INSTANT MBA: A tech CEO shares his 2 best pieces of career advice for people in their 20s

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September 02, 2015

Recent college grads are often inundated with advice. Most is fairly useless — but some (if you're lucky) is life-changing.

In a recent interview with Greg Schott, CEO of software company MuleSoft, the New York Times' Adam Bryant asked: "What career and life advice do you give to new college grads?"

The Stanford and North Carolina State University grad offered two pieces we thought were genuine pearls of wisdom:

"The first thing I'd say is that you should be spending as much time making decisions about your job as you did making a decision about the college you chose," he told Bryant. "And when you make those decisions, you need to really dig in."

Schott said candidates should be interviewing employers every bit as much as employers are interviewing them. "But I'm often surprised by how people haven't really researched the company before they come in for interviews," he added.

His other pearl: Remember that starting your career is a bit like being at the top of a mogul ski run. "You can try to map out your line for 10 moguls, but after the first two moguls, you're usually off your line. You're never going to be able to map it out to the bottom," he said. "It's about making sure that you're on the right slope and you picked the right mountain. Don't worry so much about how it's all going to play out in the end."

Read the full New York Times interview here.