Dear 1st and 2nd year students — Your Career Chaos Stops Here.

Campus Career Catalyst- C3

It’s 12 at night, you are in your 1st or 2nd year of college sitting alone in your room, with the laptop screen burning your eyes and having 6 YouTube videos playing simultaneously. One which teaches you python in 2 hours, one which tells you how important DSA is, whereas the other two which suggests students to start learning more about AI tools, and others promoting cloud courses.

You are sitting at this for 2 hours, and at this point you are even more confused than you were when you had started.

Tomorrow, someone from your class will casually mention that they have already gained more than 10 certificates and have gotten first price in some hackathon which you weren’t even aware of. And here you will be closing your laptop again and staring at the wall thinking- does everyone else have everything figured out- except me?

Turns out NO, everyone is as confused as you are. And we ran a survey to prove it.

We asked 20 students- here’s what everyone had to say:

90% of the students are confused about what to learn. Means if it is a class of 30 students, almost 27 students are clueless about the next step- which coding language should be given priority, whether they should opt for DSA or cloud computing courses or building real time projects will help them more.

This clearly shows that you are not behind, you are just not being guided well.

60% of the students rely on online sources for career guidance. Due to unavailability of a good senior network people start relying on online sources where there is an overload of information- every creator out there has different opinions, and students ultimately end up consuming a lot information and applying very less of them. It also creates comparison anxiety- because internet has stories of many 19yr olds who have done 3 internships and working on a startup, but these information without contexts makes most of the us feel like we are lagging or are inadequate and overwhelmed before even starting preparation.

Senior Lottery

And here’s what nobody talks about enough, but was proved right by our survey: Mainly in the first two years of college the quality of career guidance students receive depends almost entirely on the interaction students have with their seniors, not on the CGPA or your potential, Just on luck.

If you are living in the same hostel as a senior who has cracked an interview for a big company, or you have a society friend from the same college from whom you can seek guidance or maybe your committee head has some information about their seniors and gets you under his wing and explains you whatever exactly is supposed to be done.

But what if this isn’t the case? Then again you are on your own, back to 6 YouTube tabs open. This is what we are calling the senior lottery- which is one of the most unfair things about early years of college which c3 aims to solve. Because there exists seniors who wants to help, but there is just no bridge between the two of you, that bridge is what campus catalyst is aiming to build.

So what is C3?

Campus Career Catalyst C3- is a peer mentorship platform which solves the senior lottery problem and creates a bridge between the experienced seniors who have successfully navigated through internships and placements and the 1st and 2nd year college students who are still trying to figure things out. Everything here will be structured and accessible to all the students especially the ones who are motivated but just needs some guidance or someone to point them in the right direction.

Feedback & format for C3- as given by you:

We didn’t just ask about the problem, we asked about the solution too. And the answers were pretty clear.

95% of the students preferred a blended approach for the kind of mentorship- As different type of problems need different solution, one on one mentorship session for personal doubts, small group discussions for learning multiple perspectives about a problem, async Q&A forum for when doubts can’t stop creeping into your brain at 1pm, and you can’t sleep without first clearing it out.

70% of students wanted a hybrid model with smaller sessions (of maximum an hour)- because sometimes you want to just hop onto your computer and get your doubts solved, while sometime you will want a proper face to face conversation with a senior. Both the options felt valid and will be provided to you in C3.

Internship guidance and resume building topped the charts when it came to topic of support: Internship guidance came first at 80% and resume building second at 75%, these aren’t just random choices that students made, the numbers prove that these are specific actionable areas where students realise that they are under-prepared and need support from experienced seniors.

That’s the story of why C3 exists and the solutions- straight from that data collected from the 1st and 2nd year students. If this resonated with you, Part 2 drops this Sunday — don’t miss it!

In part 2 we’ll show you exactly how the C3 website will look- the features, flow everything. Also about how the mentorship session will actually feel like for both the students and mentors.