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Confidence, connections led to job for Babson senior

Matt Muller graduates from Babson College next month.Michele McDonald for the Globe/Boston Globe

Matt Muller, a 22-year-old business major with concentrations in IT management and legal studies, graduates from Babson College May 18 with a job in hand. How does that feel? Here’s what he told Globe correspondent Cindy Atoji Keene.

I was 100 percent confident that I’d be employed after graduation, but until a few weeks ago, I wasn’t sure what that job would look like. But thanks to a recent offer from Inflection, a San Francisco start-up, I’ll be winging my way out to the West Coast in August to become an online product manager, earning $62,000 annually.

During my four years at Babson, I wasn’t that focused on the ultimate end goal, a full-time job, except that people kept asking, “What are you planning on doing after graduation?” I didn’t have an absolute answer. When I first started college, I thought maybe I’d go back to managing IT at Cape Rail, where I worked myself up from ticket seller to taking care of all the regional rail line’s technological services. Then I thought I’d be an accountant; I really didn’t know, but I believed it would all work out as part of the college experience.

I heard about the job at Inflection through a good friend of mine, who is one of the company’s operations folks. He happened to be in Boston, and we grabbed dinner. He said to me, “Matt, I love my work; I think you should check out the company.” He recommended me to a hiring manager, and after five or six phone interviews, they flew me out there to interview with another half a dozen people. There were over a thousand candidates for 13 positions, so it was my task to persuade the team that I was the best person for the job.

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I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve worked on my elevator pitch, rehearsing it over and over. I was thrilled when I heard I got the position — it’s perfect for me, because I can do both sides of the equation, both the nitty-gritty of digital life, if you will, as well as business development.

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About half of my friends have already landed jobs after graduation; the other half are actively looking or actively trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. Since I’ve been working various jobs since age 14 and have even started my own Web design company, I look pretty good to recruiters.

I spend a lot of time — about two to three hours a day — on social media that develops my own “brand.” Between Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and my own blog, I have a pretty intense online presence. It’s definitely challenging to find a job in this economy, but I believe strategy and persistence ultimately pay off. It takes a lot of introspection to determine what you’re good at — and what you’re not good at.