Slug Jobs Isn't for Lazy People; Just the Opposite

To an outsider, a website called Slug Jobs might imply that this is for people who don't get off the couch much.

But as anyone familiar with UCSC knows, it's a reference to the school's ironically-chosen mascot, the underrated and omnipresent Banana Slug.

USCS grad Kabir Sehgal, 21, who started the first website to help Slug grads get jobs, is anything but sluglike.

He landed a job at Google after graduating at 20 with degrees in business management and economics and is in the process of launching two websites for students. One, the Slug Jobs site, is a Facebook group that is only available to students with a ucsc.edu in their email address. It posts daily job offerings and hopes to tie the students to good jobs in the community. It has more than 4,000 members.

The other, Field Study.net,  is a site that aggregates field study opportunities from around the world. It's motto is "Turning on the light so you don't have to wait for the end of the tunnel."

Sehgal, from Southern California, said that he could find no other site like this when he was looking for field studies. 

"Schools have their own field study lists, but no one has created a field study industry, which I am going to do."

Sehgal said he saw many of his fellow students floundering, having trouble finding work. 

"About 20-30 percent of our undergrads will be underemployed and 10 percent will be unemployed when they graduate," he said. "I'm surprised no one is trying to change it. They haven't seen a way to develop a professional career while in school."

He says most UCSC students who get jobs do it to pay off student loans.

"But when they try and get a job when they get out, it's difficult when all the professional experience they have is jobs to get income and none that actually uses their major. There is a gap there we try to fill."

Sehgal spent one summer interning at Plantronics and another at a start-up called Market Motive, where he learned a lot because he could deal with every higher up at the small business. 

"Being able to talk to people at that level really helps you develop a professional thinking style, he said. 

Check the photos above for some of the feedback Slug Jobs has gotten.