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Graduating without any leadership experiences

For those who graduated with no leadership experience (outside of academics), do you have any regrets job-hunting wise?

I struggle with leadership roles. I tend to make sure that I'm the best person to lead before I even consider. Thus I'm looking for people who may have the same experience of having little to no leadership experience during college and I wanna know how much did it affect your professional success?

What do you think can help to compensate for the lack of leadership skills (and internships) ?

(edited 1 month ago)

Reply 1

Pedr0

no leadership experience is probably not a big deal unless you're shooting for high-flying consulting roles etc., no internship experience is a disadvantage but by no means insurmountable, if you have no work experience whatsoever that would be a major red flag

Reply 2

TheCareerPages

In its simplest form, leadership is the act of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common objective. You don’t have to have management experience to demonstrate that you have leadership skills.

Reflect on the experiences you’ve had both inside and outside of college - can you think of any examples where you’ve inspired or persuaded people to complete a task in a certain way? Start by making a conscious effort to lead on a smaller scale, and confidence to lead at a larger scale will follow.

This article in Harvard Business Review expands on my point above https://hbr.org/2023/02/you-dont-need-to-be-the-boss-to-be-a-leader