Get to know your classmates

After serving as a senior facilitator for a Crimson Connect call on Aug. 20 linking Harvard alumni with students, several students contacted me for follow-up Zoom conversations about my career path. A few days ago, I was interviewed for a podcast by a South Korean high school student who wanted to ask about my career. On Sunday, I spoke on Zoom with a young American man who wanted advice on how to get more involved in advocating for North Korean refugees.

These are some of the recent conversations that have me reflecting on different ways I’ve found or created jobs for myself over the past three decades. My first professional job in the U.S. started with the way that was common at the time. In 1998, I was teaching English in South Korea and sent blind applications to several organizations in the U.S. I received job offers from the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., Reason Magazine, and even from my safety choices, such as the Bergen Record newspaper in New Jersey.

That was the last time I sent a blind application. Every other job came through people or proposals. My approach has been one I learned from Derek Bok, the former president of Harvard University: The most important thing you can do at Harvard is to get to know your classmates. I was already living that way, but his words crystallized my approach.

In 2010, when I applied to return to Korea to work at the Center for Free Enterprise, I presented myself as a business plan for the organization. I already knew the people there; I had met the founder in 1997 when I read about him in the newspaper and asked to meet him for lunch. I treated it as though they had never met me and sent a nine-page plan describing to the new CEO what I could do for them. I am still in touch, and last month I gave a speech at CFE.

A second route is through freelancing, through which I have received numerous offers. That’s how I became a columnist at The Korea Times. I was already writing freelance articles, then asked for a meeting where I proposed becoming a columnist. I have been a columnist with this paper since 2013 and a weekend blogger since 2018.

That’s similar to how I got hired to teach public speaking at the Seoul University of Foreign Studies. In 2015 and 2016, I was invited to give speeches there about my work with North Korean refugees. The next year, I was invited to become a professor there. Those speeches were my resume, and I have been teaching there since 2017.

A third way is by creating opportunities. I started volunteering at a school for North Korean refugee adolescents in 2012, and by March 2013, had set up my own initiative along with South Korean researcher Lee Eun-koo. That initiative, Freedom Speakers International, is now an award-winning organization that has received international recognition.

A fourth pathway is by getting recognized for your work. When I was an education policy analyst at the Cato Institute, I collaborated with the executive director of Fight For Children as we lobbied for congressional legislation creating school choice options for low-income children in Washington, D.C. After the legislation passed, Fight for Children hired me, nearly doubled my salary, and we worked to implement the legislation.

A fifth way is by staying connected with previous employers. Maintaining good relationships, updating previous supervisors about your activities and staying in touch can lead to invitations to return. Previous employers have sought to rehire me years after I moved on, after hearing about the great work I had done after leaving.

A sixth way is to seek out mentors. In late 2019, a young North Korean refugee who was in deep depression sought me out and adopted me as a mentor. I ended up co-authoring Han Song-mi’s memoir, and FSI recently hired her as our manager of external relations. She calls me her “hero” and “life mentor,” and I look out for opportunities for her.

Of course, there are other ways people find jobs that I haven’t mentioned, and I am not saying the ways I have shared above are the only way. Many begin through internships or apprenticeships, a route I didn’t take. Some people are hired because of family ties. The paths may be different, but there’s the old saying: A smart man knows a lot, but a wise man knows many.

I advise young people to have lunch with as many people as possible to set the stage for long-term connections. The key is to get to know your classmates, colleagues and others so they become part of your network.

Casey Lartigue Jr. (CJL@alumni.harvard.edu) is the co-founder of Freedom Speakers International with Lee Eun-koo and the co-author, with Han Song-mi, of her memoir "Greenlight to Freedom: A North Korean Daughter’s Search for Her Mother and Herself."