Ambitious college students often approach extracurricular activities in a similar fashion. They attend their school's club fair, discover which organizations interest them, and apply for highly coveted "executive positions." Students worthy enough of being bestowed titles like "Director of X" or "VP of Y" quickly proceed to update their LinkedIn, proudly wearing their new titles like a freshly minted MD at her white coat ceremony. Our new club executive will spend much of the year working on "fulfilling the club's mandate to inspire and educate students in X field of business," which is just a fancy way of saying plan events. The year draws to a close. Some decide to interview and "move up" while others leave, eager to begin manipulating each line item on their resumé with their recent contributions. Like a clock, one revolution ends and the next begins.
As contrived as this may sound, there's actually nothing wrong with this view. While not everyone wants to be an event planner, there are other genuine benefits to joining a school club. You likely already know most of them, and that isn't the focus of this essay. I do want to highlight one particular benefit, though: the importance of community. There are few things more inspiring than being on a team of highly motivated individuals working towards a common goal, even if that goal is as transient as an upcoming event. This shouldn't be neglected.
But for other students looking to learn and develop skills relevant to their future careers, I invite you to the world of contract work.
I want to preface by stating that pursuing contract work isn't a viable extracurricular strategy for every career path, especially for jobs outside of business and technology. At the end of the day, it's up to you to decide how you want to best spend your time.
What is Contract Work?
In our context, contract work looks like working remotely for a company/organization during the school year, often in a function requiring some degree of hard skills—like marketing or programming, to name a few examples. Contract work deviates from the conventional model of summer-only internships, providing ambitious students with an opportunity to gain "real-world" experience all year around.
Let's look at an example. Marco has always dreamed of being a marketer. When he gets to university, he signs up for every business club on campus, encouraged by the endearing words of his second-year mentor. He lands a junior executive position with two business clubs, believing that his success must have come from his plethora of high school accomplishments. If only you went to SHAD and won at DECA Provincials, he tells his friend Mary, who, like Marco, also hopes to pursue a career in marketing.
Mary remains involved as a member of her school's marketing club but instead begins to fire off cold emails to different startups and marketing agencies. Days pass and no responses yet. She reads up on communication cadences and structured frameworks on selling. She DMs upper years on Instagram for coffee chats. She cold emails various upper year marketing professors to learn more about their research (and, of course, to also ask for warm introductions to the marketing professionals she found on LinkedIn). Eventually, her tenacity pays off, and she secures a 4-month contract working remotely for a seed-stage ads startup.
It's now January. Mary begins working remotely, logging on after her classes for a few hours a day. She works directly under the VP of Marketing and learns how to run targeted ad campaigns on Facebook and Google. She struggles at first but is determined to make things work. Her boss is open, honest, and encouraging. She eventually owns her own campaign and delivers an expected ROI of 35%. Not bad, Mary.
Marco, on the other hand, is juggling between planning two major flagship events. He's having trouble finding speakers who are willing to attend and is facing increasing pressure from his demanding, second-year VP. While one club's event stumbles, the other is a huge success.
By April, both Mary and Marco are looking for a summer job in marketing. Which candidate seems more employable?
Why Now?
The purpose of this essay isn't to argue which approach is better; rather, it's to share with you an alternative view on spending your time during university. Through pursuing contract work opportunities, I've had the privilege of learning from and working with some really cool people, from the co-founder of Zoom Information to a former NBA player. These opportunities were never easy to create, but isn’t that why they say nothing easy is ever worth doing?
These past few months have shown us that remote work is at an inflection point. Many companies around the world have ordered their employees to work from home. Work culture, as we know it, is undergoing an inevitable shift towards remote teams. Companies will be increasingly open to hiring remote employees, and with them, part-time students.
Opportunity for contract work abounds! Will you be ready when it knocks?
