Very helpful and informative post. I was surprised to find this at the bottom of the page. You probably can't find more straightforward and honest advice elsewhere on these forums.

This stuff is especially important to know because the vast majority of high school kids are fed garbage about university. When you're getting 90's in grade 12, you're led to believe that the world's your oyster and that you can "do any degree you want" in university and have a job waiting for you upon graduation... No. You need some strategy, otherwise you're going to waste a lot of time and money.

I'd like to emphasize point #7... Take time to better your skills. Having completed two years of my degree and currently in the middle of a year off, I'm self-teaching myself a second language that will help land jobs in my field. It took me a little while to fully appreciate how important it is to broaden your skill set beyond your piece-of-paper degree and stand out from the crowd. It's worth the time and energy, folks.

This is sometimes true (but only sometimes). It's a lot easier to get internships than people make it ought to be. Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of creativity to distinguish you from the crowd

Thanks for sharing that info... It's definitely something worth looking into. I knew that computer skills were important, but didn't really know that being officially certified in said area was that beneficial. Did you have to take a course for this certification, or did you complete an online type of training (i.e. like WHMIS)?

I'm considering doing a course like that through Athabasca. Lots of colleges and post-secondary vocational schools of numerous sorts offer courses like that; they're very common. I know Microsoft offers its own certification for its programs ($$$), but having completed a course that teaches all the Microsoft applications should be just as good.

See, the thing is, when people make their resumes for a certain position, they usually list as their qualifications all the qualifications that are listed in the job ad (only in their own wording). If a job ad lists as a qualification "proficiency in Microsoft Office applications," then nearly everyone applying for that job is going to say something along the lines of, "I have lots of experience with and knowledge in Microsoft Office applications" in their resume. You don't have any proof of this, and you can't show just how proficient you are (if you are actually very proficient) simply by stating this. If you have successfully completed a course or certification, then you have proof. See what I'm saying?

Clearly, you nor your friends have ever applied for a FO position in finance. Because I've had the exact opposite experience as you describe.

Excellent advice Matt. People brought up how crazy I was to not hire Doctorate and Masters students at McDonald's. I didn't because they did not have the skills necessary to do the job asked of them. Just obtaining a fancy piece of paper is not enough.

I just saw this now and lol'd. No you weren't crazy not to hire grad students at McDicks, but "did not have the skills necessary" is just hilarious. You mean you knew better than to hire someone who would be too ambitious to let their soul get sucked away by working at McDonalds for an extended period of time.

I can agree with that: "overqualified" people are likely to be less enthusiastic about their job as a burger flipper, are no better at flipping burgers than a high school grad, and probably won't stay long.

Bump, because I agree with this thread more than ever now and feel most high school and university students are in need of enlightenment. A university degree absolutely does not guarantee you a job and - hopefully I'm not sounding too bitter - is for the most part a waste of money and time (though there are, obviously, quite a few exceptions).

I think a big part of the problem is that people see university as a way to "find themselves" and learn a lot about some topic that interests them - undoubtedly those are true, but I don't think it's worth the four years or more of a person's life and the $60,000+ unless you can get something else out of it. What initially pulled me into oil field work was the money, obviously. I was truly moving one step forward and two steps back, as I had $800/month in loan repayments, was paying $750/month rent and utilities, $250/month in car insurance and gas... that's $1800/month right there and even though I was making $19/hour (pretty decent IMO, relative to what I could have got elsewhere), I was making less money than I owed/spent. What stressed me out more than anything else was that I had no rainy day fund, and I couldn't qualify for any further credit, so if my car broke down and required an $800 fix or something like that, I would have to default on part of my loan repayments. Enjoying life was definitely not in the cards. I don't know how people do it on $12/hour.

People just think that having a university degree means they should make more money than tradespeople and hard-working labourers; that may have been true in our parents' generation, but it definitely no longer is. Too many people go to university these days, and there just doesn't need to be that many people with a lot of theoretical knowledge. For every person creating a product, providing an advanced service, or planning a project, there's probably ten people actually carrying out the associated work. It certainly doesn't help that most of us were raised in a soft, highly technological environment: we aren't used to doing hands-on, physical work. I never thought I would be, but since dropping out of pharmacy school I've helped delivery truck drivers make deliveries, got my class one driver's license (Alberta's version of Ontario's class A, which allows you to drive transport trucks), and worked as a labourer setting up the tools that take geological measurements of oil and gas wells. I always thought I'd just be a desk jockey, but those jobs are hard to come by and often don't pay as well. I definitely have a newfound respect for the trades especially.

Yeah, I was considering petroleum engineering, petroleum engineering technology, and geology. Seeing as I'm 25, I ruled out pet eng pretty quickly, just because it would take me four years to get the degree (I don't have a lot of transferable credits), and I'd have to spend about that much time as an engineer-in-training before getting P.Eng status. Furthermore, you can't take engineering courses online, at least not from an even half-decent educational institution. Geology would have been just a couple years of school, but it didn't interest me quite as much as petroleum engineering technology, which, with my transferable courses and taking quite a few courses online, will actually only require that I take one semester off of work, which my current employer supports (and actually they are paying for the courses, and they will pay me my base salary when I do go for the semester of classroom schooling). Perhaps surprisingly, the technologists often make more money than the engineers, here in Alberta. Sounds unfair I guess, but technologists usually work in the field, often outdoors in any weather, way up in God know's where, usually for two weeks on/one week off, 12 hour shifts, while the engineers sit in their cozy offices in downtown Calgary, working 9-5 M-F.