My answer to a student about to graduate from college, with a CompSci degree: Build your Professional Network.

This is one of my answers to this young person.

In today’s (right now, this minute, it will change tomorrow) world, you have to have a professional network. While that will include your personal network built while in high school and college, you need to get your personal and business network separated and make sure that you connect with them in appropriate ways.

To quote Dean Wormer from Animal House, “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”

Clean up you Facebook/MySpace pages and make them professional. When you start looking for a job, your prospective employers will look at these pages. Will they see pictures of you drunk at a fraternity party? If your online persona looks like it came from Animal House, then you are going to finish second when trying to get a job in today’s competitive markets.

Get some experience in your field or at least adjacent to your intended field. While flippin’ burgers for a summer will earn you money, it is that internship with an engineering or software firm or with a government office where you spend most of your day bug-tracking or shuffling paper that you will meet people that can help you get a job.

Get out to trade shows, local tech meet-ups and business conferences and start talking to companies. Meet people and get their business cards, link with them on LinkedIn , follow their blog and Twitter feeds.

Interact with your network. Once you connect with people via Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook interact with them online. This is not a game to see who can collect the most friends. Use that network! Ask them questions. Answer their questions. Send them interesting links to content you are reading which they may find useful or interesting. Follow the links they send and read the content. Get them to refer you to other people that you can network with.

In short, Get interactive or get out of the web business.