Speaker 1 (00:00):

Welcome to the Legal Learning Podcast. I’m your host Jolene. And with the legal learning center, I help prospective law students save $300,000 on law school. Legal Learning Members are invited to join a live webinar, either June 2nd, fourth or fifth, teaching three strategies to save thousands on your legal journey. This is only being offered on those three dates and we’ll share ways to save tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars on law school. And I’ll be sharing even more ways that you can save. Time is running out to sign up, go to legallearningcenter.com to receive an email invite.

Today, we are going to speak with Andrea Koppel. We spend our whole lives planning to go to college. And when we graduate, we think what now? Many of us go to law school simply because we don’t have a better answer than just going. Andrea helps college students figure out what to do with their lives after college. She helps them make sense of the big, bad, scary world. So whether you would like to hear more options for your life or are considering gap years and want to make them productive, I think you’ll find Andrea’s advice really helpful.

Speaker 2 (01:22):

Thank you so much Jolene. And hi everybody. So where do I start? I think I’m going to start with what my major was in college, because it really does align, I’m guessing with those of you who are thinking about law school. I was a polisci major and I concentrated in Asian studies and Chinese, and I’ve never used my polisci degree. Instead after I graduated, I had a little curve ball thrown at me. It wasn’t quite a Corona virus curve ball. And I had my plan go sideways and I didn’t have a plan B. I ended up through something people might call serendipity, I call magic, ended up getting a job in China because I spoke Chinese and it was while I was in China that I met all of these journalists and I listened to their stories and I said, I want to do what they’re doing.

Speaker 2 (02:34):

And so after six months on that job, I quit. I flew back to the U.S. I spent 20 years as a journalist. I then pivoted into public relations and was a senior vice president of communications. I then pivoted into the nonprofit world and was a vice president of global engagement. And then about four years ago in June of 2017, I quit my last job. And that brings us to where I am today. Because about a year after I quit, I started my own podcast called Time 4 Coffee, and the reason it’s called Time 4 Coffee is that that’s the message that you send somebody when you want to ask them about their career. Hey, do you have time to grab a cup of coffee? I want to ask you about what you do. And I interview professionals in dozens of different industries about what they do in their jobs and how they built their careers.

Speaker 2 (03:46):

And now let’s fast forward. I saw all of these cross cutting patterns, and I know Jolene, you have seen them too, because I listened to one of your episodes. I think it was your 21st episode. And you were talking about all that you had seen in the 20 people that you had interviewed. And I began to see after about 80 people that I interviewed that there are all of these big takeaways about careers that I’m not hearing conventional wisdom talk about. And so that has moved me into becoming a career coach for college students and young professionals, which is what I’m doing today.

Speaker 1 (04:37):

Yes. I’ve also listened to your podcast and yeah, I love what you’ve covered because it really, I think helps college students or even young professionals see things like career moves are not, or career development is not linear necessarily. And that we don’t have to know the path or the end goal that we can just grow with our career and change over life.

Speaker 2 (05:03):

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, the truth is it doesn’t matter where you start your career. And I truly believe now having interviewed hundreds of professionals that your first, second, third job, they don’t really matter. And you can pretty much start anywhere. And P.S. 90% of the hundreds of people I’ve interviewed, including me, had no idea what we were going to do with our careers. No idea. That is the norm. So if you don’t know what you want to do when you graduate, if you’re kind of on the fence and you’re like, well, maybe I’ll just go to law school. I say, take a deep breath and do something else. And if you still, after having done one job or two jobs say, you know that the law is for me, then talk to Jolene.

Speaker 1 (06:17):

Yes. I think that makes so much sense. I think that we can really find sometimes other things that interest us or even things to focus on in the law, through things we do during gap years. So yeah, if students are afraid of that big, bad world with no path and no direction, do you have advice for them?

Speaker 2 (06:42):

Oh my gosh, that is my sweet spot. That is my specialty Jolene. The first thing that I want to say to them is they need to stop thinking about what they majored in, in college and for those who are watching this, I’m making a little house over myself as the little house that they’re going to be forced to live in for the rest of their professional life. And instead think of your college major as the foundation of a professional skyscraper, that you are going to be building over the course of your life with each new job and each new career adding a new floor in your skyscraper. So once you broken down the walls of that little house, that major, take out a sheet of paper and have three columns. And in your first column, I want you to write down all of your hard skills.

Speaker 2 (07:50):

These are your technical skills, things like communication. If you know how to use different software, if you are a computer programmer, if you know how to analyze, if you were a comp lit major creative thinking, whatever it is, you want to put that in the hard skills in the next column, write down your soft skills. These are all the interpersonal skills. And they include things like empathy, which is huge adaptability, teamwork, flexibility, interpersonal skills, all of that. And then in your third column, write down the things that light you up your interests, where do you lose track of time? And usually you can follow the breadcrumbs to your extracurricular activities. Where do you spend your free time? Then I want you to take your hard and soft skills. And I actually post about this on LinkedIn. If you scroll through my feed, you can find it, but your hard and soft skills will align with different job functions.

Speaker 2 (09:16):

Now, what do I mean by that? I mean, if you’re a super organized person and you like that, maybe it’s project management or being an executive assistant for somebody because you’re the one who keeps the trains running on time, or maybe it’s marketing, or maybe it’s communications, or maybe it’s more technical computer oriented, all of those job functions, maybe it’s finance, they are cross cutting into a bazillion different industries. And that is where your interests can lead you. So let’s just say you’re somebody who loves the outdoors. Well, think about that. There are all these companies, these clothing companies that have to do with the outdoors, there are trucking companies. There are travel companies. There are, you could be a forest ranger, you could do all of these things, but they need people who are good in finance or who are marketing or project management or communicators. So that is the way that you can take your skills and your interests and move in the direction. That is really the beginning of your professional journey.

Speaker 1 (10:48):

That just sounds so exciting to me that I want to go do it myself. I’m just going to go and do this later today, but yeah, that’s so cool because I can picture when you were talking about outdoors. I mean, yeah. These companies that were, you know, some of these backpacking companies and stuff like that were created by just, you know, two people who had an interest who were backpacking and their backpacks kept falling apart and stuff like that. And you hear about that all the time. And if people actually maybe tried to do that, you know, while they’re still in college or right after college, they might actually find career paths that are more aligned a little earlier in their lives. And again, you might have that exploration or that first three jobs or however many that aren’t quite there, but you know, you’re on that kind of path of, okay.

Speaker 1 (11:36):

Yes. That organizational skill didn’t work for me so well over here, I don’t like it in this way, so maybe I go try it over there and just gives you a little more direction. Yeah. In that big wide world. There’s so much out there and there’s so much that they don’t talk about in high school career class. And there’s always new things. I mean, when I was in high school and college, there was no podcasting. There was no YouTube, you know, so there’s always new things being developed. You know, I mean, just in the last few years you could be a tik toker, right. You couldn’t do that five years ago.

Speaker 2 (12:10):

Exactly. And that is, I referred to magic earlier. And what I mean by that is not the “saw lady in half” magic. Okay. It’s not like “the hand is quicker than the eye”. It is the magic of life. And I’m curious if any of your viewers or listeners have already had this happen to them. I’m guessing they have, where you meet somebody, whether it’s at a party or whether it’s at a family gathering or whether it’s at a bar or whether it’s in a club and that person opens your eyes to something that you didn’t know existed, that maybe it was your major. And by the way, 75% of college students change their majors at least once, while they’re in school. So that’s a microcosm of what’s going to happen to you when you get outside of college and start this journey. But there is the magic of meeting people of having experiences of maybe that first job is just okay, but you’re in an office and somebody else, one of your colleagues is doing something that you would never heard of before.

Speaker 2 (13:40):

And you’re talking at lunch or you go out after work to grab a drink, and they’re telling you about what they do. And you’re like, wow, that exists. This is going to happen to you over and over and over again. And maybe it’s unfortunate that you can’t look into, you know, your magic globe and see that this is going to happen to you. But I actually think that this is what makes life so exciting. We don’t know what waits for us around the corner. If you had asked me when I was in college and said, Andrea, what do you think you’re going to be doing in 2020? The last thing that I would have said is I’m going to be a career coach for college kids and I’m going to be a podcaster. So I think it’s fun.

Speaker 1 (14:41):

Yeah. I’m with you. And I can already think of so many different circumstances where that has happened, where just some random thing led to something else. I mean, even within my legal career, I remember orientation day, I was like, okay, we’re having a lunch with, I don’t know, one professor and a half dozen students at a table. And I decided I’m going to make a friend of one of these people. They’re going to be the person I sit next to on the first day of school. So I’m not alone. And we all had to share something exciting that we had done. And this girl shared that for her college graduation, her boyfriend had paid for her skydive. And I was like, she’s my girl. That’s the one I’m going to be BFFs with. And sure enough, for the next three years we were BFFs.

Speaker 1 (15:23):

And we had totally different interests. We went different ways career wise, but after a few years, I was like, you know what? I just really need to be making good money and I’m not and she is. And so she got me into the industry I was in for the next 15 years and I thought I would hate it. And I loved it. And it was just like, okay, I just need to pay some bills. And you never know. And I just had so many amazing opportunities in that career field that I’d never would have had if I had not said, I liked that girl, we’re going to be BFsF. You know? And it’s just the most random thing.

Speaker 2 (15:56):

And actually that is a fantastic segue to some other advice that I have for your listeners and viewers. And that is the incredible value and power of networking. And I just had a video on it this week. I happen to love networking, and I’m going to try to sell you those of you who are like, oh, I hate it. I’m going to try to sell you on why this is something you should invest in. Not just because it’s good for your professional life, but it’s good for your personal life. Yeah. I approach networking as like, this is an opportunity for me to make new friends. Now you may not be like Jolene and become BFFs with the person that you’re sitting next to, or the person that you’re talking to, who you met on LinkedIn, but these relationships that you forge and I highly recommend that you go on LinkedIn and you approach LinkedIn in a super strategic way, a super focused way on the industries that you’ve identified from the three columns that we went through.

Speaker 2 (17:23):

Pick three of them that align with your interests. And now go on LinkedIn, use your alumni network and start identifying those people who are within 10 years of your age. So just 10 years older than you ideally two, three, four, five years older than you. And start connecting with them on LinkedIn and having informational interviews, get to know what they’re doing, learn about what that job is like and get their advice for you. Don’t ask them for a job, but what advice they have for you in terms of where they might be looking for a job if they were out on the market right now, because they are closest to the industry, they’re much closer than you are. So have like five of those conversations a day to build out your network. And I guarantee you, you will find opportunities in the coming weeks or months or years.

Speaker 3 (18:40):

That’s great because I think a lot of pre-laws students feel like they have to, first of all, label themselves, if they’re on LinkedIn and then they have to only identify with lawyers. So I only want to talk to lawyers and they forget that, first of all, they probably have an area or two of interests within the law, whether it’s immigration law or international law or whatever it is. And that those areas could also be done as non-attorneys that there are things within immigration, you know, you can be an advocate or something like that. There’s so many different things you can do outside of that. So actually then finding those industries and connecting with people in yeah. Other fields, not just law. I think we all forget that we just get so tunnel vision, and we miss opportunities to find just, yeah, great adventures, great opportunities.

Speaker 1 (19:37):

And in the more, the deeper we get into it, the more we stop looking around. I know when I went to law school, I wasn’t dedicated to being an attorney. I just thought that’s icing on the cake. I just want that JD. I want what it can give me as far as maybe I go into politics or something like that, but they feed you down this tunnel. And so you start to forget that you’re doing, you want it to do these other things and you don’t look at the weird internships. You don’t look at the outside the box anymore. And then you get shoved into that little again, corporate career or whatever that isn’t going to make you happy. Because again, you start to forget. So if you have connections in other industries, even if you go into law, you still are always thinking and you are hopefully making more conscientious decisions. Like you’re actually making a choice.

Speaker 2 (20:29):

Yeah. And there are so many different industries that need general councils or that have legal shops of their own. And you could go in that direction and wouldn’t it be fantastic if your love of the law aligned with other interests that you have that really light you up, that where you lose track of time, where it just fills you with joy, doing these activities. I mean, that is like the trifecta.

Speaker 1 (21:06):

Yeah. All right. Even if they end up not going into law, are there things that college students should be doing to kind of prime themselves for graduation to either find a job or make themselves marketable in just any way?

Speaker 2 (21:25):

Well, I would say if your LinkedIn profile and I hope you have a LinkedIn profile is not optimized, I would do that now. What do I mean by optimized? Underneath your picture and your name there are about 220 characters. We call that your headline. You want your headline to reflect what you’re interested in. So don’t just say seeking work. You want it to be aligned with the type of industry like seeking project management job in – fill in the blank – something along those lines. So you want that to be optimized. You want to have a picture that is, if it’s from the waist up, but you definitely could just be your shoulder from the shoulders up. You want to be smiling and showing teeth. Why? Because there’s research that shows you come across as more likable, more relatable, and then you want to fill out your About section.

Speaker 2 (22:45):

That is so important. Recruiters and other hiring managers will look at your About section. And this is where you have the opportunity to spell out in more detail, the type of a role, the type of industries that you’re interested in and show us some of your personality, let that come through, give us a sense of the kind of person that you are and the interests that you have and, and let that come through. And if you’ve had part-time jobs, full-time jobs, volunteer, work, whatever it is, you want to fill that out in the experience section. So you really want to optimize your LinkedIn profile and you want to make sure that the, the button there’s a button that lets recruiters know that you are open for business, basically that they can contact you. You want to make sure to have turned on that button. Okay.

Speaker 2 (23:47):

And then the second thing, the second thing is the networking. And if you are young, if you’re not a senior, if you’re an underclassmen, I would say, oh my goodness, first of all, you’re so lucky that you’re listening to this right now. You need to start networking yesterday. You really need to be reaching out to at least 20 people a week to connect. And I can talk you through very quickly if that’s okay, Jolene, how they can go onto their alumni page on LinkedIn. This is like the little secret back door. So you want to go  to the search bar at the top left of your screen. I’m just going to do this as if you’re on a laptop. So you want to type in the name of your school and go to the main page, click on that. And then you’ll see different tabs that will say people, jobs, this, that, and the other.

Speaker 2 (24:52):

You want to click on the alumni, but then you have like five different filters that you can use. And you can search by city. You can search by company. You can search by job function. You can search by what their college major was, and you can search by the year or a block of years where they graduated. And I  would recommend going right up to the years and putting in, let’s say, it’s 2021 putting in 2011. You may go back to 2009. And why do I say that? Because 2009 was the beginning of the last great recession. And those graduates are going to empathize with anyone who is graduating in this economic time. So you put those years in there and let’s just, let’s put, let’s pretend that a company that you’re interested in is there. And if it isn’t, you can do a plus sign and add the name of the company that you’re interested in and then hit return and then scroll down.

Speaker 2 (26:10):

And all the LinkedIn profiles that fall into those parameters are there. And now you can start looking, cause you’ll see their headlines. You’ll see what they’re doing, what their job titles are. And you can start looking then by pressing on their profile, looking at maybe what their first job was after they graduated. And this gives you, first of all, you have an automatic, common reference point when you reach out to connect. Cause you can say, Hey, I’m an alum of yada yada, or I was also a such and such major at this school. Or I see we were both members of the same fraternity or, or that we were both in this club or whatever it is you go through with a fine tooth comb, find those things that you have in common with them. And then you can put that into your requests to connect.

Speaker 2 (27:10):

You get 300 characters to add a note. I highly recommend do not just press connect. Put that note in there saying, hi, my name is so-and-so. I see we’re both alum of this. And we majored in blah, blah, blah. I would love to connect with you. And then after they’ve responded, you can DM them a much longer message. And that’s when you can say, Hey, I’m super interested in the company where you’re working right now. And I would love to have a 20 minute conversation with you at some point in the coming weeks would that work for you here? If you could just let me know what dates might work for you and if not, I’ll totally understand, like give them an out, but that is the way that you can uncover what is known as the hidden job market. Because 80% of existing jobs are not posted on job boards. They are out there and you can find them. So think of yourself like your detective.

Speaker 1 (28:25):

That’s great. Just having that, something in common to then leap to a job. You know, that you’re interested in that. That’s awesome. I’ve had people reach out to me when you were saying it’s so familiar. I’ve had people reach out to me just like that. Hey, can I pick your brain for 20 minutes? I had some questions about law school or whatever, and yeah, I love helping people like that. And I think I’ve done that too. Okay. You think, you know, I’m just talking to someone you don’t realize I actually was doing something kind of strategic there wasn’t I exactly. Yeah. But I like that approach because I think sometimes something like LinkedIn where there’s millions of people on there, it gets so overwhelming. And you just feel like you’re this very tiny little fish and who are you? But if you’ve got some parameters there at least narrows the pond down and then gives you maybe something in common to just reference, Hey yeah, we went to school, you know, same place. I’d love to connect or whatever. And then yeah, go from there with that next year, it is very limited. I find that I’m a talker and I have trouble keeping it to 300 characters.

Speaker 2 (29:36):

Oh, okay. Yeah. I actually have a college to career bootcamp that I’m offering this summer, this month, May and June in which I help those college students in particular, those who are graduating, juniors, if they want to get a leg up on that process to get career clarity. And then I teach them the tools, tactics, and strategies to build their job search game plan and ideally nail down the jobs and the relationships to get those jobs.

Speaker 1 (30:19):

That’s great. So where can they find out more about that?

Speaker 2 (30:24):

Well, they can go to my LinkedIn profile. Hopefully they can get that in your show notes, but if you just go down, scroll down just a little bit, they have a featured section with profiles and you’ll see the college to career bootcamp, career clarity, getting career clarity and building your job search game plan.

Speaker 3 (30:50):

Okay. I’ll make sure to provide a direct link to that featured article as well. So thank you. Yeah. Then they can see you and the article. So as well as the podcast, because we can’t forget about that either. So, and then I think you also mentioned that you had a post recently on something we were talking about earlier, so I’ll make sure to get that link as well. So they can go directly to everything we’ve been talking about today. And I know you are a wealth of so much more information and I honestly, I think we may even have to just have you back on in a few months or something to cover some more. Cause I definitely can see so much more we could cover. And I think the students can use so much more guidance in this area, whether they’re just going to take a few gap years, whether they just want to market themselves better in general, or, you know, if they’re really thinking maybe law school isn’t right for me. And I want to see what else is out there, but I want some guidance on that. I think just about everyone could use you so.

Speaker 2 (31:52):

Well, I would just say this. The reason that I created Time 4 Coffee over three years ago was to help college students to help all of you so that by listening and this was, I started it two years before the Corona virus. It was to give all of you the opportunity to hear what different jobs are like from the professionals who are doing those jobs and to learn about how their careers unfolded. Any, if you go to the Time 4 Coffee website, time4coffee.org, you’ll see on the home page, all of the episodes are organized by industry. So you can click on the different industries that light you up. I have plenty of people in the legal field. I have plenty of people in so many different industries. And I think if you listen to enough episodes, you will hear that I was not leading you astray that most of us had no clue what we were going to do. But as long as you keep your interests front and center and follow them, when you look in the rear view mirror decades later, it’s going to look like you had planned it all out and that’s going to be because the common thread that you were pulling was something that resonated with you.

Speaker 1 (33:46):

That just, I can feel it. Andrea, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (33:56):

Oh my goodness. Jolene. It was my pleasure. I want to give everyone out there a big virtual hug and let you know you are going to be okay. I’m going to go so far as to say you’re going to be better than okay.

Speaker 1 (34:20):

Before we get into my top takeaways, a quick word from our sponsor, Juno. If you have to take out student loans, check in with Juno first, Juno, can often offer law students 1-2% lower interest rates below the federal government and with no origination fees and oftentimes cash back as well. Visit adviser.legallearningcenter.com/Juno for more information.

My top takeaways from this chat with Andrea: one, evaluate your hard and soft skills and apply them to job functions, to help find a good job fit. Number two, college students change majors. Likewise, it’s equally okay to change jobs. Your first job can just be okay. Just be sure to keep your interests front and center and follow them. Number three, use LinkedIn strategically to conduct informational interviews, to learn more about the industries you are interested in. That’s it for this episode, all the tips links and so forth will be in the show notes. A full transcript will be available at legallearningcenter.com/time4coffee. That’s what the number four, which is Andrea’s podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please leave a review. Subscribe, that helps this show, reach more ears and can help those who may need it. Thanks.