Tips for the Entry-level Job Candidate

Job hunting got you down? Are you new to the job search or just not sure how to go about it? Maybe some of the things I’ve learned on my pre-employment journey can assist you.
My name is Nancy, and I’m a non-traditional (adult) college student who’s re-entering the workforce after a long absence. Last fall, my household income was abruptly cut in half. So it was off to the salt-mines, as I pounded the pavement and my computer keys in search of a good job. Fifteen to twenty years ago, the job search was fairly simple: you filled out a paper application or mailed a resume, and you were either called for an interview or not. That is no longer the case in today’s technology-based/security paranoid society. When my younger self sought out employment, it usually only took a matter of weeks. So far, I’ve been at bat for over two months, and am having a hard time keeping the roof over my head. But it hasn’t been all bad, I’ve learned a lot of things about the job search in my bid to re-enter the market.
Are you looking to enter or re-enter the job market? You’ve been diligently attending college, but you have no recent work experience. Is this a problem? The answer is yes, that it most certainly can be. Unfortunately, many of today’s employers won’t even glance at the resume of someone without a recent work history–regardless of the reason(s). How can a prospective employee cope with a situation like this one?
The very first thing you should do is to get someone to help you with your resume and a cover letter. Most colleges have career centers for the use of students and alumni. Just because you’ve graduated, doesn’t’ mean the college’s doors are closed to you. A big selling point for most colleges is where their students wind up after graduation. Most colleges like to take credit for your success–use that! Do not settle on just one resume, either. The longer you are out there in the job market, the more often you should be tweaking your resume.
So you have a good resume/cover letter, what do you do with them? Again, your first stop should be to your college’s career center. Next, visit your local state department of labor employment office and/or go online. But don’t stop there. Save those cover letters and resumes on your computer. There are literally dozens of online job/career sites, like this one, out there. Many will automatically forward your cover letter/resume directly to the prospective employer. Use them all. Next, decide what kind of business you’d like to work for, and Google them. Many of today’s big employers have career/internship sites right on their corporate webpage. In many cases, you can not only submit a resume and/or application online, but also take pre-employment surveys. The nice thing about computer applications is that you can sit in your underwear, drinking beer and three a.m., and fill them out the same as if you dressed in your best outfit and went as a walk–in, just be sure your web cam is turned off!

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Oops! I Networked

In the past month, I have spent an extensive amount of time online, looking for suggestions on where to look for work. I graduated one year ago. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Integrative Arts. I studied photography and writing. What I do not have is the internal confidence. Hundreds of times, in online advice, the word ‘Network’ came up. It was to the point that the very word ‘network’ irritated me. Unemployed and frustrated, I needed work.
I called my ex-boyfriends mother, ‘Jane’. I had painted two bedrooms for her a few years back when her son and I dated. With a first impression, one could not tell that Jane was emotionally strapped with ADHD, depression, and bi-polar. Multiple medications and BAM, she was genuinely happy to hear from me. We did lunch.
Before arriving at the restaurant, Jane told me to bring my resume. She explained that she used to work with career services at the local college. A real life free career counselor; how did I not know that after three years with her son? Furthermore, she proclaimed, although she was not perfected in the grammar aspect, her structuring was top-of-the-line.
Jane ordered the equivalent of a lunchmeat sandwich and soup, something I would not normally eat. However, she offered to pay, and the meal seemed cheap and not messy, so I ordered the same. While waiting for our food, my job in painting was not discussed. She looked at my resume and started to hack it immediately. Three red lines and a circle crossed each other; that was just the first line.
Before Jane read the second line of my resume, she looked over the top of her glasses and apologized to me for destroying my job history. I was not offended. It was just the product of the software preprogrammed on my computer. Until that moment, I assumed it was fine.
Our sandwiches and soups were brought out by the server. A few minutes later, she finally pulled herself away from my mess of a resume, now littered with red slashes, X’s and lines.
We briefly discussed the price of my painting; more accurately, she offered $15 per hour and I graciously accepted. Over the next two weeks, I painted two ceilings, some walls, and trim in two rooms. Meanwhile, between sleeping and napping, she worked on my resume.
When she finally emailed it to me, I was amazed. I had no idea that I had accomplished so much. Jane set my new resume up with a priority on accomplishments. Listed were my five years of restaurant management experience, four years of photography and writing, and three years of property management. Each area was set up in a separate row with details that I assumed were irrelevant. My resume looked terrific.
Who knew that five years of working in a restaurant to get through school, photographing two friend’s weddings, another’s senior pictures, and buying my house, with three extra apartments, could mean so much?
I was looking for a job and came away with more confidence and money. Oops, I networked. I can not wait to do it again.

Landing that Writing Gig

After sending out about 30 resumes and following up religiously, I’ve recently been accepted for a part-time writing internship! Thankfully, it pays, because these days, every dollar counts. Most importantly, I’ll be writing articles that will be published online, get my own byline, and be working with an editor to improve my writing skills. I’ll finally be able to create a writing portfolio. I feel a thrill akin to that felt by the aspiring actress who lands her first one liner on a TV show.
There’s only one thing marring the happiness of finding a position from which to springboard my writing career, that little voice in the back of my head murmuring that with my college degree and my work experience, I should be making more money. The bottom-line is that I have to keep reminding myself that although there’s nothing glamorous in being where I am now, sometimes people have to give up a little to get where they want to go. The act of pursuing my passion as a writer despite the lack of monetary reward is equivalent to the gutsy act of someone who’ll hop on a greyhound bus heading out to Hollywood to chase after their dreams.
In the meantime, in accordance with my new role as an aspiring writer, and to keep a positive monthly bank balance, I plan to apply as a part-time waitress at a restaurant nearby. When it comes to going after your goals, I feel like I’m starting to have more in common with that aspiring actress than ever before, and lately, I feel like that isn’t such a back thing.

Intros – Part 7 of 7: A Moment of Muddy Clarity

My senior year was my fifth year in college. I had just found out what major would help slip out with a degree in hand. And I started to take every course I could to graduate on time. I had already been delayed too many times by changes. In the meantime, linguistics came pretty easy to me.
My business job had ended after three months; the funds ran out. But my sociology job was kind enough to allow me to work with them and get paid and stay as a team. I will always be grateful to them.
In the meantime, I was enjoying taking the acting 101 class during autumn quarter of my senior year and had fun going to plays and the class participation. I had taken theater 101 as a freshman, but didn’t think too much of it. When it was time to schedule for Winter courses I started to take a Movement class dealing with Laban notation. It was so fun and inspired more confidence that in the spring time I took a directing class and script analysis class.
Somewhere in the middle of my directing class, I was doing a ballet piece with human montage stills and splicing audio files late into the night and thought, “Hey! I could do this for a living, it involves computers, and this is fun!”
I graduated a few weeks later with A’s in all my final courses, received a diploma and was having a blast staying up there earning cash as a university webmaster. But, my summer was coming to an end. My job was going to be over. I had to go back to my parents home and my father and mother called every weekend reminding of Damocle’s sword hanging over me of my return to dependence on them if I couldn’t find a job. Again for the second time my Dad offered to give help me make a career move, this time teaching.
It was a warm summer’s day as I was walking to my sociology job for my last three weeks on the job. Halfway there, it all became clear. I resolved to go back to graduate school to study film and video editing. But then it became muddy again. How to get there and what to do with it…?
*** Dear readers, I hope you’ve enjoyed my exciting seven part Pre-Candidate Intro series. Stay tuned for Job Hunting – a new series where I chronicle my next past and present job hunting adventures beginning in February.

Cheesman’s “Battling Free” eBook

I read a great ebook today by Joel Cheesman. Battling Free describes the current opportunities and risks facing all classified sites, including job boards, as sites such as Google begin to run classified ads for free. According to Cheesman, “to remain competitive, it’s imperative for such posting sites to reevaluate market positions, business models and evolve to find new sources of revenue.”
Cheesman’s book addresses these issues and offers over 25 nuts-and-bolts tips, each of which are designed to enable the site owner to raise revenues that they have, are, or will lose to sites which offer competitive content at little or no charge. But what I loved about this book is that rather than just focusing on the problem or offering vague, theoretical solutions, Cheesman dives right in and gets his hands dirty. He provides links to specific web sites that offer specific solutions to specific problems. He provides his opinions as to which of them offer more promising solutions than the others. And he doesn’t pretend for one minute to have all of the answers or to possess the ability to accurately predict the future.
It was comforting to see that we have already successfully implemented many of Cheesman’s tips, such as running Google AdSense code on our site to display pay-per-click text ads as well as pay-per-impression graphical ads, referring visitors to third party sites using trackable affiliate links through Commission Junction, being listed in directories such as Yahoo!, submitting articles to third party web sites, pre-selling sponsorship pages on our site to organizations which offer services which are complimentary to ours, delivering targeted emails to our users based upon their demographics rather than just a one-size-fits all monthly newsletter, encouraging employers and job seekers to pay nominal additional fees to have their jobs and resumes appear at the top of the search results, providing video content, charging for resume access, and selling complimentary services to the employers and candidates who use our site.
But even though we are successfully generating revenue through the above strategies, Cheesman’s book provided me with a lot to chew on. There are substrategies in many of the above areas that we have not yet implemented and there are strategies that he recommends that we have not yet touch at all. The book is $24.99. And as stated on its web site, “just one idea pays for this investment times over.”

Intros – Part 6 of 7: Running Out of Time.

Around my junior year, I had transferred from computer science over to a business degree and started helping out over there. My stint in computer science was fun, but short lived. A big problem was that my abstract thinking was poor, but that just needed training. However, I was needing to get into a major fast and running out of scholarship money. I had been talking to a lot of advisors and they were trying to help me in saying “Just because you have an interest in it, doesn’t mean you have to make it your job. It can become a hobby.” Made sense.
So while I was trying to pursue a business degree, I still had computer skills that could get me some temporary jobs.
I applied to two workstudy jobs: web editing position in our college of business (piecing together audio samples from college public news broadcasts, site overhaul & update, database logs) and sociology department (webmaster, programming, systems administration). I ended up taking two workstudy jobs because I liked both positions. The only problem was it ate up my work-study funds even faster. I had pitched this idea to both supervisors and they agreed. It gave me a ton of experience, but the thing was once my funds ran out, I was out. I worked hard on both jobs and felt great. It also was good because it helped me focus on my classes better. Things started going well, met my future roommates and took some exercise classes together. It got me into taking self improvement classes and interests so I started took Journalism classes and also a incidently also a class for psycholinguistics.
I did well in these classes, but here’s the neat thing. The psycholinguistics class ended up having a TA who gave me a hot tip for free pizza and free information about linguistics. I went for the pizza and found out we had a linguistics major, which is the study of languages. I was really needing something to help me graduate and the classes would fit into my schedule. Who knew that I’d go in for free food and come out with a full belly and finally a major! I got an A at the end of the quarter too.
The journalism classes was among several self improvement classes I started taking. I had realized one of the things I was lacking was the ability to convey my thoughts through speech. I was excellent if you gave me a pen and paper, but when I had to sit with them face to face or talk over the phone, that was a different matter. So I took this to help with my public speaking. I took two other course offerings that I felt were significant. One dealt with martial arts courses I took with my roommates which helped reduce class load and stress, and was fun. The other, turned out to be my first class … in the world of acting.

2006 ACPA Conference

I received confirmation yesterday that I was selected by the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) to speak about podcasting at their 2006 Annual National Convention in Indianapolis. I’ve been to a lot of great cities, but never Indianapolis. Any suggestions for what I should see and do?

If Only I Wanted to be a Pharmacist

Sometimes I wish that I had wanted to become a pharmacist instead of a writer. Being Rita the neighborhood druggist is a lot easier then being the next Carrie Bradshaw. In most colleges, there are specific programs set up that set you on the right path to becoming a pharmacist. You put in your time and Boom! You’re a pharmacist. But when you want to be a writer or something artistic like that there is no such program. There are no classes, no residency you can complete that guarantees you will become the greatest talent to grace the white page since Ernest Hemmingway. I hate that. Everything in the Arts and Entertainment field is all up to chance and God-gifted talent. You have to be on the streets night and day, waiting, thirsting for that opportunity, for that next idea that no one has thought of and that will put you over the top. Put you above all the young bloodthirsty hopefuls that want it just as much as you do. You basically have to pimp yourself.
Don’t get me wrong; the things learned in college are immeasurable. When at university, the classes you take give you background, historical and current. The college experience alone teaches you many aspects of the human experience that is fundamental in transcribing emotion and reality into any type of artistic expression. I just wish there was some type of structure, some mentoring program in college that teaches aspiring entertainers how to achieve that goal. Of course, you have your drama schools and things like that but it’s never a guarantee. But that is the price you pay for wanting to own the world. So don’t give up on your dreams!

CollegeRecruiter.com Founder Invited to Speak at American College Personnel Association (ACPA) 2006 Annual Convention in Indianapolis

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 27, 2006 – Virtually every college in the country has an Office of Student Affairs. In these offices work professionals whose mission it is to make a positive difference in the lives of their students. The world of higher education is shifting from teaching to learning, greater accountability from and to its partners and stakeholders, and a general resurgence in undergraduate education. To stay current with these shifts, Student Affairs professionals understand that they need to engage in dialogue with key partners to help shape and contribute to strategic priorities that make a difference in the lives of students. And the premier forum for this dialogue is the American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Annual Convention, which is being held in Indianapolis, Indiana this March.

CollegeRecruiter.com, the highest traffic career site used by job-hunting students, recent graduates and the employers who want to hire them, announced today that its President and Founder, Steven Rothberg, will speak at the ACPA 2006 Convention.

“I’m thrilled to be part of an event that brings together all of today’s leading Student Affairs issues, trends, and players in a highly-focused, forum,” said Rothberg. “The tremendous work that these professionals accomplish every day is a testament to their dedication. They touch the lives of virtually every one of the college students and recent graduates who use our career site, so I’m happy to do anything that I can to help these professionals help these students and grads.”

Rothberg’s presentation, entitled “Podcasting: A Cutting-Edge Recruiting Tool to Catch Job-Hunting Students” is targeted at faculty, mid-level professionals, and senior-level professionals who are interested in issues related to career development, graduate students, and new professionals. In the interactive, nuts-and-bolts session, Rothberg will explain how podcasting (downloadable audio recordings) can be a cutting-edge tool for recruiting and career counseling. He’ll demystify podcasting and illustrate how it truly catches the attention of today’s mobile graduates. Most importantly, he’ll help the Student Affairs professionals better understand how their organizations should use podcasting to communicate with students and how to snatch their attention when they’re ready, willing, and able to offer it.

About ACPA:

ACPA, headquartered in Washington, DC at the National Center for Higher Education, is the leading student affairs Association that advances student affairs and engages students for a lifetime of learning and discovery. ACPA, founded in 1924 by May L. Cheney, has nearly 8,000 members representing nearly 1,500 private and public institutions from across the U.S. and internationally. In addition, members include companies and organizations who are engaged in the campus marketplace. Our members include graduate students enrolled in student affairs/higher education administration programs as well as faculty who are teaching and researching in this area to student affairs professionals from entry level to senior student affairs officers.

About CollegeRecruiter.com

CollegeRecruiter.com is the highest traffic career site used by job-hunting
students and recent graduates and the employers who want to hire them. Three
million visitors per month use the CollegeRecruiter.com network of career
sites to find part-time positions, summer jobs, internships and career
opportunities. CollegeRecruiter.com features tens of thousands of job
openings and over 3,500 pages of employment-related articles and Ask the
Experts questions and answers. Further information about
CollegeRecruiter.com is available at
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/pages/press-room.php.

CONTACT INFO:

CollegeRecruiter.com
Steven Rothberg
3109 W 50 St Ste 121
Minneapolis, MN 55410-2102
USA
Phone: 800-835-4989
Fax: 702-537-2227
Steven@CollegeRecruiter.com
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com

Health Care

There’s a problem with me cleaning theaters as a job; it doesn’t provide health care. I have medications that I need to take to function at my job. As of right now, I’m still covered by my mom’s plan but in a few months, that will run out. What am I going to do when I need to get health care? I can’t even think of working a “real” job right now because of the stress level and my anxiety being as bad as it is. What am I going to do for my prescriptions? If I can’t get them, I’ll probably lose my job at the movie theater as well, because I can handle ZERO stress without my meds.
If I get into graduate school for art, maybe I can find some type of plan that will give me health care while I’m in grad school. I don’t know of any as of yet. But if not, what will I do? I have no clue.