14 tips for finding a job upon graduation that is not related to your major

I studied business but my first job out of college was selling copiers door-to-door. Had nothing to do with my degree and everyone thought I was crazy. Looking back, I’d tell myself to stop obsessing over whether a job title matched my major and start asking one question instead: “Will this teach me how to sell?”

That copier job taught me rejection doesn’t kill you. I got doors slammed in my face forty times a day. When I started my fulfillment company at 25 in that vacant morgue, I had to sell myself to every potential client with zero track record. The comfort with rejection I built selling copiers was worth more than any “business development associate” internship at a Fortune 500 company where I’d have spent two years making PowerPoints.

Here’s what I’d do differently: I’d seek out the hardest, most uncomfortable role I could find in my first two years out of school, even if it had zero connection to my major. Especially if it had zero connection. The kids who go straight into cushy roles that perfectly align with their degree often skip the struggle that builds real resilience. By 28 I’d scaled that morgue startup to ten million in revenue and sold it. The foundation wasn’t my business degree. It was learning how to hear “no” five hundred times and still show up the next day.

If you’re a recent grad worried your first job doesn’t match your major, ask yourself whether it’s teaching you skills that transfer everywhere. Selling, managing difficult people, operating under pressure, building something from nothing. Those matter infinitely more than having the right keywords on your resume. I’ve hired hundreds of people and I’ve never once cared if their first job matched their major. I care whether they know how to work.

I’d tell myself to stop trying to hide my ADHD and look for jobs that work with how my brain actually functions. I spent years forcing myself into regular office jobs when I did way better in fast-paced, hands-on environments. My biggest mistake was thinking I had to follow the same straight line everyone else seemed to be on.

Something I wish I’d understood earlier: your major doesn’t lock you into anything, especially when you have ADHD. A lot of us are good at things we stumble into by accident, not things we studied. I would’ve spent more time talking to people in different fields and trying short projects instead of just going for whatever seemed safe.

Look for places where ADHD traits like creativity, hyperfocus, and working well under pressure are actually useful. That’s going to matter way more than whatever’s on your business card.

I didn’t take a traditional internship in my CS major. The trade I made was spending those summers building real software for paying clients on the side instead, which I still think was the right call for me, but the one thing I’d do differently if I could turn back the clock is take far more shots earlier at companies whose work I admired, even when I wasn’t a ‘fit’ on paper.

The assumption I made at the time was that internship recruiting was a transaction: you submit through the portal, you get screened, the algorithm decides. That model is correct for the largest tech employers and a few investment banks, and it’s wrong almost everywhere else. The smaller, more interesting companies, the ones building things I was actually excited about, almost always preferred a thoughtful cold email over a job-board application. I didn’t realize that until much later. By the time I figured it out, I was already running my own thing, and the internship window had closed.

What I’d do differently, concretely: I’d pick 15 companies I genuinely admired by sophomore year, and I’d send each one a short note to a real human (the founder, a director, someone whose blog I’d read) saying ‘here’s a small thing I built that’s relevant to what you do, here’s a question I have about how you do it, would you ever take an unpaid week of help from a college student who can ship code?’ Two or three of those would say yes. One of them would turn into an actual paid summer role with someone you’d genuinely learn from. That single relationship is worth more than three brand-name internships on a resume, because at 21 the highest-leverage thing you can do is be in the room with someone five years ahead of you who’s actively building.

The meta-lesson: the formal channels exist because they scale, not because they’re the best path. The best paths almost always go through one specific person who is willing to vouch for you because you showed up with curiosity and useful work in hand. I waited too long to learn that.

After my MBA, I didn’t apply for the finance or consulting jobs my classmates were chasing. I spent 14 months traveling 25 countries with my partner, working odd hospitality gigs and studying how different cultures approached wellness, food, and community. I sat in on staff meals at family-run guesthouses, shadowed owners through their opening routines, and asked the same set of questions about how they built loyalty without budgets. That fieldwork became the foundation of the business we run today.

If I could go back, the one thing I’d do differently is keep a rigorous record of what I was learning. One observation I wish I’d captured properly: in a small Lisbon guesthouse, the owner greeted every guest by asking what they’d eaten that morning, not where they were from. That single reframing shaped how we onboard guests now. My advice to graduates taking an unconventional route: whatever you’re doing instead of the expected job, document it like it matters. One day it will.

I had been trained to aim in one direction but chose to join the sales team at a tiny financial services firm. Not exactly the salary you dream about, not quite the job title that would make sense to add to your LinkedIn profile, and perhaps even some mild disapproval from a few faculty members. But, what it provided me with was firsthand client interaction and insights into business tactics and customer acquisition. After all, I used this experience as the platform to set up my very own company several years later. These skills weren’t exactly part of the syllabus.

Were I to go back in time, then the one change I would make is to stop apologizing for my decision. While trying to explain away this decision as a mistake would have made things easier in the early days, it also means that I did not build relationships with as much confidence as I should. Your degree is your ticket to getting through the front door. You choose which room you stay in once inside.

I would have made the decision more data-driven instead of identity-driven. Early on, I treated “a job related to my major” as the default path, even when the day-to-day work didn’t match what actually energized me. If I could redo it, I’d run short, low-risk experiments first: 10 informational interviews across adjacent roles, a couple of small project sprints (even unpaid personal projects), and a simple scorecard for what I learned (skills used daily, feedback loops, mentorship quality, and growth in 6-12 months). That would have helped me choose based on evidence, not pressure.

I also would have framed my story sooner around transferable skills rather than a linear major-to-job narrative. The turning point for me was realizing that operations and manufacturing discipline, analytical thinking, and communication mattered more than the exact label on my degree. If I’d articulated that earlier, I would’ve wasted less time “credential matching” and more time targeting teams where those skills are valued and measurable.

If I could go back in time, I would have realized earlier that the first job is more important not because of the ‘job title’, but because of the speed with which you develop discipline, responsibility, and understanding of the real business. As an employer, I often see the same mistake in young candidates: they wait too long for the ‘perfect’ job that matches their diploma and lose 1-2 years of practical experience.

At Wow Now Cleaning, we regularly hire employees with no experience for entry-level positions. Those who come with the mindset of ‘I learn through practice’ grow to become team leaders for projects in 3-6 months. For example, one of our employees started out simply cleaning residential properties, but thanks to regular feedback and a willingness to take on more responsibility, he quickly became a team coordinator.

Now, I would advise graduates to choose their first job as a ‘skills trainer’, not as a career finale. Even if the job isn’t a perfect match for their specialty, it provides key elements—an understanding of responsibility, client communication, and the real operating environment. This is the foundation that can be converted into any profession faster than waiting for the perfect one.

I didn’t follow a traditional internship path when building ChainClarity, and the tradeoff was exactly what you’d expect: slower credential accumulation, faster real-world signal.

The specific calculation I made: a summer at a large company would give me a line item on a resume, exposure to how one large organization works, and a network of people early in their own careers. Building ChainClarity over the same period gave me a live product, paying users, and direct evidence that I could take something from idea to market.

The resume line item is easier to get than the live product. Most hiring managers I’ve spoken to — at companies where I’d actually want to work — weight demonstrated ability to ship over credential-stacking. The gap is less about “internship vs. no internship” and more about “what do you have to show?”

The honest downside: traditional internships provide structured mentorship, exposure to professional norms, and networks that are genuinely hard to replicate independently. If you skip them, you have to be intentional about finding those elsewhere — advisors, accelerators, open-source communities, online professional networks.

The advice I’d give: the internship question is really a question about what you’re optimizing for. If you’re building something specific and the opportunity cost of eight weeks is real progress on that thing, the tradeoff can make sense. If you’re using “working on my own thing” as a rationalization for not doing the hard work of getting into a competitive program, that’s a different situation.

If I had decided not to pursue an internship or entry-level job related to my major, one thing I would do differently is begin formal project debriefs from the very first projects. Those debriefs should capture how much time and margin were lost compared to original estimates. Doing this early would surface whether issues were due to pricing, operations, or quality while volumes were still low. It would also make it clear if the constraint was labor or equipment rather than marketing. With that information, I could make targeted adjustments to pricing, staffing, or tools before peak demand. I would combine debriefs with a deliberate Q2 review to prepare for seasonal cycles. That routine reduces the last-minute scramble that often appears in Q4. Starting this habit at the outset would have accelerated practical learning and smoothed the path to running projects independently.

After 20 years in software engineering and technical leadership, I pivoted from pure tech to help over 11,000 businesses scale through Skyport Digital. I realized that technical skills are only half the battle if you aren’t visible to your customers.

If I could turn back the clock, I would focus earlier on reputation management and SEO rather than just following a traditional software career path. I would have mastered Google Ads to understand customer behavior before ever writing my first line of commercial code.

One of our clients stopped a $300,000 per week revenue hemorrhage just by suppressing negative search results and reclaiming their online narrative. This taught me that being an adaptable partner is more valuable than being a specialist in a single major.

Look for ways to provide measurable ROI, like cutting organic traffic costs by 5x. Don’t just pursue a job title; seek the strategy that helps a business survive and thrive.

I should’ve talked to people outside my major way earlier. I stuck to what I knew until I got into real estate. Honestly, a random chat with a local shop owner is what pushed me to switch. Don’t just do what’s expected. Talk to folks in totally different industries. You never know which random conversation is going to be the one that actually changes your career.

I would have taken at least one internship in my major, even if it was unpaid or part-time, just to see if I actually liked the real work.

I always thought classes were enough to prepare me for what to expect in the workforce, even in the same field, but I was wrong. Theory on its own is important, but internships are much more valuable for the hands-on knowledge of a field.

Here is what I learned too late:

1- An internship would have let me try out daily work in full, up-close detail, instead of a section of it, as I would have learned while studying it.

2- I would have had the chance to network with a workforce already established, having the ability to orient me on the possibilities of the job market.

3- I would have learned about various pathways I could take to prepare for a successful job interview, and gained useful examples to support my arguments.

4- Discovering my likes and dislikes through an internship would have provided the opportunity to quickly and easily alter the career pathway I chose, while focusing on examples to justify the deviation.

The thing I most regret is the time and money I lost by blindly focusing on a lengthy university degree. Spending one summer on an internship would have saved me years of this.

I wish I had found a way to mix real work with networking earlier, even without a formal internship. Launching YEAH! Local meant fixing actual search problems immediately, which was a crash course, but doing it alone was overwhelming. I got results by pushing myself, but finding a crew to bounce ideas off sooner would have made the grind much easier.

I wish I hadn’t just chased internships that matched my major. I should have spent more time hanging around startup circles, joining any project that would have me. Watching a marketing person and a programmer figure out a problem together, that was the real education. That kind of hands-on work shows you what you’re actually good at and enjoy more than any class ever could.