Job Search For Young People: A Five O'Clock Club Case Study

By Sharon Kassakian

Five O'Clock Club Coach

 

One of the unwritten rules for career coaches is never try to counsel a spouse! Sometimes, however, sons and daughters are more receptive to advice-in my case, the fact that I am both a career advisor at a college and a Five O'Clock Club counselor might have carried some weight.

 

Having heard me talk about the Five O'Clock Club for years, my daughter Jennie decided to put the Club methodology to work. For example, we never tire of pointing out that networking is one of the four ways to generate interviews. Direct contact is often not given its due, since people usually misidentify direct contact as networking (direct contact means reaching out to someone when you don't have a networking lead). Search firms and ads are the other two sources of interview leads.

 

Acquiring Experience to Improve the Résumé

Jennie majored in biology with an environmental concentration, and minored in economics. She dreamed of landing a job as an Environmental Consultant. During her senior year, two environmental consulting firms came to campus to recruit. She was selected to be interviewed by one and was actually offered a job in Washington , D.C. She turned this down because she did not want to move to that area. The other was based in Boston -where she really wanted to work-but, after reviewing her résumé, the recruiter decided not to interview her because her skills “did not match their needs.”

 

Somewhat demoralized, she decided to follow a crucial piece of Five O'Clock Club advice: if you don't have the experience you need, get it. To make herself more marketable she accepted a five-month paid internship at the University of Maine to conduct underwater lobster research. One of Jennie's passions is scuba diving and the internship offered her the opportunity to hone her research skills and do something she loved-even though the water temperature was only 54 degrees!

If you don't have the experience you need, get it!

A Second Target: Part of the Strategy

At the end of the internship she renewed her job search. Her primary target had not changed: she still wanted to work at an environmental consulting firm in Boston . Because there weren't many such firms in Boston , she expanded her search by developing a second target (based on experience gained through another internship): financial services companies. With excellent writing, research and analytical skills there were many things she could do. First, she contacted an employment agency that concentrated in the financial service field. She was sent on a number of interviews for administrative assistant positions for which she was clearly overqualified and which did not interest her.

 

The jobs that were of interest (i.e., entry level financial analyst positions), were usually filled by the campus recruiters. Because she had already graduated, she did not have access to these people. Although she knew there were jobs at these firms, getting to the right people with the right message proved to be very difficult. She risked everything one day by being candid with an HR officer. She answered the question ‘What would she like to do?' by telling the recruiter exactly what she wanted to do. Apparently from her résumé and presentation the recruiter saw her as a desirable candidate and passed her résumé on. As a result she was interviewed for a position as a writer- researcher, which was of great interest.

 

A Friend Encourages Her to Re-apply

Jennie intensified her efforts, and during a six-week period lined up interviews for several positions, in some cases being asked back for second and third interviews-primarily in her secondary target, financial

 

The above is an excerpt from The Last Job Search Guide You'll Ever Need: How to Find and Get the Job or Internship of Your Dreams, which is available for sale for $19.85 in our bookstore or $27.00 at Amazon.com but for free to those who subscriber to our free career newsletter. This hot new book contains job search secrets of the most experienced, most knowledgeable and most respected career experts. Learn career planning, job hunting tools and tactics, interviewing, cover letter and resume writing (lots of samples!), networking, and how to find an internship. Written by 149 career experts. To receive a free copy, subscribe to our free career newsletter.

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