For many of us here at Iowa State, we can tend to think that college is the intermediate “waiting room” between being a young adult and getting a career as a full-fledged member of society. We are mostly on our own and now get to make choices about our lives, but college is rarely the highest aspiration for anyone seeking a degree. After graduation, students will be seeking to enter a new part of their life.

It is rather easy to fall back onto the idea that while we are in college, we have not really started our “real” job and do not need to be worried about how well we are hopefully going to do it. After all, what is the point of working on something that you do not even have yet?

The short answer is that we all need to be thinking about making ourselves better at whatever we want to do, because anyone interested in hiring us is sure to be thinking about it.

Making oneself better at performing in any given career path is certainly easier said than done, but there is a relatively simple step that almost anyone can take, and it is joining a professional society.

Professional societies exist in virtually every field of work. From landscape architecture to forestry to event management, there are groups that exist to foster communication and connect individuals with common career interests. Most of these societies also encourage student members and offer discounted membership fees to anyone still in school.

As students, we have arguably the most to gain from such connections and communication. Since most of us in college cannot actually start our careers without the degree we are working toward, we may end up trying to enter a field of work with no real-world experience. For many of us, our sole form of education about the job we are expected to do came in classrooms or highly-structured laboratory settings. By joining a society composed of people who work in the same field, we gain access to their experiences through offered newsletters and publications.

That access to experience also informs any potential employers that we have access to current information. Most textbooks go through an extremely lengthy publication process, in many cases several years, and are rarely updated every year. This means that by a student’s graduation, they may have been learning from publications that are five or more years old.

Professional societies also signal to employers that you are prepared to enter their company as a productive worker as soon as possible. Joining a professional society shows that you have at least some form of professionalism that is not only brought out during an interview.

Many people are going to have well-written cover letters, and many applicants will interview well. Someone who has actually dedicated time and effort outside of their schooling to become a better worker is someone an employer is going to take a second look at.

Depending on the profession and the professional society, membership may also show a potential employer that you are dedicated to your chosen career path. For example, someone who is a member of the Ecological Society of America looks to be more dedicated to ecological issues than someone who simply has a degree in ecology. In a working world where university-level education is becoming far more common than it once was, it is important to show an employer that you spent your college life doing more than just going to class.

A potential employee who shows that he or she is dedicated to their work and to professionalism beyond what is required to obtain a degree will be a safer and more economically viable choice for any employer.