Your First Job Search: Where To Start

Are you ready to land that entry level job after graduation, but not sure where to start?  The following post will help you begin your job search.

Your first job search post-college can be intimidating. In fact, many recent college graduates don’t even know where to start. But getting started on your job search doesn’t have to be the intimidating task many make it out to be. Remember, recent college graduates don’t have to have

More here:

Your First Job Search: Where To Start

Entry-level jobs are no longer entry-level

Since 1994 we’ve been helping college students find internships and recent graduates find entry-level jobs and other career opportunities. So we’ve been through some economic up and down times including a few recessions. No recession came close to the one from which we’re still emerging. One of the unfortunate trends during and after each recession has been the significant increase in experienced workers taking jobs which normally would have gone to inexperienced workers. As a result, jobs which may be regarded and perhaps even advertised as entry-level are pursued and often taken by candidates with years of experience.

It isn’t just CollegeRecruiter.com which has noticed this trend. Job aggregator SimplyHired is also concerned:

Continue Reading

Experience: You Can Find It if You Look in the Right Places

If you are like many people trying to start their careers, your biggest challenge might be limited work experience. Many positions require applicants to have years of related experience in the field. But how can you possibly gain the necessary expertise when you are not even qualified to enter the industry and start working? Still, there are several options that can help you overcome this obstacle, and you can gain the skills and respect you need for an effective job search. Continue Reading

Breaking Into the Hospitality Industry Requires the Right Resume

Jessica Holbrook Hernandez of Great Resumes Fast

The hospitality industry is wonderfully vast, providing interested job seekers a wide array of professional options. Whether you’re looking to be an executive chef or a hotel accountant, there is something for you to do that you’ll love.

Because there are so many opportunities for employment in hospitality, some think that it’s easier to enter this industry than others. In some respects, this may be true, depending on the field that’s being compared, but overall, you still have to work hard to get your foot in the door and should therefore know a few tricks to help get you started. Continue Reading

Writing a keyword rich resume

Imagine you’re on Google, Yahoo, or any Internet search engine looking for a custom clothing store in your hometown. To search, you might use a series of words (keywords) to initiate your search, such as custom clothes, boutique, petite, and the name of your town. This search combination would result in a returned list of stores that meet one or all of your search word criteria. The same goes for using relevant words (to your profession, industry and personal characteristics) in your keyword rich resume, when an employer is looking for you.
If a recruiter or HR professional is doing a search on passive candidates (those candidates who have not directly submitted an application or resume to the company’s database), they’ll use a combination of keywords related to the position, as well as words that emphasize the characteristics they’re seeking in an employee. They may do this on Google, Yahoo, LinkedIn, or any job board, as well. They’re all search engine optimized. If your résumé contains these words or combinations of words, it will show up in the returned search results. When you submit your résumé online to a company’s application system, the same concept applies. When the company is ready to pull down resumes for a particular position, it may do so by title, keywords, education, or any other combination of words.

Continue Reading

Top Characteristics Candidates Seek in Employers

Philip Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute and Georgia Chao of the Eli Broad School of Business at Michigan State University collaborated on a white paper, “Important Characteristics of Early Career Jobs,” in an effort to determine what today’s young entry-level job seekers really want when they conduct their job searches. Because the job market is so competitive, employers have to be able to offer more than an enticing salary. Instead, Gardner and Chao suggest, offering young candidates strategic presentations of the companies they represent might prove more effective with this generation than “throwing money at them.”
A survey of more than 9,000 young men and women between the ages of 18 and 25 found that the things young job seekers deemed most important were fairly consistent, regardless of ethnicity, gender or academic major. The overall results were as follows:

1. Interesting and engaging work                     88%
2. Good benefits – including health insurance         84%
3. Secure job                                                      82%
4. Opportunities for promotion                              81%
5. Opportunities to learn new skills                       77%
6. Location                                                         63%

The study broke the results down into comparisons between genders, among races, major courses of study, and socioeconomic background. What they found was that Caucasians tended to worry less about job security than did minorities, particularly African-Americans, who ranked flexibility and job security as very important. Asian-Americans ranked working for a prestigious company high on their lists. They also discovered that men ranked “chance for promotion” higher than job security or good benefits. The opposite was true for women, ranking good benefits and job security second and third, respectively, with “chance for promotion” fourth.

Continue Reading

Is Work Centrality As Important to Gen Y As It Is to Older Generations?

In a recent white paper, ”How Central Is Work to Young Adults?” written by Phil Gardner of the Collegiate Employment Research Institute (CERI) at Michigan State University and Georgia Chao of the Eli Broad College of Business also at Michigan State University, research was cited in support of the theory that today’s young adults don’t view their jobs as the primary focus of their lives, the way earlier generations did. Although work is important to them, they also care about having time to spend with family and friends, and doing things they enjoy like hobbies and/or volunteering.
Ten thousand young adults between the ages of 18 and 28 were surveyed. The results of the survey – done in 2005 – were compared to one done in 1982, offering these three statements:

• Life is worth living only when people get absorbed in work.
• Work should be considered central to life.
• The most important things that happen in live involve work.

Young adults in 2005 were more likely to disagree – either moderately or strongly – with these opinions than were their counterparts in 1982. The survey went on to break the results down into differences between genders and found that women were more likely to disagree with the above statements than were men – probably, they surmised, because women usually have other concerns like children and taking care of their homes.
In addition, the survey results showed that young adult workers with high or medium work centrality were less concerned with having entry level jobs with “low stress characteristics” like regular hours (no nights/weekends), and annual vacations of a week or more than they were with having jobs that were secure, provided interesting work for them to do, or had “success factors” like high income and opportunities for promotion.
Conversely, young adults with low work centrality were as concerned with having jobs with low stress characteristics as they were with secruity, interesting work, and success factors.
“Organizations that hire these young adults may benefit from a better understanding of this new generation of workers,” they concluded. Jus as employers are looking for entry level employees who are good fits, so are young job seekers looking for companies that are good fits for them, in terms of how what they want – but can’t articulate – compares to what employers provide.
Finally, Gardner and Chao say it’s necessary to do further research in order to fully understand the new generation of workers and effectively integrate them into the workforce.

Entry Level Jobs With The Onion Have Many Layers

Posted on Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Happy Election Day! I’m not going to urge you to vote like most other people will, because yesterday I learned that “It’s more likely that you will be killed driving to the polling booth than it is that your vote will change the outcome.” That’d be a lot to have on my conscience, so I’m going to say vote at your own risk. If you’re upset that I’m making a mockery of the political system, then today’s company isn’t for you. That’s because we’re talking about The Onion and their entry level jobs. I can’t think of a more fitting company for election day (except for maybe Diebold, but they’re not nearly as much fun) than The Onion because politics and satire go hand in hand. Without politics satire is hamstrung, and without satire politics is utterly painful. The Onion is not only “America’s finest news source,” but also “the funniest publication in the US” according to the New Yorker. Continue reading about The Onion…
Article by Willy Franzen of One Day, One Internship and One Day, One Job

What Does an Air Traffic Controller’s Salary Look Like?

Anyone who’s ever seen the movie “Pushing Tin” got a peek at what air traffic controllers do on a day-to-day basis. It’s a tough job that not everyone is qualified to do.
Here in the U.S., most of the air traffic controllers currently in the workforce will be lost to retirement over the next 10 years, so the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is planning to hire in excess of 12,000 new, entry level air traffic controllers throughout the coming decade.
To be an air traffic controller, a candidate must have excellent memory and spatial awareness, be quick with numeric computation, assertive, calm under pressure and able to follow and apply rules with an ability to be flexible when needed. Entry level air traffic controller trainees generally begin in their twenties and retire in their fifties. They must pass strict physical and psychological tests, maintain excellent vision, hearing and speaking skills. Air traffic controllers must do everything they can to remain healthy and avoid prohibited medications.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the mean air traffic controller salary, as of May 2008, is $107, 780 annually. For entry level air traffic controllers (trainees) is about $25,000 per year to start.
Sources:

http://wikianswers.com/Q/How_much_are_air_traffic_controllers_paid

http://www.answers.com/topic/air-traffic-controller

The Entry Level Pharmaceutical Sales Rep

Sales is a tough industry, no matter what you’re trying to sell. But the nature of the products being sold by pharmaceutical sales representatives would, I think, make it a little bit tougher. It’s hardly like selling vacuum cleaners or encyclopedias door-to-door. A good sales pitch and basic product knowledge alone won’t do it. No, a pharmceutical sales rep has to know as much about the product he’s trying to sell, and the company that makes it, as his target customers do. Chances are, they will know about the company and clinical trials that have been done to prove the safety and effectiveness of the product, so any rep worth his salt had better know the same.
If you think a job in pharmaceutical sales is right for you, consider first what level would be the best fit. According to Ventiv Recruitment Services’ senior director, John McCabe, there a three categories of pharmaceutical sales: “primary sales or mass-market representatives; specialty pharmaceutical sales representatives; and hospital or institutional representatives.”
Typically, primary sales or mass-market sales repreesntatives are recent college graduates or people with little or no experience in sales. “Primary sales reps usually call on primary care physicians like family practitioners, promoting mass-market products,” according to a press release at Medzilla.com.
The next level of sales rep is the specialty representative, who would sell pharmaceutical products for women to an OB-Gyn, McCabe said. Ideally, sales reps are promoted from within, though you can get a job as a specialty representative if you have sales experience.
The third level of pharmaceutical sales rep is the institutional representative who sells products like I.V. drugs, emergency medicine drugs and some HIV drugs to university and other medical centers.
A four-year college degree is essential to be an entry-level pharmaceutical sales rep, as is a consistent work history. And if you’re in the healthcare profession and think you have a knack for sales, Michelle Groutage, Medzilla’s director of marketing said, utilizing skills that work well in your current position – nurse, EMT, physician’s assistant – can help you sell pharmaceuticals to other medical professionals.
Although I have a knack for sales, I don’t have a passion for it. If you have a passion for sales, but no experience, an entry-level pharmaceutical sales job might be a good fit for you. It’s a lucrative profession that could have many personal rewards.