bit more about the industry … go to office hours or ask them if you can come by for 15 minutes just to chat.” 
 
“I've definitely appreciate and remember those students who take a little bit extra time just to talk and learn more about what you do,” he said. 

Write out questions beforehand, Mayhew suggests. “To reduce that fear and to reduce that anxiety … come in with questions written and then just read off the form, and then the cadence will start to flow for itself.” 

The same applies to guest speakers, alumni board members and industry leaders, and even company bosses or industry leaders after you graduate.  Introducing yourself at a conference or at the office is a healthy risk that can pay big dividends. 

“They might decide, this guest speaker in this huge lecture hall, they were really good,” Mayhew said. “I'm going to go up and introduce myself afterwards, just so that in the future, if I need to call on them … I can say, ‘Hey, you came and guest spoke for Dr. Mayhew's class back in the fall and I came up and introduced myself. And I just want to reach out and see if there's any opportunity…’”  

“It's going to feel strange for a student to stay after class,” he said. “Their friends might be leaving. It might be lunchtime. It might take 20 extra minutes to get everyone out of class to make your way up there. But I think that risk might be beneficial in the long run.” 

Be persistent 

If you don’t score an interview or get the internship or job the first several times you try, don’t give up, Hanks said. Keep building your network and reaching out to people in the field. 

“Just showing your interest, I think, can go a long way,” he said. “Even if it doesn't turn into an internship or a job, it ... forces you to learn how to have those conversations. And it shows that you're eager and you want to continue trying.” 

Perseverance can be challenging, but it’s a marker of successful people, Hanks said. “It just requires that resilience,” he said.  

Recast your failures 

Some of Porfeli’s career counseling research considers how people develop a sense of self with respect to their careers. As the work world rapidly changes, he said, “the multiple jobs, the multiple employers, the multiple careers … there is also a contextual pressure to constantly be revisiting and adapting your identity.” 

A job loss can have a negative impact. A promotion, a positive one.  Artificial intelligence creates fear but also new pathways. “It offers the opportunity for invention and reinvention of oneself,” Porfeli said. 

Fundamentally, college and career success requires leaning into opportunities and learning, he said. Sometimes that means being willing to fail to emerge someplace new. 

“People who have experienced a failure — and then there's been some distance between the failure and their current experience — will often look back and recast a failure as actually a great opportunity,” he said.   

“It doesn't feel that way in the moment, but oftentimes failures lead to a different perspective, a different opportunity that we otherwise wouldn't have experienced had we succeeded. And sometimes significant failures are actually great opportunities.”