a gap between students and ex-students

Yesterday, I gave a talk to engineering students about career planning and job applications. It was really a talk about networking, or rather: connecting with their future employers.

I only left grad school a few years ago, so I remember being a Ph.D. student quite vividly. Still, I notice some serious gaps between academia (or rather: students) and industry (or rather: entrepreneurs). Which is a shame. It's a shame, because students and entrepreneurs are two classes of people with a spectacular freedom to operate. Both get judged by their output (grades or profit) and not by their input (hour of work invested). As a result, both have a choice to spend the entire thursday morning in bed or to spend the entire saturday night working (and they do).
Nobody cares about how exactly entrepreneurs or students get to results. They can use any (legal) means necessary, but the cold numbers are presented at the end of the year, be it the book year or the academic year.
In a sense, we should feel connected. I know I do.

And still, when students make contact with entrepreneurs or with a corporate environment, all of a sudden most of them switch to a whole new set of social rules (a different protocol, if you will), which is awkward both to the student and to the entrepreneur. Which is a shame, because a good relationship with their possible future employers would make their job search a whole lot easier.

Example: I had a discussion with the president of a CenEka, a student's organization. She tried to contact companies, trying to get sponsoring and to get her organization invited for toured visits in interesting companies. She asked me how long her e-mails should be for getting in touch with companies. Apparently, she never got an answer to her two-page long e-mail. She wondered if she left anything important information out, while she should be wondering how to the e-mail shorter and more powerful. If she had talked to anybody who runs a business, she'd have had a better e-mail and probably some direct introductions.

It would be nice if students and people from the industry would be able to interact more spontaneously. After all: we are future colleagues. So I'd like to call on all students to start interacting with their future co-workers -- I'm sure entrepreneurs and employees are willing to accept student's invitations. Ceneka has made it its core business to organize toured visits to companies. This is a good starting point. But it would be even better to build lasting relations between the companies and the student's club, or even better: between the people.