Learn Basic Office Skills

Jim Durbin is an employment blogger and former recruiter whose claim to expertise including once being a college student and graduate.
I hired over 20 fresh college graduates from 1999-2001 as a recruiter in Los Angeles. Their skills and aptitude varied, as did the pedigree of the institutions they attended, but a few things stick in my head to this day as a cautionary tale.
The following is only anecdotal, but the more distinguished the school attended, the less likely the graduate had mastered basic office skills.
One young lad from Berkeley is probably the best story. We hired him because he was smart, ambitious, negotiated well, and well, he went to Berkeley. There was a strategic (and wrong-headed) assumption that we could improve the quality of the office personnel by increasing the number of people who graduated from private and top-ranked colleges.
It was insulting to the number of highly successful state school graduates we had in the company, but it was a mistake many companies made (and still make). Anyway, our young graduate was a recuiter, and back in those days, we made paper copies of the resumes that people brought in.
The copier we had was relatively new, but pretty straightforward. It had a top-loading section for automatic copies and you could lift the lid for manual copies. It also had the occasional problem of jamming….

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Case Study: Getting a Job With A Blog

How do you use a blog to get a job? Recruiters and job-seekers are using this medium to get noticed, and I wanted to share an experience that one developer had in finding employment through his blog.

I’d like to present Chris Hammond, an ASP.Net developer in St Louis.  Chris writes three different blogs, including a technical blog on DotNetNuke, a relatively new entrant in the .Net field, and one that owes much of its history to open source. The point is DNN experience is cutting edge stuff, a bit like being an experienced Java guy in 1997.

When the story beings, Chris is happily employed with a firm in downtown St Louis.  He gets plenty of calls from recruiters, but none of them offer him anything but drab job descriptions and unimaginative projects.  They don’t understand why he’s a good candidate – they’re just looking for buzzwords, and his resume has them.  He’s not listed on any job boards, but he has been in the past when he looked for a job, and he knows if he needed one quickly, that he can sign up at Monster.com and Dice and get interviews.  He is the prototypical passive candidate, with a good company, a solid technical understanding, and no desire to search for a job. 

To get better at his job and to showcase his ASP knowledge, Chris participates in the ASP.Net Forums and writes code examples, tips, and announcements at his technical blog.  One day, the President of EngageSoftware, a software development firm in St Louis, notices a particularly insightful example of coding prowess in the ASP.Net forums written by Chris.  The President follows the link back to Chris’s blog because he notices that Chris lists his location as St Louis.

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Interviewing Takes Practice: One of My First

I’m an expert in interviewing. For six years, I was a technical recruiter, learning both how to interview and how to be interviewed. My interview prep and selection methods resulted in a 50% placement of my candidates for as long as I tracked them, so rest assured I know what I’m talking about.
That experience came with practice, not natural talent. When I first started interviewing, I was terrible, and I want to share with you just how bad I was.
Interview: (from my journal)
My first experience with recruiting was in 1996. I was living in Florida, having picked up and moved from $50 to my name, a 1986 740Gl Volvo station wagon, and a sister in Tampa.
To pay the bills, I worked at two restaurants for about three months, then started interviewing. I looked in the paper and sat down with Enterprise Rent-A-Car (they turned me down), the ubiquitous multi-level marketing scam, real estate, insurance, and then found a recruiter for a company called Sun Staffing.
I dressed in my only suit, and drove the Volvo (no air conditioning) to the recruiter’s offices, sweating so badly that the back of my shirt was soaked. I rolled the window down and drove 40 miles an hour (2WD40 is the acronym for that kind of air conditioning). When I got to their offices, I ducked in the bathroom and used the hand dryer on the floor below my interview room to try to dry off.

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How to Turn Your Internship Into Your First Full Time Job: Advice for College Students

College career counselors cover your ears! As a former undergraduate career counselor myself, it was cardinal rule not to promise students that the company they interned for would offer return into a full time position upon graduation. While I am not making any promises here, as a counselor turned current employer of college interns, I can give you advice on how to increase your chances of being hired permanently by a company you intern for. The advice comes in the form of three simple rules:
1. ALWAYS OFFER INPUT.
One of the biggest mistakes college interns make is not speaking up enough! It is natural to feel a sense of intimidation when beginning an internship. You may feel at first like you aren’t familiar enough with your job or the company to really speak your opinion and offer ideas. However, it is important to remember that internships are competitive and you the student were hired for a reason. Not only did the employer feel you could accomplish the tasks involved, but chances are they also felt you could contribute to the organization in a meaningful way in a short period of time. So take advantage of the time you have. No matter how small the comment appears to you, make sure to say something intelligent in every meeting. Don’t just bring up problems and issues you are experiencing. Bring them up, but offer your own ideas and solutions. This will position you to be viewed by members of the organization as intelligent and insightful. And don’t be afraid to ask questions. It will not show ineptness, just interest and a desire to succeed!
2. CONNECT. CONNECT. CONNECT.
Another mistake student interns tend to make while working is not making the most of the people you meet or could meet! Again, it could be intimidating as an intern to reach out to other people in your organization besides your supervisor. You might feel like they think of you as “just the intern.” However, as more and more companies are seeing the value in bringing aboard fresh talent through college intern programs, company attitudes towards students are changing and the old cliché of the intern ONLY being present to make copies and get coffee is starting to disappear. Don’t get me wrong. You may still be asked to make copies and get coffee, but why not make contacts that could potentially help your future career along the way? Volunteer to run errands to other departments. Ask your supervisor about shadowing someone else in the company whose work you find interesting for an hour or a day. If there is a big company meeting, ask to sit in and even be introduced if only for a few minutes. And most of all, be personable to everyone you meet! Share outside activities you are involved in. Talk about classes you took. Ask about people’s positions. Over half of people’s impressions of you will be based on personal interactions and not solely what you contribute work wise. So simply stated, be friendly and be professional. You never know when a full time position might come up in the department of a person you made those copies for. Make sure they know who you are.
3. FOLLOW THROUGH.
The last area students tend to miss is keeping the connection with their company and/or supervisor alive once they leave their internship. Many times students participate in internships in their junior year of college and once complete, think of it as a closed process. In actuality, you should think of the internship as only a start in the process of finding a full time position. Keep in contact with your supervisor and/or other organization members you made with connection with during your internship. Depending on the nature of your relationship with those people, check in every few months. Let them know how classes are going and that you are looking forward to graduation. Ask them for feedback or details on an industry related conference you are interested in attending. This will help keep you in the forefront of the employers mind. This way, when it comes time for graduation, if they have a suitable position open, they will know you may be interested. There is no need to be pushy or ask about job openings in every interaction you have. But you can be connected and aggressive. Business professionals do it all the time!
If you follow these rules, are you guaranteed to be offered a full time position by a company you intern for? Absolutely not. But speaking from experience, you are guaranteed to ensure you present yourself in the best possible light while interning. At CVS/pharmacy in the Management Development Intern program I run, we seek students who exhibit the above qualities and view them as valuable members of our organization. And those students who can really demonstrate a drive to succeed very often receive an offer to return in a full time capacity after graduation.