This is the time of year when people who are famous, accomplished, or both get invited to stand in front of a room full of graduating students and say something memorable.
Graduation speeches are supposed to be inspirational. They are meant to give you good advice. And they are supposed to send you out the door ready for whatever comes next.
The problem is that no one ever told you what "whatever comes next" actually looks like.
Not the org chart. Not the employee handbook. The real system. The one where the rules are written in invisible ink and everyone assumes you already know them.
That’s what I would talk about if someone handed me a microphone. Because I think understanding how work actually works is its own kind of graduation gift.
So here it is. Three pieces of advice I wish someone had given me before I walked into my first job. Each one is about the same thing: the difference between signs and signals.
1. Your major is a sign. What it signals is bigger than you think.
At some point between high school and now, someone asked you what you were going to major in. Without missing a beat, the next question was "so what are you going to do with that?" As if the answer was going to be: Use it. Directly. In a job called exactly that.
To be fair, sometimes it does map that neatly. Engineering remains suspiciously connected to engineering. Accounting continues to lead to a surprising amount of accounting.
But the longer I've worked around recruiters, employers, and professional development, the more I've realized that organizations are often hiring for something much harder to label. They want people who can think, communicate, read a room, and make a judgment call when no one is telling them what to do.
You practice those skills in college. But usually not inside your major. You practice them in the group project that nearly fell apart. With the professor who pushed back on your argument. During the internship where you had to figure out what to do when no one told you what to do.
So the next time someone asks what your major is, know that there is a much more interesting answer than the subject. It’s what you got good at along the way.
2. Your job description is a sign. What your manager actually expects is a signal.
Read your job description carefully. Then understand that what it says and what is expected of you are almost certainly not the same thing.
This isn’t a trap. It’s just how it works.
Consider your job description a living document. Know that the document is not actually the job. It’s a starting point.”
Your job description was written by someone who was trying to capture a role that may have already changed by the time you accepted the offer. Some of them were written for jobs that are being reinvented in real time, often faster than anyone inside the organization fully understands.
Consider your job description a living document. Know that the document is not actually the job. It’s a starting point. What you actually need to figure out is what the role requires right now, today, in this organization, with this team. And then figure it out again when the team changes. And again when the strategy shifts. And again when the technology does.
Study after study shows a significant gap between how new employees rate their own performance (high) and how their managers rate that same performance (low). The tempting interpretation is entitlement. The more accurate one is mistranslation.
The system speaks in signals. If you only read the signs, you will miss most of what is actually being said.
So ask. Ask your manager what excellent looks like in this role, not just adequate. Ask for feedback before your review, not during it. Pay attention to who gets trusted with the ambiguous project. That tells you more about what the organization values than any stated criteria ever will.
You can’t wait for someone to explain the unwritten rules. Most managers don’t even know they have them. And speaking of managers…
3. Your manager's silence is a sign. What it signals isn't what you think.
At some point, maybe soon, maybe years from now, you will feel like your manager doesn't care about your development. That they aren’t invested in you. That they aren’t thinking about your future.
That feeling is understandable. It's also probably inaccurate.
Here's what is more likely true: your manager is navigating their own career questions. They are absorbing pressure from people above them that you can't see. They have seven other things competing for their attention on any given Tuesday. The silence isn't about you. It's just what limited attention looks like from the outside.
Which means the silence is actually information. It's telling you something important: no one is coming.
Not because they don't like you. Not because you aren't good. But because no one will ever care about your career as much as you do. That's not cynical. It's clarifying.
Because once you stop waiting for someone to notice, something shifts. You ask for feedback instead of hoping it finds you. You tell people what you're working toward instead of assuming they can see it. You stop reading the silence as a verdict and start reading it as a cue.
And that posture, deciding to drive instead of waiting to be driven, is itself one of the strongest signals you can send.
***
I said at the start that most graduation speeches are inspirational. I meant that as an observation, not a criticism. Inspiration has its place. But I think the most useful thing I could offer graduates today is not a quote or a challenge or a send-off. It’s a translation.
The world of work runs on signals. Most of it isn’t written down. A lot of it isn’t even said out loud.
Signs are what organizations say they value. Signals are how decisions actually get made.
The sooner you learn to read work that way, the less time you’ll spend wondering why things aren’t working the way you expected. Most of the time, you are not missing something about yourself. You are just reading the signs when you should be reading the signals.
