Looking for bliss? University professors have it

Professor teaching from the blackboard. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

If you are looking for a career that offers zen-like tranquility, it may be time to pull out the sewing machine — or the drill press.

Well, tranquility may not necessarily be what you get with a drill press, but their operators reportedly have one of the lowest-stress jobs in the nation. Along with seamstresses and eight other occupations, drill press operators made the cut on the 2013 list of least stressful jobs, according to CareerCast.com. Continue Reading

Just Got My Masters in Communications: What Now?

Communication in digital form. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Effective communication is the key to accomplishing goals in every industry. Individuals with an online degree in communications are in high demand because they’ve been trained to execute tasks that help organizations reach their objectives. If you’re stuck at a stand-still after completing a graduate program in this field of study, take a look at some career options that could help you make good use of your degree. Continue Reading

What Are some of the Career Paths for a PR Major?

Carlo Pandian

If you hold a PR major, you are likely to be considering the start of your career by now.  Hopefully, you will have thought about that before you started your major, so you are likely to have a general idea about the line of work you want to be involved in.  In order to find work, you could contact a number of media recruitment agencies, many of which are always on the lookout for PR freelancers.

Type of Employment

There are two main career paths open to you:

• You can go on the books as an employee of a company.
• You can find employers looking for PR freelancers, whereby you basically work for yourself. Continue Reading

Free Publicity for Small Businesses Who Are Hiring

I recently teamed up with my friends over at SmartRecruiters, the free, web-based applicant tracking system, on their Got Jobs? initiative to help put America back to work.

The initiative is designed to help create one million jobs in the U.S. by simplifying the hiring process while celebrating the heroes who are hiring new employees despite today’s difficult economic times. More than 12.7 million Americans are unemployed, yet according to Bersin and Associates, 80 percent of businesses report difficulty hiring, and 3.5 million U.S. jobs are currently left unfilled. If these positions were filled, the unemployment rate in the U.S. would be an estimated three percentage points lower than what it is today.

“We live in an increasingly connected world. Hiring should be fast, easy and social; not lengthy, painful and expensive like it is today,” said SmartRecruiters Founder and CEO Jerome Ternynck. “Through the Got Jobs? Campaign, we and our partners are seeking to make it easier than ever before for companies to hire, grow their businesses and strengthen the economy. We are laser-focused on creating one million U.S. jobs. We welcome everyone to join our Got Jobs? crusade and the Zero Unemployment Movement.”

The Got Jobs? campaign honors the people, business owners and managers who are creating jobs. In recognition of those job creators, SmartRecruiters created the “I Hired” Badge. The “I Hired” Badge can be displayed on a company’s website or Facebook profile and represents to its fans and followers that the business has created a job in 2012. This social campaign encourages the public to consider whether a company is driving our economy forward by asking a simple question: “Got Jobs?”

As part of the campaign, SmartRecruiters has created a series of custom landing pages (see above) featuring business owners who have hired in the past year.  Visitors to the page see a changing series of business owners who have made hires, and invites the visitor to create an additional job right then and there.

Would you be willing to have your face/name/company name/number of recent hires included on one of these pages?  It will lead to some good exposure for your brand.  Post a comment below if you’re interested.

Best Regards,

Steven Rothberg, Founder and President
CollegeRecruiter.com

Interview with a Public Relations Professional

I have worked for four years as a public spokesperson for a medium sized manufacturing corporation. This is my first job out of college and I have been loving it so far. I help the company shape their image and message and then present it to the public so that they understand what it is we do.

On a personal level, I do a lot of different things for the company. Since I am relatively new, I do a lot of writing press releases or information for our website. This can get tedious, but it is fun to see it come together in one of our advertising campaigns or public outreach efforts. A lot of people think that public relations people just spin bad news all day, but this is quite untrue. It is mostly about establishing a report with the public in order to earn trust in us and our products. This report is always based on truths about our company, however. I have never participated in a campaign that distorted or violated the truth. I am glad to be able to clear that up! Continue Reading

How to Get Free PR on CollegeRecruiter.com for Your Product, Service or Opportunity

The re-launch of CollegeRecruiter.com earlier this week has provided employers, consumer marketers, schools, and even job seekers with the ability to promote their products, services, or other opportunities for free on our site. How? Post a blog article. The process for posting a blog article is quite simple.

First, either login to your existing account with CollegeRecruiter.com or click the Sign-up link on the right side to create a free account:
Then, click the links to Settings:
Then, click the Save button near the bottom of the page:
then My Page near the top center of the page:
then Blog Posts about halfway down the left side:
then post your blog article!

Note that blog articles should not be self-serving and we reserve the right to remove any blog article for any reason but expect to have to remove very, very few. Don’t write an article primarily about your product, service or opportunity. Instead, write something that is likely to be of interest and somewhat related to your product, service, or opportunity. Then, include a byline at the bottom in which you tell the reader a little about yourself and the product, service, or opportunity you want them to consider. A good rule of thumb is a sentence or two about yourself and then a sentence or two about the product, service, or opportunity. Feel free to link from the mention of the product, service, or opportunity in your byline to the web page that to which you want the reader to click through. The byline will look a lot better if you italicize it as the reader will understand that it is somewhat separate from your article.

The staff of CollegeRecruiter.com will regularly feature on our home page and other prominent locations the blog articles which are likely to be of most interest to our readers. The less the article is about your product, service, or opportunity, the more likely it is to be of interest to the reader and the more likely it is that it will be featured. Having your article featured will drive a huge amount of interested eyes to your blog article and therefore to your byline. Your byline will also be more credible to the reader if they haven’t just read through a bunch of self-serving drivel.

Want an example of a great blog article? Carole Martin, the Interview Coach, posted a great one shortly after our re-launch. It is entitled Cut to the Front of the Interview Line.

Questions? Please contact our staff writer, William Frierson.

Entry-Level Public Relations

Like I always say, it’s important to do background research on whatever it is you plan on doing, especially your career, and entry-level public relations jobs are no different. So, I think it is helpful to take a look at what the Public Relations Society of America has to say about the field in general and also subcategories (financing, multicultural affairs, government etc) in the public relations field. It’s a handy resource and would benefit anyone looking for an entry-level public relations job, get a feel about what the profession entails and if it is the right fit for you.
Then take a look at those job researching sites, the oldies (collegerecruiter.com, salary.com, smarthunt.com) are always good places to start finding those entry-level public relations jobs. I also found a newbie (http://www.brubach.com/eljo/publicrelations.htm) that might be interesting to look at as well. Make sure you provide strong references, resumes, and cover letters to get those entry-level public relations jobs, and the tool listed above will make sure that is possible.
Public Relations Society of America: http://www.prsa.org/_Resources/profession/careeroverview.asp?ident=prof2