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Many newcomers and even some veterans to Twitter find the process of deciding who to follow to be very confusing. The Twitter home page, for example, has a prominent search engine but strongly implies that you search for content rather than people. I believe that both are important. In fact, I prefer to follow people who discuss content which is relevant to me. So how do you decide who to follow if you know the content but then get thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of matches back?

Perhaps the easiest way of adding up to 100 highly relevant people in a flash is a free service from TweepML. You can create lists of people ("tweeple") of your own or, as most probably do, run a keyword search or two to find lists which someone else has already created. You then review the lists of the people, uncheck those who don't seem relevant to your interests, and log into your Twitter account near the bottom of the screen.

At that point, the coolest thing happens. The screen will show you that those people are being added to your Twitter account so you'll now be following them. In just a few minutes, for example, you can follow 100 of the top recruiting experts on Twitter. Very slick.

One of the biggest mistakes that we see job seekers making when using our job board or others is failing to follow-up with the employers after applying to work for them. The old adage about the squeaky wheel getting the grease is absolutely true. Some employers will disregard applications from candidates unless they follow-up because the employers perceive -- often incorrectly -- that a lack of follow-up is indicative of only passing interest and candidates who follow-up are more interested and therefore more likely to accept an offer. We counsel job seekers to follow-up to every application four to five business days after the employer should have received the application. Unless the candidate has mailed or overnighted an application, that means that they should be on the phone one week after submitting their application.

Most candidates would do so but don't know how to reach the appropriate person. Virtually every employer web site has a Contact Us or About Us section and there's almost always a phone number listed there. Call and ask for human resources and then ask them to confirm that they've received your application. A week is typically not enough time for them to decide whether to interview you and it is best for the initial call to be non-confrontational. You should even explain that you know that some applications never arrive due to technical problems so you just want to make sure that yours didn't fall into some black hole. Make a joke out of it. When they confirm they've received your resume, ask them for the timeline. When will it be reviewed? When should you hear back? Then follow-up one to two business days after that deadline and repeat the process.

Continue reading "When to Follow-up After Applying to a Job" »

Money is tight for just about everyone right now. Organizations from the federal government to local government to public corporations to private corporations to individuals are all feeling the pinch. This has been a nasty recession for all of us so naturally a lot of people are wondering how they're going to have enough money to do the extra things that come about at this time of the year, whether that's traveling to see family or just buy gifts for the kids.

If you're wondering how you can make some additional money quickly, don't fall for one of those ridiculous "make gobs of money while sleeping in" multi-level marketing scams. Instead, look to quality employers which are offering legitimate, temporary positions. A great example is United Parcel Service. They're hiring thousands upon thousands of temporary workers for the holiday season. Whether you want to work in one of their facilities as a package handler or be out and about as a driver's helper, you'll get great exercise and make good money doing good work. Whether UPS is the right fit for you or not, go out and get yourself a good temporary job today so that you and your loved ones can have a wonderful holiday season.

Two of the best and most popular social media services are LinkedIn, the leading business networking site, and Twitter, the leading micro blogging site. And now, like peanut butter and chocolate, they're integrating their services to provide additional value to users of LinkedIn and Twitter.

Watch the video below and you'll see from the words of founders Reid Hoffman and Biz Stone just how compelling this new partnership will be. One great example is the much broader distribution your questions posted to LinkedIn will receive. Rather than just tapping into the collective brain trust of LinkedIn, which is considerable, you'll also be tapping into that of Twitter. Awesome.

Continue reading "Twitter and LinkedIn Now Integrated. Get Your Tweets on LinkedIn Easy, Fast, and Free." »

marilyn-mackes.jpgIt is probably of no surprise to anyone involved in college recruiting that new college graduates who had internships prior to or even after graduation fared far better in their efforts to find permanent employment after graduation than did their counterparts who didn't intern.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) just released its 2009 Student Survey. The report shows that just 19.7 percent of the Class of 2009 who had applied for jobs had one by the end of April. As dismal as that one in five percent may be, it was even worse for those who had not completed an internship. Just 14 percent of those landed jobs as of April as compared to 23 percent of their classmates who had interned. In other words, completing an internship prior to graduation made members of this year's class 64 percent more likely to land a permanent job by graduation.

Continue reading "Report: 2009 Grads Who Interned 64% More Likely to Have Received Permanent Job Offers" »

Attending a name-brand college or university will give you the following professional advantages over those who attended schools which are less well known:


  1. It will be easier for you to get interviews and job offers at prestigious big companies.
  2. Big companies will offer you more favorable starting positions and higher salaries.
  3. People at big companies will have a more positive initial impression of you even if they haven't yet seen your work.
  4. It will be easier for you to get involved in a more promising start-up company.
  5. It will be easier for you to get admitted into name-brand graduate schools.

Source: Philip Guo, Ph.D. student studying computer science at Stanford University and previously an undergraduate and master's student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Employees need to be careful about what they posted to Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites. It amazes me how many will complain about their bosses, places of work, etc. and then are shocked when they're disciplined and sometimes even terminated due to their lack of discretion. Perhaps the poster child for this is Kimberly Swan, who wrote on Facebook that her job is boring...after only three weeks on the job. She was terminated. To hear her explanation and why her boss fired her, watch this video:

  1. Friending your manager on Facebook and then complaining about your job.
  2. Putting your personal brand in front of your company's brand.
  3. Complaining that your company blocks social networking sites.
  4. Attracting the wrong attention to your company's brand because of your own.
  5. Announcing your new job on Twitter when you're still employed.
  6. Thinking you're superior to older workers because you're tech literate.
  7. Wearing rags to work because it's part of your brand.
  8. Posting inappropriate photos on Facebook, forgetting that your profile is public.
  9. Spending more time on yourself than being productive during work hours.
  10. Calling in sick, when you're not, so that you can focus on your brand.
Source: Personal Branding Blog

  1. Education / Training Consultant
  2. Physical Therapist
  3. College Professor
  4. Software Developer
  5. Technical Writer
  6. Telecommunications Network Engineer
  7. Speech-Language Pathologist
  8. Software Architect
  9. Occupational Therapist
  10. Civil Engineer
Source: CNN Money

Guerrilla Marketing for Job HuntersMy friends, David Perry and Kevin Donlin, recently published a great new resource for anyone searching for a new job in this difficult economy: Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0. As part of that effort, they invited me to write the chapter on how job hunters should use job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com.

Guerrilla is much, much more than just a chapter on job boards, so David and Perry thought it would be a good idea for me to re-publish my chapter here so that potential readers of the book can get a better feel for the type of content included in the book:

Continue reading "How to Use a Job Board to Find a Job: Advice From a Job Board Owner" »

Dr. Phil Gardner of Michigan State UniversityDr. Phil Gardner of Michigan State University asked if CollegeRecruiter.com could help him (and the college recruiting community) collect some information from employers of college students and recent graduates for his annual survey. I strongly encourage all employers, whether they're clients or CollegeRecruiter.com or not yet client of CollegeRecruiter.com (wink, wink), to complete this survey. If you do, he'll be happy to send a copy of the compiled results to you.

Here is the message from Dr. Gardner:

Continue reading "Employers: Tell Candidates What You Think in This Survey" »

No one is born knowing how to look for a new job...or mistakes to avoid when looking for a new job. But there are some people out there who through experience and thoughtfulness are fountains of wisdom about what to do and what not to do.

Tom Gimbel, Founder & CEO, The LaSalle Network, is one of those people. Kathryn Kaysen Jackson, the Academic Internship Coordinator/Clinical Instructor at Loyola University Chicago and blogger, recently tipped me off to a four minute video in which Tom discusses how to avoid some common mistakes in finding a job. Enjoy!

Continue reading "How to Avoid Common Mistakes in Finding a Job" »

Boschcampus logoBoschcampus just launched its Facebook Fan Page. If you're a college student or recent graduate and looking for a great career opportunity in engineering or any of many other areas, join their Fan Page today so that you'll receive the most current information about their internship, co-op, and entry-level career opportunities.

Bosch is committed to developing top talent. They've seen that one of the best ways to bring in talent is through recruitment of high-potential students into their internships and co-op programs, and graduating students into their full-time Professional Development programs at both the Bachelor's and Master's levels.

Continue reading "Looking for a great co-op, internship, or entry-level job? Become a Fan of Boschcampus." »

Continue reading "How to Identify the Best Companies to Work For -- Free Webinar" »

Promise Phelon, the CEO of career management start-up, UpMo, provides some great advice to job seekers on how they can use their social network to find a new job.

This is one of the most entrepreneurial generations in history. Some chose to start their own businesses for lifestyle reasons and some were forced into it because they were unable to find an organization willing and able to hire them. But all new businesspeople need help and as someone who started his business while in college, I feel well qualified to pass along some tips that I don't see in many of these lists:

Continue reading "7 Tips for Starting Your Own Business While in College" »

candice-arnold.jpgOne of the pleasures of managing a team of talented, dedicated employees is seeing one of their ideas take root and flourish. Case in point: content coordinator Candice Arnold recommended that we resurrect our Ask the Experts questions and answers feature using our blogging software and integrating it with our customer relationship management software, Salesforce.com.

Candice's vision was quite an upgrade over how we used to do it: email the questions to the couple of dozen experts, receive their answers back in the bodies of their emails and sometimes attachments, copy and paste their answers into html templates, and upload the web pages. The entire process took hours for our staff and the experts. The new process has saved everyone a ton of time and led to a ton of great answers by the experts who choose to address the questions being asked by students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, alumni, and employers.

Each week, Candice sends out an email through Salesforce to the experts who have agreed to answer questions. None answer all of them. Some answer a lot and others answer a few. The choice is theirs. Here's the email that Candice sent earlier today:

Continue reading "Ask the Experts: Answering Great Questions from Job Seekers" »

CollegeRecruiter.com has been a pretty active user of Twitter for almost a year now and it has proven to be a valuable marketing tool for our job board. It is one of larger sources of traffic from college students seeking internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs. It is also proven to be a good source of leads for the employers and consumer marketers who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them reach those students and recent graduates.

We have two accounts:


  1. EntryLevelJob contains links to many of our newest articles, blogs, videos, and job postings. We have about 6,000 followers to that account.

  2. StevenRothberg contains some of the same content but is targeted more at our clients than the job seekers. We have about 5,500 followers to that account.

Continue reading "Five No-No's When Using Twitter" »

Kenrick Chatman of The Career CatalystI enjoyed the opportunity to speak with Kenrick Chatman on his Career Catalyst radio show about how college students searching for internships, recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs, and experienced candidates searching for higher level positions should use job boards such as Monster, Careerbuilder, Dice, Jobing, and CollegeRecruiter.com.

Interested? Listen to the conversation and many excellent questions asked by Kenrick's listeners.

Eric Normington of University of DreamsWe've been involved in college recruiting since 1995 so we've seen a lot of fads and trends. One of the more interesting trends -- I don't see this as a fad -- is the growth in the number of students who pay for internships. That's right. Students are paying for internships rather than being paid to work as interns.

The New York Times recently ran an interesting article about this trend. The article, entitled, "Unpaid Work, But They Pay for the Privilege," did a nice job of laying out both sides of the issue with a number of quotes from college career service office professionals criticizing the practice and a number of quotes from people like Eric Normington, the chief marketing officer of University of Dreams. They're a leader in the industry and advertise "a guaranteed internship placement, eight weeks of summer housing, five meals a week, seminars and tours around New York City for $7,999. It has a full-time staff of 45, and says it placed 1,600 student interns in 13 cities around the world this year, charging up to $9,450 for a program in London and as little as $5,499 in Costa Rica."

Continue reading "Paid Internships Are Booming...But Students Are Paying Rather Than Being Paid" »

Talk with any job seeker for more than a few minutes and you'll hear horror story after horror story about how they can't get their resumes noticed by employers. Many employers refuse to extend the most basic courtesy of an automated email acknowledging the receipt of a resume despite the fact that virtually every employer with more than a few hundred employees has easy, free tools built into their applicant tracking systems that allow them to send automated emails to every job seeker at every step of the hiring process. Any recruiter who works for a mid- to large-sized organization who tells you they don't have the time to email rejected candidates is either lying or a fool.

So what should job seekers do if they're well qualified for a position being offered by an organization and can't get the attention of that organization's recruiters? One answer is to go around the normal, failed hiring channels by building a web site about why that organization should hire you.

Continue reading "Employers Ignoring You? Build A Web Site Telling Them Why They Should Hire You." »

Now I've heard just about everything.Trina Thompson, who may win the award for making the stupidest career move ever, has sued her alma mater, Monroe College, for $70,000. Her claim? She's been unable to find a job since she graduated with an information technology degree in April and she blames the school's Office of Career Advancement (a/k/a career service office) for not trying hard enough to find her a job.

Trina's mother -- surprise, surprise -- is pretty vocal in all of this and completely backs up her precious daughter and completely slams the college. Pathetic.

Continue reading "Jobless Grad Sues College for $70k - Claims Career Office Didn't Help Enough" »

Work StrongToday, July 23rd, is Work Strong day at Amazon.com. Work Strong is one of the best career guides and, even better, was written by my friend, Peter Weddle.

Visit Amazon.com today and buy your copy of this revolutionary new guide to career success, and you'll receive your book AND:

Continue reading "Today is Work Strong Day" »

We just launched a great new service on CollegeRecruiter.com, the leading job board for college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs and other career opportunities.

For years we've been selling career-related books for $9.95 through our bookstore but we just entered into a partnership that will allow us to buy gift certificates from Restaurants.com at such a significant discount that we are now including in every book purchase a $25 gift certificate from Restaurants.com. You can use that gift certificate at any of thousands of leading restaurants. That's right -- buy a book for under $10 and you'll get the book AND the $25 gift certificate with no strings attached.

Sound good? I thought so. Head over to our bookstore and get your book and $25 restaurant gift certificate today for $9.95.

One of my saddest days at work over the past year occurred early last fall when one of my favorite client contacts was let go by her employer not because of poor performance or anything of the sort but instead because her employer was hard hit by the recession and needed to quickly reduce the number of people it employed or it would likely go out-of-business and then everyone there would be out-of-work. There's never a good time to lose a job but it is particularly hard in a recession. Unfortunately, that scenario repeated itself many times over the fall and into 2009 with many organizations terminating the employment of many recruiters and other human resource professionals. One of the saddest days occurred when one of our sales people called me and told me that she had to cancel one of her sales calls for the day because she was supposed to speak with the three people in the employer's college relations team but two of them were let go earlier that day.

Some of these people who have been laid-off have approached me for help in finding a new position and I've been able to help some but not most as there simply aren't all that many recruiting and other human resource positions available. But earlier today I spotted a position that looks great. One of our clients, Black & Veatch Corporation, is hiring a College Relations Leader for their Overland Park (suburban Kansas City) head office.

Continue reading "Job Opening for College Relations Leader" »

Kevin Donlin of Guerrilla Resumes and the Minneapolis Star TribuneThe conventional wisdom is that 90 percent of job seekers are typically spending almost all of their time chasing after the 10 percent of job openings which are advertised. What that also means is that only 10 percent of job seekers are chasing after the 90 percent of job openings which go unadvertised.

So if you're searching for a job, which bucket would you prefer to be in? The second, of course. But how do you get into that bucket? Network, network, network. Want some examples of three job seekers who were hired because of their networking efforts? Listen to this podcast by Kevin Donlin of the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Guerrilla Resumes as he interviews Candice Arnold, our content coordinator, and me.

Probably the best recruiting-related blog is Cheezhead, written by Joel Cheesman and his team of staff writers. Today's article was great, well, mostly great. It included a list of the best internships and that was great, but it also made the fundamental error in not recognizing that in order to call a job an internship that job must be career-related.

You cannot, for example, put a finance major in the mail room and accurately call that an internship any more than you can refer to a job cleaning toilets as an internship, which is exactly what the article did. These "poop-swabber" jobs can only be described as internships for those whose chosen career path is in the cleaning industry. I trust that the error was an oversight and will be corrected by the good people at Cheezhead.

Continue reading "10 Best Internships Out of 9,000+ Still Available" »

Hilary Harwell of An Inspired Mind LLCOne of the key disadvantages that younger workers have is that they simply haven't had the opportunities to gain experience. The cliche about with experience comes wisdom is very true, but there's also no need for every young professional to have to go through the same experiences personally in order to gain wisdom if those young professionals are able and willing to really listen and benefit from the lessons learned by others.

So if you're a young professional, listen carefully to these five tips from Hilary Harwell, CEO of An Inspired Mind LLC and former investment banker:

Continue reading "5 Tips for Success as a Young Professional" »

Job boards fall into two main buckets:


  1. General boards like Monster and Careerbuilder and
  2. Niche boards like Dice and CollegeRecruiter.com.

I recommend that candidates use two or three general job boards as they tend to have the most jobs advertised and the most employers searching their resume banks but also a handful of niche job boards because the jobs advertised tend to be of higher quality and the employers who use niche boards tend not to use the general job boards to fill the same positions. The employers who use the niche boards tend to do so because the quality of the candidates are often higher.

Continue reading "Why Use Niche Job Boards" »

Lindsey PollakGen Y career and workplace expert Lindsey Pollak just posted a great blog article about how students can make the most of a jobless summer. Rather than pinning the blame for being unemployed on the unemployed, she wisely took the high road by understanding that few want to be unemployed and most are victims of the economy, bad advice, or lack of advice.

So how can high school and college students make the most of a jobless summer? Lindsey recommends three courses of action:

Continue reading "3 Ways Students Can Create Their Own Jobs" »

CollegeRecruiter.com booth at SHRM 2009The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) 2009 annual conference opened yesterday afternoon with a keynote by legendary CEO, Jack Welch. Most of the 10,000+ paid attendees then made their way from the main presentation room at the mile long New Orleans Convention Center over to the massive exhibit hall to begin their discussions with the hundreds of exhibitors as well as snack on catfish fingers, gumbo, mushroom caps, beer, wine, soda, and more.

The exhibit hall was open from 4 until 7pm yesterday and traffic to the CollegeRecruiter.com booth was pretty good from 4 until about 6:15pm and then dropped off a cliff. By 6:45pm it was much harder to spot attendees than exhibitors but that's pretty normal for these types of events as the reality is that most of the attendees come into the exhibit hall for the free food and drink and then leave to enjoy their evenings at local restaurants and bars. And given that this year's conference is in New Orleans, there's no shortage of either.

Continue reading "New Webinar Service Warmly Greeted at #SHRM09" »

July is right around the corner and this terrible job market for college students and recent graduates has snuffed out the chances that they had for landing an internship. Or did it?

If you haven't landed that great internship yet, get more aggressive. I'm not talking about getting your friends in New Jersey to put a horse's head into the bed of the hiring manager but instead literally calling up your target companies. Lauren Berger a/k/a The Intern Queen did just that when she was a freshman in college and landed the first of her many internships. Intrigued? Watch her recent interview on Fox News.

Four things that a student can do to find a summer job at the last minute are:


  • Call all of your adult family members and friends of your parents. Tell them you're looking for a summer job, what you're good at, and what type of work is of interest to you. Don't ask them for a job. Instead, ask them to give you the names and phone numbers of three people you should call. You've just multiplied your network by three fold. Repeat until someone declines to give you the names and instead gives you a job.
  • Don't tell people that you're willing to do anything. Focus. Recruiters and hiring managers are turned off by people who are too flexible as it tends to mean they're too desperate and desperate candidates tend to make lousy employees.
  • Be willing to work for little to no pay in a position which is in line with your career path. Getting experience is incredibly valuable. For money, find a job that pays well even if it isn't of interest to you or in line with your career path. Invest in yourself.
  • Don't focus your job search efforts on advertised openings as they're only 10 percent of the job openings and 90 percent of candidates spend all of their time applying to advertised jobs. Rather than being in the 90 percent chasing after 10 percent of the jobs, be one of the 10 percent who networks and therefore is chasing after 90 percent of the jobs. Your odds are much better.

Isn't it interesting that one person's dream is another's nightmare? Many college students and recent graduates would just about kill for an opportunity to work for leading technology companies such as Google, Amazon.com, Yahoo!, Facebook, MySpace, IODA, Workforce Logic, Mashable, and Mahalo. Yet each and every one of those organizations gets the nod in a list of the 10 worst entry-level jobs in information technology:

Continue reading "10 Worst Entry Level Jobs in Tech" »

A tip of the hat to my twin sister, Marnie Tod, for sending to me a great video on Facebook manners. Amongst other nuggets, don't use Facebook to break up with your girlfriend:

Continue reading "Timmy Uses Facebook to Dump Alice " »

Recent graduate, Amanda Hoffstrom, just posted a nice blog article about how she was skeptical about using Twitter as part of her job search but then read an article about 50 job search experts to follow on Twitter, followed them, and has found it helpful in her job search. One of those experts was the dude who posts career information to Twitter.com/StevenRothberg. Maybe you've heard of him.

Amanda wrote that "Twitter offers a quick way to stay connected to leaders in your chosen profession." News organizations are just as important for her to follow as career experts. She also follows companies she's interested in working for, previous employers, journalism and media job boards some friends. She's founder that "once you start following someone, they often follow you back, and may respond to you if you post a question or solicit advice about looking for a job. If you follow the right people, you can also find job openings." She has applied to positions via Twitter's job search engine and through links companies post on their account.

Do you know of a student or recent graduate who is unable to find an internship for the summer? If they can't find one, tell them to create one.

Heather Huhman, the entry level careers examiner at Examiner.com, posted an article today about how students and recent graduates can propose internships to employers. I had some additional ideas for Heather but missed her deadline. Here are my ideas:

Continue reading "How to Create an Internship" »

The job market for this year's 1.4 million college graduates is not exactly bleak, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, but employers will continue to be very selective, meaning they will look for candidates with more experience and motivation and knowledge on the industry they want to enter.

Brent Peterson Interview AngelBrent Peterson, interview expert and Founder of Interview Angel says the keys to standing out are research, knowledge and preparation. "It almost seems ridiculous to enforce this almost 'old school' and common sense approach to securing a job," said Peterson. "Still, far too many people today treat job interviews like closed book exams, walking in blind. Everyone has to get back to really preparing and researching the company and job in which they're interviewing. Stop being 'job seekers' and become 'problem solvers' for companies."

Continue reading "Job Hunting Tips for Recent College Grads" »

marilyn-mackes.jpgEmployers expect to increase the pay they offer college students for internships, according to a new study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Overall, employers taking part in NACE's 2009 Experiential Education Survey say they will offer bachelor's-degree-level interns an average hourly wage of $17.13--up 4.9 percent from the average they offered last year's interns.

Continue reading "Employers Hiring Fewer Interns But Paying Them More" »

One of the benefits of being a job board owner is that I get to speak at and attend a lot of recruiting conferences, including this week's ERE Expo 2009 in San Diego. Some conferences are great. Others are okay. But they're all wonderful places to be for those who want to learn from the giants of our industry.

It is very rare when you see a candidate attend these conferences but that's not much of a surprise as it costs thousands of dollars to attend most of them. But there's so much great information at the conferences for the candidates that it is a shame that more of them can't afford to share lunch or even a few minutes with one of the giants. Well, that's not entirely true. You see, there's a guy by the name of Peter Clayton of Total Picture Radio and he is present at a lot of the conferences. Peter does a great job of sitting down with industry experts and getting them to talk about what is happening in their niche or even across the entire recruiting industry.

Continue reading "Total Picture Radio Fills the Career Advice Media Vacuum" »

One of the questions that a lot of graduating college seniors are asking right now is whether they should consider starting their own business. I started this business in November 1991 so we were on the verge of going to war with Iraq and businesses were very reluctant to spend any unnecessary money, many had hiring freezes, and few were hiring or advertising. It was a terrible time to start a business yet I did so because I had done my research and my downside was very, very limited. The business had virtually no fixed costs so all I needed to earn was what I needed to eat.

There is no perfect time to start a business but there are some times which are easier. In the short-term, you're better off starting a business during a strong economy as you're more likely to cover your costs and perhaps even earn a profit. But you're also likely to be less appreciative of the need to conserve cash and watch your nickels. In the long-term, you're better off starting a business during a recession because you're forced to learn to be frugal and all successful entrepreneurs are frugal.

I recently wrote a blog article praising Jamie Varon's TwitterShouldHireMe.com project as being a great example of a candidate who does much more than just post a resume and wait for the phone to ring. Jamie's blog was proof, day after day, that she was extremely well qualified for the job that she was targeting and wasn't just trying to get hired in order to get a paycheck. Certainly getting a paycheck is important and just, but her blog was proof that her interest in working for start-up Twitter was much more than just getting a paycheck from Twitter.

Earlier today, Heather Huhman of Examiner.com posted an article in which she took the opposite side and criticized the approach. Unlike some writers, Heather takes care to think through her positions and explain them. She and I may disagree on whether Jamie's strategy is more helpful than harmful to Jamie's career prospects, but Heather makes some excellent points:

Continue reading "The Counter Argument About TwitterShouldHireMe.com" »

Peter WeddleWhy does such a high percentage of job seekers use job boards when you keep seeing stories that the vast majority of job openings go unadvertised and that only a small percentage of job seekers find jobs through job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com? Could it be that those stories are wrong?

"Job boards work," writes career expert Peter Weddle. "Not as a substitute for all of the other things you must do to find employment today, but as a critically important complement. Said another way, you ignore job boards at your own peril." How can Peter make such a claim? Unlike a lot of other pundits, he's actually done his research. WEDDLE's has been polling job seekers since 1996 on what strategies work best in a job search. Last year, almost 2,000 people responded to the poll. Here are the top five ways they found their last job:

Continue reading "Job Seekers Use Job Boards Because Job Boards Work -- Weddle" »

Twitter Should Hire MeOne of my favorite tactics for college students hunting for internships or recent graduates searching for entry-level jobs is for them to create a blog or other type of web site about why a particular employer should hire them.

Many and perhaps most large organizations now have Google Alerts set up to email them whenever a new web page is posted that includes a reference to the organization, so if you're targeting a web savvy organization then your web site will quickly come to their attention and if what you've written on that site is compelling then you'll pretty much force them to hire you -- which is good for you and them.

Want an example? Jamie Varon is the poster child for this tactic. She wants to work for Twitter so created a site all about that. Rather than just talking about how great Twitter is and how much she wants to work for them, she explains in some detail why hiring him makes tremendous business sense for Twitter. The result? She scored an interview and I'll be shocked if she doesn't get hired.

Our friends over at Graduate Degree Blog recently put together an excellent list of the 100 best web sites for job seekers.

Some of the sites recommended should be of no surprise. Those included LinkedIn, Twitter, Indeed, SimplyHired, Careerbuilder, and Monster. Some of the sites listed aren't as well known. Those include NetParty, Ryze, and Peekface. And some were just plain nice for me to see. Those included CollegeRecruiter.com.

Thanks, Graduate Degree Blog!

college students on the beach during spring breakSeniors who have a job offer lined up, use the break to thank everyone who helped you. If your prospective employer gave you a book list or other tips on how to prepare, start tackling that.
Seniors who don't yet have an offer, you still have three months before graduation, plenty of time to execute a proactive search. Spend the break identifying your preferred industries, companies, and functional areas so you can hit the ground running when you're back at school.

Juniors, you still have three months to land a summer internship, and this is a critical internship. Your competitiveness in senior year recruiting is very dependent on how strong this junior summer internship is. So take the same care of seniors looking for full-time. Spend the break identifying your target areas and be prepared to launch an aggressive search when you get back to school.

Continue reading "What College Students Should Do For Their Job Search Over Spring Break" »

There is no way to ensure that you are hired by any employer or even hired at all, but there are many steps that you can take to maximize your chances:

Continue reading "How to Ensure That You Get Hired" »

Jeff Horwich of Minnesota Public RadioJeff Horwich of Minnesota Public Radio led a roundtable discussion with a group of 10 college seniors to better understand their thoughts on what it is like to graduate into the worst job market since the Great Depression. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the discussion when the show was recorded yesterday evening.

Almost all of the students were pessimistic about their job opportunities but apparently their views were not representative of the views of many other students at campuses from around the state. Want to learn more? You'll need to listen to the show.

The edited version will be broadcast tomorrow at noon Central on Midday with Gary Eichten. For those outside of the MPR listening area, listen on-line.

John Buettner Stevenson UniversityJohn Buettner of Stevenson University, was quoted in an Examiner.com article about how college seniors can land a job in a down economy. John provided 10 great tips for the article. I've taken those tips and adapted some of them to better suit the needs of the students and recent graduates who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them find a great internship or entry-level job:

Continue reading "10 Tips for Job Hunting College Seniors" »

Ben SteinOther than Ben Stein, is there an economist in the world who is smart, witty, and in movies such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off? So you know that when he talks, you need to listen. And when he writes, you need to read.

Ben just wrote a great article in which he gave three great tips to college seniors who are approaching graduation in a very, very difficult job market:

Continue reading "Ben Stein's Advice to Job Hunting College Grads" »

One of the best bloggers to emerge over the past year or two is Willy Franzen of One Day, One Job. Last June he posted a blog article that listed the 10 blogs which, in his opinion, are the best written by college career service office professionals.

Like Willy, we here at CollegeRecruiter.com want to see more blogs written by those in career services because we know that they have tremendous wisdom to share with their students but also with students, recent graduates, and alumni from all schools. In an effort to make it easier to follow what is being written about at all of the career service office blogs, staff writer William Frierson compiled and recently updated our blog of blogs: the CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Career Services Experts Blog.

Is your school's blog on our list? If not, let William know. We'll be happy to add them right away!

Tory Johnson Women for Hire photoTory Johnson of Women for Hire is one of the country's foremost career experts. She recently wrote an article for Yahoo! in which she listed 12 great ways to get your resume noticed by prospective employers:

Continue reading "How to Get Your Resume Noticed" »

Last week we hosted the first of will be many free job hunting webinars that we'll host for the college students, recent graduates, and alumni who use CollegeRecruiter.com. The webinar, College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market, was delivered by guest experts Susan Kennedy and Mitch Bornstein, principal partners of Career Treking LLC.

Susan has been coaching young professionals throughout her expansive career. She has over 20 years experience hiring and managing young professionals across different industries. Her business background combined with Human Resources experience brings a wealth of experience and practical knowledge that every young professional can benefit from. Susan has a degree in psychology and economics and frequently speaks at local area colleges about the job search process.

Continue reading "Recording of Webinar: College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market" »

Marilyn Mackes photoA new study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows that, for new college graduates in this tight economy, becoming the perfect job candidate is a tall order.

"Today's employers have an extensive list of attributes, skills, and qualities they look for in their job candidates," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. "And that's assuming that the candidate meets the employer's basic criteria--including having the requisite major, course work, and GPA."

Continue reading "What makes for the "perfect" job candidate in a tight employment market?" »

I love Facebook. I use it almost every day and sometimes multiple times a day. It has allowed me to connect with people that I otherwise wouldn't have known existed. Sometimes getting to know someone isn't a good thing, but it usually is. Not only is it enjoyable, but it is also educational. Or is it enjoyable because it is educational? But I digress.

Tony Zanders from SimplyHired recently spotted a great article with tips for how to protect yourself if you've decided to use Facebook. Some of the tips should be immediately implemented by all, others only by those who are the most concerned about protecting their privacy. So regardless of which bucket you fall into, read 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know and then thank Tony for caring about all of us.

I received an email from a woman in my network who was seeking advice for a relative of hers. The relative has been out of work for a year and has spent that time applying for job after job and networking. The woman didn't describe how many jobs or what types of jobs the relative has been applying to or what kind of networking or how much networking her relative has been doing. She asked for my advice. I wrote to her with the following advice:

Continue reading "Applying to Jobs But Getting No Interviews" »

susan-kennedy-photo.jpgI'm really excited about the first of what should be many that we'll host for the college students, recent graduates, and alumni who use CollegeRecruiter.com. Next week we will host the free webinar, College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market, by Susan Kennedy, principal partner of Career Treking LLC. We already have 323 registrations. If you haven't registered yet, do so today at the registration page.

Hiring in 2009 is projected to decrease eight percent for newly minted college graduates and 10 percent for MBAs, from 2008 levels. An abundance of qualified, experienced talent and the largest number of graduating seniors ever present stiff competition for fewer openings. Despite the above-mentioned doom and gloom, there are some encouraging industry projections. In this webinar, you will learn where the jobs are for college graduates as well as specific steps you can take to manage your job search in this challenging job market.

Continue reading "Free Webinar for Candidates: College Seniors Can THRIVE In This Job Market" »

Willy Franzen did some great research over the past week and came up with a list of 50 users of Twitter that job seekers should follow if they want to have every advantage possible in their job search. I am honored to have been included on the list.

Thanks, Willy!

Work Strong book coverOne of my favorite veterans of the recruiting and staffing industry is Peter Weddle. He recently published another book for candidates (does the guy ever sleep?). Work Strong: Your Personal Career Fitness System is on par with 20th century employment bibles such as Parachute but Peter's new book is specifically designed for 21st century issues.

If you're struggling with trying to figure out what to do for career success, then buy this book. It tells you what to do for career success but also when, where, and how to do it by encouraging you to use your reasoning ability on the left side of your brain while also using your creative ability on the right side of your brain.

Susan Kennedy Career Treking LLCI'm excited about hosting the free webinar, College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market, by Susan Kennedy, principal partner of Career Treking LLC.

Hiring in 2009 is projected to decrease eight percent for newly minted college graduates and 10 percent for MBAs, from 2008 levels. An abundance of qualified, experienced talent and the largest number of graduating seniors ever present stiff competition for fewer openings. Despite the above-mentioned doom and gloom, there are some encouraging industry projections. In this webinar, you will learn where the jobs are for college graduates as well as specific steps you can take to manage your job search in this challenging job market.

Continue reading "Free Webinar: College Seniors CAN Thrive in This Job Market" »

The recession has thrown a lot of very good people out of work and provided many of them with an incentive to to re-consider their work choices. Do they still want to work in a big, downtown office building with hundreds or thousands of others and play all of the political games? Or would they prefer to make money from home by running an Internet-based business?

Unfortunately, there are many, many scams out there from organizations who claim to help people who are looking for quality work-at-home jobs but instead just offer those people a way of wasting their money. Many of the organizations charge a fee and send you a list of information that you could obtain just as easily and for free through a simple Google search. Or they'll happily set you up with a quasi-pyramid scheme under which you'll primary way of making money will be to recruit more suckers so you get a cut of their enrollment fee and the whole thing collapses when there aren't enough suckers left.

Continue reading "Home-based Work Opportunities Are Not Always Scams" »

One of the dirty, dark secrets of the job board industry is that many of the boards do a terrible job of protecting the safety of the candidates who use their sites. The feeling amongst the owners and managers of these boards is somewhat like caveat emptor -- let the buyer beware. What these boards seem to be saying to their candidates is that if the candidates are stupid enough to be using their boards then the candidates deserve to have their identities stolen, bank accounts emptied, or worse. That's just wrong.

CollegeRecruiter.com is a member of the International Association of Employment Web Sites and one of the goals of the association is to improve not just the image but also the practices of the industry. I'm not saying that the job board industry is dirty or untrustworthy. But in any industry there are some bad apples and our industry is no exception. One way that the more trustworthy members of our association and industry protect our candidates is by verifying the authenticity of job postings. Unfortunately, some of the most popular job boards do little to no verification so the ads running on their site include many, many bogus job postings.

Continue reading "Bogus Job Postings" »

College students searching for internships and recent graduates applying for entry-level jobs often ask whether to include their grade point averages on their resumes. There are essentially two considerations:


  1. Grade point average is often, but not always, important when applying for internships and entry-level jobs. Some employers will refuse to consider candidates whose GPA's are below some cutoff point such as 3.0 or even 3.5. But the vast majority of employers use GPA as merely one of many factors when considering candidates so if your GPA is low but your other qualifications are exemplary then you still stand a good chance of landing an interview and being hired.
  2. A good rule of thumb for deciding whether to include your GPA on your resume is that you want to include it if it is good as that will increase your chances of landing an interview but you want to leave it off of your resume if it isn't good as that will decrease your chances of landing an interview. But that rule of thumb also begs the question: what is a good GPA? That depends upon the employer and position. If you're trying to land an interview with a top management consulting or investment banking firm then anything less than a 3.5 is not going to be regarded by the employer as being good. But if you're trying to land an interview to work in customer service for a travel or hospitality firm then a GPA as low as 2.5 for many firms would be regarded as being good enough to increase your chances of landing an interview.

keith-luscher.jpgOne of the most frequent sources of frustration that we here at CollegeRecruiter.com hear from students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry-level jobs is that they can't get their foot in the door of organizations for whom they want to work. The candidates are told over and over again to network with people in the organizations but if they don't know anyone within those organizations then how can they network with someone there?

Keith Luscher, author of Prospect & Flourish and publisher of Prospecting Weekly, has the answer: if you can't get your foot in the door then use a wedge. The approach of wedging your foot in the door is a step-by-step approach that should be used only with a limited number of highly targeted prospects at any given time. It can be used to get interviews or other appointments with key decision-makers in organizations of all types and sizes.

Continue reading "How to Get Your Foot in the Door" »

Virtually all major job boards encourage candidates to post their resumes so that the minority of employers who search the resume banks can search the database, find your resume, and contact you to see if you'd be interested in being considered for one of their employment opportunities. There are certainly pros and cons to posting your resume to a public database such as a resume bank. For example, although potential employers will be able to see your resume and that will increase your chances of finding a new job faster, others will be able to see your resume as well. We at CollegeRecruiter.com became so concerned about the threat of identity theft from hackers and annoying phone calls from those who search resume banks to find new customers that we no longer allow employers or anyone else to search our resume bank.

If you decide to post your resume, do so carefully. Use a disposable Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail or other such email address and a post office box rather than your home address. Never include on your resume information such as your birthdate or social security number. Employers don't want that information when they're considering you for a position and because of the risk of identity theft you don't want to ever hand that information over to anyone who doesn't absolutely need it. Don't include the name of your current employer as that will reduce the likelihood that they or someone acting on their behalf will find your resume. If you work for a large national bank, identify your current employer as "Large, National Bank" where you would normally list the name of the organization. If you think that your employer may find you by your name, use your first initial and last name.

At the end of the day, you are not owned by your employer. If they find out that your resume is on-line they should look upon that finding as an opportunity to try harder to keep you. If they terminate your employment or take other disciplinary action, then they'll only have confirmed for you that they are not an employer of choice and that you made the right decision to seek out a new place of work.

One of the most thoughtful voices in the recruiting blogosphere is Jim Stroud. Today he has given job seekers a true gift: a free, one hour webinar in which he walks those who are searching for a new job through the process that they should follow. Download the materials and then watch the video here:

Job-Action-Day.jpgRandall Hansen of QuintCareers asked me to participate in a group blogging effort to help empower workers and job-seekers to examine and improve their careers in a struggling economy. At least a dozen bloggers are posting entries today, Job Action Day, about these topics. While our efforts will certainly not solve all of the problems afflicting today's workers and job-seekers, efforts like this should make a difference to some and, at the end of the day, that is enough.

Randall left the choice of topic up to each of us so that we could each write on something for which we felt some passion and, hopefully, in which we have some expertise. I will write a few words about the overuse of job boards by job seekers. Now that may seem like an unusual topic for an owner of a job board, but I've seen far too many candidates delay their entry or re-entry into the workforce because they hide behind their monitors. Do spend a day on the job boards at the beginning of your search but after that you should spend a few minutes per day max.

On your first day, first register with the three big general boards: Monster, Careerbuilder, and HotJobs. Post your resume and apply to all of the advertised jobs for which you are qualified and which are of interest to you. Set up resume match agents / alerts so that the boards email you whenever a new job is posted which matches your interests. Then repeat with one or two boards that target your geographic area (i.e., MinnesotaJobs.com) then repeat with one or two boards that target your occupational field (i.e., EngineerJobs.com), then repeat with CollegeRecruiter.com if you're a college student or recent graduate.

On your second, third, fourth, and additional days only go back to the job boards if you receive an email from them telling you that a position has been posted that matches your interests and then only spend as much time on those sites as is necessary to review the posting and apply to it if you are qualified and interested in the position. Spend all of the rest of your time setting up and going to informational interviews, volunteering, and otherwise networking.

Your job search will be more stressful and difficult than will be similar searched conducted by your friends who rely on the job boards, but long after you've been hired and are happy in your new job, they will continue to be pounding away at the job boards and, probably, their keyboards, monitors and anything else that is connected to their computer.

A frequent complaint that we hear from college students searching for internships is that they can't find any. There are a number of variations but some of the more typical are:


  • "Employers aren't hiring."
  • "Employers are telling me that I'm overqualified."
  • "Employers are telling me that I don't have the requisite qualifications."
  • "How can I get experience if no one will give me a chance?"

Continue reading "No Internships? Volunteer!" »

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Follow-up

Many of the major job boards will keep track in your account of the jobs to which you've applied and many also email a copy of the jobs to you. Use those records to follow-up with each and every employer to which you've applied. Give them four or five business days to review your resume and then email or call using any contact information included in the job posting ad. If there is no such information in the ad, and there often isn't, then go to the employer's web site and use the Contact Us or other such page to contact the Human Resources office. All you want to know at this stage is if they received your resume and when they'll likely review it. Be polite but firm in getting that information. Any good employer should be able and willing to communicate that to you. If they tell you five business days, call or email them back on the sixth business day to ask for an update and the timing of the next step. If they tell you that they'll be setting up interviews in 10 business days then call or email them back on the eleventh day. Keep repeating the process until you've been excluded from consideration or, hopefully, hired.

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Fraud Alert

There has been a small but increasing number of instances of fraud being perpetrated against job seekers who post their resumes at job boards. Most of the major job boards derive the vast majority of their revenues by selling job postings and resume searching access to employers so they're loath to eliminate resume searching as a product. Yet they'll also admit that there is a real problem with keeping out those who want to buy resume searching access simply to download hundreds or even thousands of resumes for identity theft purposes. Also problematic are legitimate organizations who purchase access in order to call and sell products or services to candidates.

Protect yourself by posting your resume anonymously at the job boards that offer that option so that employers and fraudsters who search the resume bank can't see your name, email, or other contact information. Better yet, patronize the small number of major job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com which do not sell resume searching access to employers so as to better protect the candidates who are using the sites.

(continued tomorrow)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Be Neat and Tidy

Remember that the bulk of large employers will not actually see your resume before calling you for an interview, but keep in mind that some will. If you have an opportunity to do so, submit your resume without any formatting in plain text and also attach a copy as a Microsoft Word or, better yet, PDF document. Some employers don't want to look at attached resumes but some do. Even within some employers you'll find that some recruiters want to only look at plain text resumes while others only want to look at the formatted attached resumes. Rather than trying to guess, give them both and let them choose.

When you submit your plain text resume, be sure that you spend some time cleaning it up. Don't just copy from a Word document and paste the text into the "paste your resume here" box. That will result in a poorly formatted resume that is hard to read. Take five minutes and use a program like TextPad or WordPad and clean it up so that it is easy to read even if it isn't as pretty to look at as the Word version of your resume.

(continued tomorrow)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Keywords Also Matter When You Apply

Candidates who apply to jobs which are advertised on job boards or who post their resumes to job boards in the hopes that an employer will find the resume and contact the candidate with an interview offer are often shocked to learn that most large employers don't really read resumes anymore. Instead, resumes are added to the employer's database of resumes. That applicant tracking system allows the employer to more efficiently manage the flow of candidates and also all but ensures that when employers review your resume they will likely only find it if your resume contains the keywords that the employer uses when she searches for the resumes which are likely to best fit her needs. Just like you typed in keywords to find the employer's job posting, so will that employer type in keywords to find your resume.

To ensure that your resume is reviewed by an employer who may not be as skilled at keyword searching as you are, make sure that you include in your resume all of the possible keywords that the employer may use to find a resume such as yours. Don't include irrelevant keywords because the trick isn't to get your resume noticed. The trick is to get your resume noticed by the employer when they are reviewing resumes submitted for a job for which you are both qualified and interested. Rather than referring to your previous experience just as an "Account Executive," also include the word "sales" if that's what your function actually was. Rather than referring to yourself as a "Registered Nurse," also include the acronym "RN" as some employers will search one way and others the other way.

(continued tomorrow)

To read the first of this six part series, go to Part I.

Keywords Matter When You Search

Virtually every job board allows candidates to search by a combination of keywords and geographic parameters. If you're looking for a sales position in New York, you can enter "sales" into the keyword field and "New York" into the geographic field but most of the larger boards are going to return hundreds and perhaps thousands of job matches to you. If that happens, narrow your search by adding keywords or refining your geographic parameters or both. Are you actually looking for a retail sales position in Manhattan? Then search using the keywords "retail sales" and the geographic parameter Manhattan. Your results will be of much higher quality as most of the potential matches you'll see will actually be of interest to you.

(continued tomorrow)

Job boards have been around almost since the dawn of the Internet and became popular in the mid-1990's with the birth of some of today's biggest and best job boards. They're wonderful tools for both job seekers and employers yet like all tools can be dangerous in the hands of someone who misuses them. The following are tips for those who want to use job boards in a way that will maximize their chances of finding a great new job as quickly as possible:

Come, Use, Go Away

Although I'm the President and Founder of job board CollegeRecruiter.com and therefore have a vested interest in getting job seekers to use job boards, I also recognize that far too many job seekers spend far too much time on job boards. There are some 50,000 job boards that primarily serve candidates in the United States and another 50,000 that primarily serve candidates elsewhere. No one can use all or even most of them. And don't even try to use many of them. '

Continue reading "How to Use a Job Board to Find a Job - Part I of VI" »

Charissa Cowart, the WALA FOX10 News Daily Dot Com Reporter, is quickly making a name for herself in the recruitment blogosphere by doing a great job of quickly summarizing a few job search resources at a time for her viewers.

A couple of weeks ago she provided her viewers with some great information about JibberJobber, which is essentially a web-based, job search organizational system for candidates that allows them to easily and accurately track the jobs to which they've applied, been interviewed, received offers, etc.

Continue reading "Job Search Tips from the Daily Dot Com" »

Heather Huhman, the careers writer for Examiner.com, has some great suggestions for internship and entry level job candidates regarding how you should negotiate your starting salary and other compensation in these tough economic times.

First of all, during tough economic times like we are in now, all candidates, but especially entry-level candidates, should understand that employers will be less likely to be willing to negotiate compensation packages because they face an abundance, not a shortage, of well-qualified candidates. The employer holds the negotiating power. That said, here are five tips:

Continue reading "Salary Negotiations in Tough Economic Times" »

My conversations with dozens and perhaps even hundreds of employers who hire college students for internships and recent graduates for entry level jobs have led me to believe that about 75 percent are searching social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace as part of their background checking process. But one question that was harder to answer was how many of those employers have declined to hire a candidate because of content on those sites.

Careerbuilder recently surveyed hiring managers and found that of those admit to screening job candidates using Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites, 34 percent admit to dismissing a candidate from consideration because of what they found on the social networking sites. The top areas for concern among these hiring managers were:

Continue reading "Employers Admit to Disqualifying Candidates Due to Facebook Content" »

One of the questions that I'm frequently asked as an expert on how to employers can and should use Facebook for recruiting is what candidates and others should do if they find that there is information on-line about themselves that is not positive. In short, how do you bury your digital dirt?

There are three primary techniques for burying your digital dirt:

Continue reading "How to Bury Digital Dirt" »

There's no question that most college students prefer paid internships to unpaid internships. After all, not many people would prefer to do the same work for nothing than receive compensation for it. But what if you're a student and are weighing competing offers for an okay internship that is paid and a great internship which is unpaid. Which do you accept?

Students whose finances allow them to find a way -- any way -- to accept the unpaid internship should do so. The little compensation that they will likely receive from the paid internship will almost surely pale in comparison to the increased compensation they will receive upon graduation when they're able to convert that great internship into a great entry level job.

Continue reading "Internships: Should They Be Paid?" »

One of the problems with being a college student searching for an internship is that you're typically a young adult and lack the job hunting experience that people who graduated years ago have accumulated. One of the strategies that those more experienced job seekers employ much better than a typical college student is networking.

Should you include networking in your internship search strategy? Absolutely. About 70 percent of jobs are found through networking. I've heard even higher estimates of 90 percent and similar estimates that 90 percent of candidates only apply to internships which are advertised through on-campus recruiting, corporate career sites, and job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com. I've also heard estimates that less than 10 percent of internships are advertised. If that's the case, then 90 percent of candidates are chasing after 10 percent of the internships. Wouldn't it make more sense to be in the other bucket where 10 percent of the candidates are chasing after 90 percent of the internships?

My recommendation is to apply to the advertised jobs. They're easy to find and it is easy to apply to them. Then get out of your comfort zone and network. Find a mentor, or two. Job shadow. Set up information interviews. Join trade associations. Volunteer. But get out of your comfort zone...or did I already recommend that?

Know of anyone who is looking for a well paying, legitimate, home-based, media sales opportunity? CollegeRecruiter.com is hiring inside sales representatives to sell recruitment advertising such as targeted email campaigns, cell phone text messaging campaigns, job postings, and banner ads to our employer clients.

Despite the generally negative economy and decline in overall employment in the United States during the first quarter of 2008, job-seeking seniors found a relatively robust job market, according to results of NACE's 2008 Graduating Student Survey.

The survey, which was conducted February - April 2008, found:


  • More than three-quarters of those who applied for a job (77 percent) had at least one job interview.
  • More than half who applied for a job (52 percent) received at least one job offer.
  • Nearly half of those who were offered jobs (49 percent) accepted them by the time they participated in the survey.

Interestingly, gender and job location preference played major roles in determining whether a student accepted an offer. Women were less likely than men to accept an offer (47 percent of females accepted offers versus 53 percent of men), as were those who ranked the job's location as extremely important.

The findings from NACE are consistent with what we at CollegeRecruiter.com have been hearing from the candidates using our site and our employer clients. There are many firms who are no longer hiring and some which are laying off but for every one of those there seems to be another organization that has started or increased their hiring of college students and recent graduates. The result is a flat job market as compared to 2007. Not up and not down but flat.

Fewer grads are reporting receiving multiple offers but they're also telling us that they're more inclined to accept the first offer they receive quickly so fewer grads are in a position to receive multiple offers. If the economy were stronger, they'd likely be more confident about holding out for the best match and therefore more likely to receive multiple offers.

At the end of the day, there seems to be equilibrium. There seems to be about the right number and quality of positions available for the students and grads who are properly seeking them. Note the use of the word "properly." When I hear from students who are really discouraged in their job hunt, I almost always learn that they are doing little to no networking and what networking they may be doing isn't really networking at all. They're hiding behind their computers and applying to advertised jobs day after day. When they do, ahem, network it is only to ask others to help them find a job. That isn't networking. Networking is about asking what you can do for others knowing that at some point some of them will do the same for you. But don't start off asking them to do you a favor.

College students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs often have questions about when and how they should broach the subject of salary with a potential employer. One of the greatest blogs for this audience, Newly Corporate, has some great advice: don't. Wait until the employer asks you.

There's little doubt that Gen Y is entrepreneurial, especially the males. A lot of would be entrepreneurs of all ages figure that they just need a good idea and they'll be successful. As someone who founded and runs CollegeRecruiter.com, I can assure you that success in the world of business requires a good idea but that a good idea is much less important than good execution.

But let's leave the issue of good idea versus good execution aside for this blog article and instead focus on how to get funding. One of the key problems facing any start-up is how to get funding. There are several types of funding which are often used by start-ups:

Continue reading "Sure College Students Are Entrepreneurial But Where Can They Get Funding?" »

One of my biggest frustrations with helping college students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs is that many don't yet know how to network. It isn't that they're stupid or lazy. They simply haven't been taught. So how do you get a Gen Y'er who grew up with computers and can hardly remember a time when the Internet wasn't at their fingertips how to network? One way is to guide them to the best on-line tools and remind them to use those tools over and over again.

Today we added a new feature to CollegeRecruiter.com that will provide the students, recent graduates, and alumni who use CollegeRecruiter.com to help them find internships and entry level jobs with easy access to one of the best on-line networking tools: LinkedIn. Now when a job seeker applies to a job, they're taken to a page that shows the candidate who they know at the organization to which they applied and, perhaps even more importantly, who the candidate knows who knows people at the organization.

linkedin.gif

Continue reading "We're Helping College Students and Grads Get LinkedIn" »

A tip of the hat to Julie Hays Bartimus, Vice President of the Alumni Career Center for the University of Illinois Alumni Association. She tipped me off to a blog article by Business Week's Stephen Baker about resumes and word clouds.

Run your resume, job posting ad, or any other document through word cloud (a/k/a tag cloud) software. The software extracts unique words from the document and increases the size of each word the more often it is used. So the most frequently used words appear as the largest clouds while the least frequently used words appear as the smallest clouds.

Continue reading "Resumes, Job Postings, and Word Clouds" »

One of the most frequent statements that we hear from frustrated job seekers is that employers are rejecting their applications because they lack experience. The job seekers typically wonder how it is that they can get experience if no one will hire them.

The answer to that conundrum is that the job seekers should get the experience they need outside of the job market. Instead of looking for someone to pay you and to give you the experience you need, instead look for someone who will only give you the experience you need. That's right, work for free. Volunteer.

But what about those who are employed and struggling to advance? Their paths are frequently blocked or at least delayed by their lack of experience. If their employer won't give them the experience they need in order to earn the sought after promotion, how can they obtain the promotion? Again, work for free. Volunteer.

Continue reading "No Experience? Volunteer. Even After Being Hired." »

  1. You are the most educated generation to enter the workforce, but you are also viewed as the least prepared. Don't be blind-sided by your generation's professional reality.
  2. The other generations in the workforce don't have much compassion for your situation. You are being incorrectly perceived as lazy, entitled and arrogant. Don't validate these beliefs by ignoring their concerns, instead, work to overcome them.
  3. DON'T road trip, backpack or 'take a year off' without thinking about your career first. Those who delay to play, often pay!
  4. More degrees don't mean more money! If you aren't sure what to do next, the LAST thing you should do is stay in school.
  5. Don't succumb to Cinderella Syndrome. The sooner you break your addiction to acceptance, praise, grades, rewards and other bribes, the sooner you'll find personally satisfying work that is professionally rewarding.
  6. Got a compelling Career Story that you use to market your employability? If not, then plan on a longer, more stressful job search.
  7. Spray-and-pray job searches (sending out a hundred resumes and hoping for a call) are for people who are willing to settle for what's available. Get active, create a network, and you'll get access to the hot jobs nobody else knows about.
  8. A great mentor is worth a lot more than a good job.
  9. Want to quantum leap your career? Then learn to deal with the 3 C's (conflict, criticism and causing disappointment) ...now!
  10. Embrace the equation used by the most professionally satisfied people in the world: EXPERIENCE = LEARN = GROW
Source: J.T. O'Donnell, Brazen Careerist

Ryan Healy at Employee Evolution just posted a very thought provoking blog article for Gen Y employees about how they can become leaders in their organizations. Healy offers four tips:


  1. Demonstrate that you're able and willing to make the decisions because leaders need to decide even when they don't have all of the information available.
  2. Try new things. "Being comfortable and competent in unfamiliar situations is a sign of true leadership ability. So whenever you have the opportunity to do something new, try it!"
  3. Surround yourself with people smarter than you. You don't need to lead them at every opportunity or even occasionally. But interact with smart people and learn "to hold your own in complex or thoughtful conversations."
  4. Learn to work well alone. Leaders often have to make decisions by themselves and work through issues without the assistance from others.

    Continue reading "How and Whether to Make a 22 Year Old Your Leader" »

tony-beshara.jpgWe regularly hear from college students searching for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs that one of their biggest frustrations is getting interviews. Overwhelmingly they believe that if they can just get an interview that they will be able to demonstrate their worth to the recruiter or hiring manager. Many times the student or recent graduate is correct, but the question remains: how do you secure more interviews.

Tony Beshara recently wrote an article for the free recruiting content exchange service RecruitingBlogswap.com in which he provided this excellent, excellent advice:

Continue reading "How Students and Recent Grads Can Get More Job Interviews" »

I'll probably get a parking ticket the next time that I'm at the campus as a result of writing about this, but then so will my MN Headhunter buddy. News from our alma mater is that the University of Minnesota Police Department and other campus officials freely admit to looking at the Facebook pages of students as part of their criminal and other investigations.

Nationally, only about 25 percent of colleges and universities admit to searching Facebook pages for evidence. I've suspected for a long time that the number is far higher and it seems that the, ahem, evidence of that is starting to emerge.

Candidates (and that means everyone): this is a great reminder that you shouldn't post anything on-line that you wouldn't want to show to your favorite grandmother because posting information on-line is like getting a tattoo. Once you do it, you can never get rid of it.

If you are entry level or a fairly junior player without specialized skills and experience you just don't have a lot of room to negotiate. You may be able to get a higher salary if, say, you have to commute further to the new job or you need to buy a car to drive to the new job. If that is the case, mention it to the hiring manager and ask if they would consider additional compensation to cover your additional commute costs. If that isn't an option for them perhaps you can negotiate a flexible work situation that includes telecommuting for part of the week. You may also be able to negotiate additional days off or tuition reimbursement. Many companies have a dollar amount that they offer to junior employees - particularly those who join the company as a member of training program or a class (i.e.: first year Big 4 auditors or consultants) and that number tends to be pretty rigid.

Source: Minnesota Headhunter

Dennis Smith of WirelessJobs.com recently posted a video shot while he was driving to work. In the video, he advices job seekers to look around and see what other job seekers are doing and then do the opposite.

For example, if 95 percent of the job seekers are applying to advertised job openings, don't. If 95 percent of college students searching for internships are doing so primarily through their college's on-campus recruiting system, don't. If 95 percent of recent college graduates hunting for entry level jobs are doing so primarily through on-line job boards such as CollegeRecruiter.com, don't. Instead, network, network, network.

Continue reading "Do the Opposite of What 95% Are Doing" »

I recently wrote a blog entry about how to artfully dodge stock and often pointless questions from employers such as, "what is your greatest weakness."

But sometimes stock questions aren't silly at all and are deserving of a well thought out and delivered response. We now have a great video on our site that walks you through how to answer tough interview questions.

job hunting treadmillI was just reading a CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Candidates Blog entry about how to overcome tough interview questions and it caused me to remember an answer that a friend of mine used to give interviewers who asked him what was his biggest weakness. He would answer that it was chocolate. That would end that silly line of questioning for most interviewers but for those who were better prepared and could actually explain what information they were after he would provide them with a more meaningful response.

When I interviewed for jobs in college and after graduation, it never ceased to amaze me how ill prepared both the interviewers and candidates often were. Interviewers often had little to no training and frequently knew nothing about the candidate until they had scanned their resume as the candidate was walking in the door. So rather than asking meaningful questions about the candidate's credentials, they would ask stock, open ended questions like, "describe your greatest weakness." What a waste of time for everyone in the room.

Continue reading "My Weakness is Chocolate" »

I guess yesterday's blog entry in which I asked why more college students and recent graduates don't use business networking site LinkedIn really hit a nerve. As of 9pm CT tonight, I've received six comments to the blog entry when most blog entries don't receive any comments and about twice as many via email.

The consensus seems to be that most don't use it because they don't know about it. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are known and used by almost all college students and recent graduates so that's where the buzz has been but few college career service office professionals use LinkedIn so aren't able to teach their students how to use it. Kennedy Information's free LinkedIn webinar on March 4th should fill in a few of those gaps. But the bottom line is that so far few college students use it so there's little viral spread on campus like there is amongst recruiters, sales people, and other professionals. Hopefully that will change.

But college students and recent graduates who are looking for a connection into an industry, organization, or department will find few tools as powerful as LinkedIn. I have a couple of thousand connections so am only a few degrees removed from virtually everyone who is part of LinkedIn. Want to become part of my network? My pleasure. Join here.

I had the pleasure of speaking to about 75 students and staff at Mount Saint Mary College in Newburgh, New York earlier this week. I was invited by the school to talk with the students about how employers are using the web to both include and exclude them from the hiring process. What an impressive group of students.

During the hour long and very interactive discussion we talked how many Gen Y'ers thinks nothing of posting photos and other information to sites such as Facebook and MySpace under the mistaken impression that employers either can't see it or won't care about it. I showed some examples of students using the web to enhance their employment opportunities and others who are killing their chances because of what they've posted on-line. We also talked about what candidates can do to remove harmful information that they've posted or which has been posted by others and to bury information that can't be removed.

Continue reading "Students Not Using LinkedIn" »

Interesting take on the work habits of Millennials over at the Life Before Noon blog. Author Carla Blumenthal praises her Millennial generation for being diverse, multitasking, tech-savvy individuals who love teamwork, are optimistic, and determined. But she's candid about the faults of her generation as well:

In class work, internship and job hunting we often wish for things to happen instead of actually trying. We think about doing something, talk about it with every possible adviser and then try. I spend more time making to-do lists, thinking and talking about the work I have to do than actually doing work. My friends and I often talk about the future, internships, job hunting, and applications more than we actually complete them.

Continue reading "Millennials Need to Try Less and Do More" »

cell phoneIn a development that must be causing fits of alarm in human resource offices everywhere, it appears that some college students and recent graduates are using cell phone text message (SMS) abbreviations and gaming slang in their job applications. This development has prompted some employers and education institutions to provide these candidates with special courses in written communication.

Now I can understand why I'd want to c if u or my bff r ok using abbreviations, but candidates of all ages need to appreciate that they need to demonstrate that they're the most highly qualified candidate for the job and to do that they need to speak the language used by the employer. It is most likely that the application will be reviewed by a Gen X'er or Baby Boomer and few of those understand SMS abbreviations and even fewer like to use them. So the best strategy is to use the abbreviations with your bff, but not with your potential employer.

1. Request more face-to-face meetings.

2. Step up your job-search activity.

3. Try to be as flexible as you can.

Continue reading "7 Tips for Quickly Finding a New Job" »

Great advice from Liz Handlin in a blog entry recently posted via free content distribution site RecruitingBlogswap.com to the American Forklift Safety blog:

[F]ind a job you love working for people you admire and then work your rear end off. In other words: be strategic about your career and work really hard when you find the right job. If you have a job that you are great at and you are happy in your work environment you will have the energy left to push yourself in other parts of your life (run marathons for example) and you will naturally behave with kindness toward others. Generally speaking it's the unhappy achievers who aren't very nice to be around.

More than four of five hiring managers are willing to view a video resumes according to a survey by HireMeNow.com. Of the 300 human resource and hiring managers, 83 percent indicated that they would view a video resume.

The survey also asked respondents how many minutes long a video resume should be. Some 78 percent said less than two minutes and a plurality preferred under one minute:


  • 1 minute or less (54 percent)
  • 1-2 minutes (24 percent)
  • 2-4 minutes (18 percent)
  • 4+ minutes (4 percent)

"The desire to have the video resume last less than one minute is not surprising to us," said Phillip Thune, Chief Executive Officer of HireMeNow.com. "It's similar to what the cover letter traditionally encompasses: a very brief overview of why a company should hire a person and a highlight of relevant experience, with the added benefit that cover letters never had -- personality."

I just read a great blog article at Bootstrapper, a resource for any small business owner operating on a shoestring budget, and provides tips on financing, cash flow, low-cost marketing and small business loans. They posted a list of more than 50 tools for candidates to change their career paths by helping those job seekers find the best careers for them and how they can get there.

The article is divided into sections for assessment, career exploration, advice, getting (re)hired, and transitioning. Want a taste? Here's what they wrote about assessment:

Continue reading "50 Tools to Change Your Career Path" »

andrew-cafourek.jpgWant to find a great new job quickly? Experts will tell you that your chances of success increase dramatically if you invest time on the front end doing some research into the appropriate industry, the organizations within that industry, the departments within those organizations, and the hiring managers within those departments.

But once you've identified those targets, how do you get those targets to pay attention to you? One way is to blog about them. Create a blog on CollegeRecruiter.com or other sites that provide free blogging space for candidates and write a series of short articles about the industry, the organization you're targeting, their vendors, their suppliers, etc. Prove to the hiring managers and other decision makers that you care deeply about their organization and that you can do and have done the work.

As reported by Karen Burns, University of Missouri student Andrew Cafourek used a blog to land a job with a marketing firm in St Louis. If he did, why not you too?

A recent study indicates that 21 percent of college admissions offices admit to searching social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace as part of the process of deciding whether to admit a potential student. I suspect that the real percentage is actually much higher.

My conversations with employers and other career professionals indicate that about five to 10 percent of employers admit to searching the social networking sites as part of their background checking process yet when you ask if they use the Internet for the checks at least 75 percent say yes and then explain they run the candidate's name through Google. Well, then that means that they're also checking the vast majority of social networking sites.MySpace, for example, defaults so that pages are not password protected and therefore when an employer searches Google they're also searching MySpace. Facebook is the opposite in that pages are by default not accessible to search engines.

Continue reading "College Admissions Offices Using Facebook" »

We've all heard the stories about how social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook can be dangerous to job seekers when those people post on-line what most people would deem to be embarrassing photos or stories about themselves. After all, what employer is going to trust the judgment of a candidate who posts a MySpace page about herself and uses it to brag about how she likes to get drunk and have sex with strangers?

But what about candidates who make their political beliefs known in a low key way? One of the basic questions that Facebook asks, for example, is your political orientation. Your options include very liberal, liberal, moderate, conservative, very conservative, apathetic, liberatarian, and other. Unless you change your default settings, which most don't, your choice shows up for all to see. But what if your employer or potential employer sees your choice?

Continue reading "Employers Looking at Political Orientation" »

Snyder MySpace drunken pirate photoImagine that you're at 27 year old student days away from graduating from the School of Education at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and you're at a party, have a photo taken of you wearing a pirate hat and sipping from a plastic cup, and you post it to your MySpace page with the caption, "drunken pirate," and then your school refuses to aware you the degree in education and the teaching certificate that comes along with it. Fair? Not according to Stacy Snyder.

Millersville administrators, in their infinite wisdom, decided that the image of a 27 year old wearing a funny hat and drinking out of a plastic cup on her own time was somehow "unprofessional" so they essentially barred her from earning a living in her chosen profession and instead awarded her a degree in English. No word on what punishment they've handed out to faculty who have been photographed wearing fancy hats and drinking fine wine out of crystal glasses.

Continue reading "Student Denied Degree Due to MySpace Photo" »

30-reasons-girls-should-call-it-a-night-facebook-group.jpgTuesday's Dr. Phil Show spotlighted Facebook group 30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night. It is one of the largest Facebook groups with 175,000 members.

The basic idea of the group is for female members to upload to Facebook photos of themselves after they've gotten drunk. Many of the photos are pretty harmless and just show a group of friends smiling and laughing. Few would object to those.

Continue reading "30 Reasons Girls Should Call It a Night" »

Mark Liston ValpakOne of my favorite corporate recruiters is Mark Liston of Valpak. He's a fountain of energy and passion and cares deeply about his work and the people that he serves. And Mark understands that the people that he serves include but are not confined to his superiors at Valpak. They also include the Millennial college students and recent graduates that Valpak recruits for some of the best entry level sales opportunities in the land.

Well, the blog article that Mark posted yesterday was typical Mark. Some stream of consciousness mixed in with a lot of great, practical advice. Including what he refers to as the ABC's: "Always . . . Be . . . Coachable."

Six unionized members of an industrial plant ridiculed their supervisor on Facebook. The derogatory postings were made using personal equipment during personal hours. The employer moved to terminate them. Their union stepped in and saved their jobs but two of the employees ended up with one-week suspensions and the other four received letters of reprimand in their personnel files. Ridiculous? Not even the union would say so.

"This is a growing problem and employees have to be very, very careful of what they do," said Robert Ziegler, president of Local 832 United Food and Commercial Workers in Winnipeg, Canada. "This all falls into the category of off-duty conduct and under precedent and case law, all that can be held against you and our members can be disciplined and even fired. If an employer can prove that anything you've done affects the reputation of the company or created an atmosphere where other workers will not want to work with you, then the employer can discipline that employee," added Ziegler.

Keep in mind that this case arose in in Canada where labor laws are more socialist than they are in the United States. Also keep in mind that these statements are being made by a union official. There's no doubt, folks, that statements made on-line on sites such as Facebook, MySpace, blogs, etc. have the potential of negatively affecting the reputation of employers and if an employee makes such a statement, they can be disciplined or even terminated.

One of the reasons that I love working and hanging out with national account executive Mike Palmquist is that he's got a great sense of humor. For example, he loves the killer rabbit scene in Monty Python's The Meaning of Live. So it shouldn't have come as much of a surprise to me that he found a career-related blog article that used that scene as an analogy by comparing co-workers to killer rabbits.

How can co-workers be like killer rabbits? Well, they come into your life as seemingly harmless and even friendly but then morph into horrible and frightening creatures. Unless you're an incredible judge of character, and most of us think we are but actually aren't, take it slow so that you can better understand if they're a mere rabbit or a killer rabbit.

Continue reading "Are Your Co-Workers Killer Rabbits?" »

By Tahjia Chapman

Marketing yourself and your e-portfolio (also known as a personal portfolio) is one career goal worth planning. If you want to get your dream job, place your e-portfolio before prospective employers and possible clients. You may not be familiar with internet marketing, but we have you covered. We have compiled a list of the top five methods of increasing traffic, visibility, and importance of an e-portfolio for recent college grads and students. You must work on these tips to build a foundation then add more link building strategies for more exposure.

Why should you focus on marketing your e-portfolio?

Your e-portfolio is one marketing tool that sells your skills to an employer. An e-portfolio places you before an audience with information of who you are, why they should know, and how they can contact you for job interviews. It is important to use your e-portfolio as an introduction for prospective employers by placing your most valuable work before their eyes. The marketing plan for your e-portfolio will include all five marketing strategies to gain interests from future employers.

Continue reading "Five Ways To Market Your E-Portfolio" »

One of the greatest experiences that a college student or recent graduate can have is to work abroad. I had the good fortune of doing so immediately upon graduation from high school and then again after my sophomore year in college.

During the latter period, I hooked up with friends from London, England that I had met during my first work abroad experience. I was able to stay and hang out with them during the evenings and weekends while during the day I worked in London.

But what if you don't know anyone in the city you want to work in? Thanks to the Internet, it is now just about as easy to connect with employers in world class cities like London as it is in the city in which you currently reside. If you have a chance to work at a job in London, grab it. It will be one of the greatest times of your life.

I just returned from two recruiting conferences in Orlando. Both were fantastic. The first was organized by Kennedy Information and was attended by about 500 human resource professionals, most of whom were corporate recruiters. While at the conference I had the pleasure of meeting several senior Wal-Mart recruiting professionals and learned not only just how big of an employer Wal-Mart is but also just how great a place it is to start a career.

We all know that Wal-Mart is big. In fact, really big. But I had no idea that it employed 1.3 million people just in the USA. That's about one out of every 250 people people. Yikes. In addition to those folks, they also employ about 600,000 more worldwide for a total of about 1.9 million. The company's sales are $345 billion per year.

Think their head count and revenue numbers are big? Fast forward to 2012 when Wal-Mart projects worldwide employment of 2.5 million and sales of $500 billion.

So how does this fit with college recruiting when all of their employees are stocking shelves or running cash registers. The answer is they aren't. In addition to the thousands of people working outside of the stores in logistics, information technology, finance, marketing, etc., about 75 percent of their store managers started as hourly employees. That's right. About 75 percent. So if you're in college and want a career in management, consider working for Wal-Mart part-time while you're in school as there's a good chance that upon graduation they'll have a management position waiting for you.

Great blog article at MNHeadhunter.com about do's and don't's for resume writing and also this tip for how to think of them:

"The best use of a resume is as a really large business card--a leave-behind after you have interviewed a potential employer."

It has been pretty well documented that about 75 percent of employers admit to looking at information that candidates post to Facebook, MySpace, and other web pages as part of the hiring process. In other words, today’s college students and recent graduates are often finding in their race to find career opportunities that the finish line is being blocked by the risqué photos or stories about drunken parties that they or their friends posted on-line. What has not been as well documented is that the this same generation is often finding that the starting line is also blocked.

A recent study by the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth found that 25 percent of college admissions offices admit to using search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN to research potential students and that 20 percent look for the same information on social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. The reality is that the percentages must be even higher because colleges and universities have little incentive to overstate their reliance on these digital dirt web searches but they have a significant incentive to understate their use due to a fear of negative public relations and likely backlash from many Gen Y candidates who view information that they post to MySpace and some of the other social networking sites as somehow being private even though it is accessible through a quick Google search.

Continue reading "College Admissions Officers Using Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networking Sites to Block Students" »

katherine-ann-olson.jpgFront page news in the Minneapolis newspapers over the past couple of days has been the killing of Katherine Ann Olson. While any murder is tragic, this one is noteworthy to employers and job seekers alike because it appears to be related to the victim's use of Craiglist to find a nanny position.

Ms. Olson was looking for a nanny job. She had successfully used Craigslist before and so searched it again. She found an ad of interest responded. She told her roommate that she was going to meet the family from the ad. After she didn't come home, police initiated a search and found her dead in the trunk of her car at a park in Burnsville, Minnesota late Friday night.

Continue reading "Craigslist Job Seeker Killed" »

A tip of the hat to my friend and Recruiting Roadshow Unconference buddy, Ami Givertz, for alerting me (and other readers of his blog) to a great YouTube video that explains how social networking sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace can help people find new jobs, mates, and other connections.

Continue reading "Social Networking in Plain English" »

college-job-fair.jpgIf Web 2.0 is all about making existing web sites work properly and Web 1.0 was all about getting web sites on-line, then Web 0.0 must have been college job fairs. Technologically advanced they are not, yet don't infer from my sarcasm that I dislike college job fairs. To the contrary, I am in favor of employers and candidates using a variety of methods to connect with each other. No serious marketer should put all of their eggs in one basket regardless of the success of that basket as there is a huge difference between success and exclusive success. In other words, there are normally multiple strategies that should be employed when marketing a product, service, employment opportunity, or your own services so don't rely exclusively on job boards, newspaper ads, on-campus recruiting, referrals, or job fairs.

Continue reading "Job Fairs: Tips for Finding an Internship or Entry Level Job" »

Content provided by EssayEdge.com.

Graduate School Statement Samples

This section contains five sample graduate school personal statements:

Why Graduate School? Essay

My freshman year at Harvard, I was sitting in a Postcolonial African Literature class when Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o (the influential Kenyan author) succeeded in attracting me to the study of African literature through nothing more than a single sentence. He argued that, when a civilization adopts reading and writing as the chief form of social communication, it frees itself to forget its own values, because those values no longer have to be part of a lived reality in order to have significance. I was immediately fascinated by the idea that the written word can alter individual lives, affect one's identity, and perhaps even shape national identity.

Professor Ngugi's proposal forced me to think in a radically new way: I was finally confronted with the notion of literature not as an agent of vital change, but as a potential instrument of stasis and social stagnancy. I began to question the basic assumptions with which I had, until then, approached the field. How does "literature" function away from the written page, in the lives of individuals and societies? What is the significance of the written word in a society where the construction of history is not necessarily recorded or even linear?

Continue reading "Writing a Graduate School Statement? Put Harvard-Educated Editors to Work for You!" »

Just when you think you've seen it all, you're sent an email by Ami alerting you to a candidate who uses her MySpace blog to, ahem, expose not only her employment qualifications but also her under cleavage.

Continue reading "Under Cleavage Is Not Appreciated by Employers" »

Given that CollegeRecruiter.com is a leading job board for students searching for internships and recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities, most of what we focus on when we're looking at social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are issues related to careers. But colleges and university students are discovering that the information that they post on-line is not private even if they think that it should be and even if the web site has privacy settings.

A tip of the hat to Charles Cassells for alerting me that Oxford University is investigating what appear to be fairly petty crimes using Facebook. The video of just under three minutes shows a student upset that her school would use photos that she felt would be private and that there would be consequences to her law breaking behavior even though university officials did not witness the crimes first hand. Hopefully she'll become a little wiser through this experience. I've said it before and I'll say it again: posting any information on-line anywhere is like getting a tattoo. There's nothing inherently wrong with it but you have to realize that once you've done it, it is permanent and you won't always be able to control who sees it or how they will react to it.

EntrepreneurNextDoor.gifA month ago I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Wagner of Accord Management Systems at the Valpak annual conference. He and I were there to speak to their 300 franchisees. Bill did a masterful job of explaining to the franchisees why they should hire as independent sales representatives people who are entrepreneurial. He also discussed with some candor their strengths and weaknesses, explained what makes them tick, and why they are able to start businesses while others simply dream.

If your entrepreneurial or merely wondering if you are, then pick up a copy of Bill's book, The Entrepreneur Next Door: Discover the Secrets to Financial Independence. You won't be sorry.

Dave Lefkow, formerly of Jobster, then his own consulting firm, TalentSpark, and now Bacon Salt entrepreneur, is featured prominently in this television interview about on-line recruiting.

The piece covers the gamut from revenues earned by job boards last year ($1.3 billion) to tips about how to find candidates or employers on-line including in virtual worlds such as Second Life. One great tip: if you're pulling a virtual resume out of your virtual pocket to hand to a virtual recruiter, make sure that you don't instead pull out a virtual beer.

Continue reading "Job Board Revenues and Second Life Recruiting" »

What horror stories have you heard about or perhaps even happened to you as a result of information that was posted to blogs or social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook?

One of the worst that I've heard was from a friend of mine who was hiring a technology sales representative. He ran a Google search on her name after he and everyone else at his firm had decided they wanted to hire her. Although she had been careful not to include her name on her page, her friends weren't so smart and created a link from her name on their pages to the candidate's MySpace profile page. Google is smart enough to have understood that although the candidate's MySpace page didn't have her name on it, because her friends linked using her name that people searching for the candidate by name will want to go to the candidate's MySpace page.

The problem wasn't that she had a MySpace page. The problem was that the content indicated that she likes to get drunk and have sex with strangers. My friend declined to extend the job offer to her not because of that (he doubted she'd get drunk and have sex while on the job) but because her posting of that information on-line indicated a lack of good judgment.

Continue reading "MySpace and Facebook Career Horror Stories" »

Thanks to our recently implemented partnership with CareerTV, we're able to bring the users of CollegeRecruiter.com so truly fantastic career-related videos. One of my favorites is Internships Rock, which explain the importance of internships and how to find them. If you're a college student searching for an internship or even a recent graduate trying to bolster your experience through a post-graduate internship, you'll want to invest the few minutes it takes to watch this great video.

Because of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, a growing number of mortgage and finance professionals are hitting the streets, looking for jobs. Yet, these layoff victims largely lack the most important career skill of all: How to market themselves.

"The moves most mortgage and financial professionals have made to advance their careers to this point are probably exactly the wrong things they should do to find work in the current job market," cautions recruiting professional David Perry, managing director of Ottawa, Ontario-based Perry-Martel International.

Here are 3 typical wrong moves most mortgage/finance job seekers are making now:

Continue reading "Help for the Mortgage / Finance Job Market" »

For many, one of the least enjoyable aspects about post-secondary education and the years immediately following it is finding a new place to live. When I moved to the Twin Cities to attend the University of Minnesota, I moved every year for five successive years. Now all of that moving does have some benefits. Boxes which were not opened two moves in a row somehow found their way to the nearest dumpster. If I didn't need the stuff in two places, I wouldn't need it in the third and I certainly wouldn't want to have to move it the third time.

Continue reading "Finding a New Place to Live" »

Guerrilla Marketing for Job HuntersConventional wisdom in these digital days is that your resume should be written in a standard fashion so that employers can easily add it to their automated applicant tracking systems and then pull it up through a keyword search. But what if you're not a conventional candidate or otherwise want to stand out from the crowd? Some job seekers who fall into those groups are creating resumes with aesthetic features that highlight their creativity, attention to detail, or otherwise are designed to draw the attention of the employer.

Examples of what job seekers are using are:

Continue reading "Special Looking Resumes: Pain or Panacea?" »

We launched our second Facebook application late last week and we've already got about 225 installations. But that's not all that interesting. Want interesting? Read on.

Facebook applications allow third parties such as CollegeRecruiter.com to add features to Facebook so that its million of users can customize what they see and use when they go to Facebook. Think of them like computer programs that you download to your computer. Each person works differently so we each have our computers set up differently. Facebook recognized that desire for customization and a couple of months ago they created the applications section.

Our first application was essentially a (yawn!) job search engine. Practical but not exactly exciting. The second has a similar front end but features two improvements, one minor and the other major:


  1. The first application requires you to enter the state in which you are looking for a job. The second application assumes that you're searching for a job in your state of residence. Nice improvement, but minor.
  2. The first application required you to run a job search every time you wanted to check our database to see what is new. The second application automatically posts to your Facebook profile page a list of the 10 or so newest internships and entry level jobs based upon the keywords, job category, and state of residence that you enter. Nice improvement, and major.

Click on the thumbnail below to get a better look at how the job search engine portion of the second application looks after you install it:

Continue reading "Facebook Application Update" »

Want to see on your Facebook profile page the newest internship and entry level job postings in your area of interest and state? Add our brand new Facebook application and we'll do just that. Essentially, we'll keep an eye out for you for the newest internships and entry level jobs so that you don't even have to come to CollegeRecruiter.com -- you just need to go to Facebook to keep an eye out for jobs that you want to apply to before anyone else.

Continue reading "New Facebook Application Shows Newest Internship and Entry Level Jobs on Your Facebook Profile Page" »

tattooPosting information about yourself on-line is like getting a tattoo: there's nothing inherently wrong with either but you just have to realize that both are permanent even with expensive surgery. Sure you can try to erase the information by removing it from your Facebook or MySpace page but if those pages are indexed by Google or other search engines or copied and posted to another page or web site, then you've lost the ability to ever permanently remove the information. So before posting information about yourself on-line, ask yourself if you would feel comfortable sharing the same information with your favorite grandmother. If so, then you're probably safe.

Continue reading "Posting Info On-line Is Like Getting a Tattoo, Only More Permanent" »

I had the good fortune to spend four months living, working, and traveling in the United Kingdom. It was one of the most enjoyable summers of my life and came after my sophomore year in college. So whenever college students ask me about whether a work or study abroad program is a good idea, they get very positive responses from me.

One of the neatest cities that I traveled in was Edinburgh, Scotland. In fact, all of Scotland was fantastic. But although I spent time in very small towns and in some of the biggest cities like Edinburgh and Glasgow, I never worked in Scotland. All of my work was for a large retailer headquartered in London but if I wanted to find a job in Edinburgh or any other Scottish city, I likely would have had to turn to the newspaper classifieds or go to a temp agency. But that was 1986 and in 2007 we have better options. Now if I wanted to research Edinburgh jobs, I would go to a web site such as Edinburgh Classifieds. Isn't the Internet great?

College students for generations have studied abroad to gain a better understanding of the world, their areas of interest, and, well, to have even more fun than they can on their own college campuses. So it shouldn't be much of a surprise that today's college student is combining her thirst for a great internship with the benefits of studying abroad to create international internship opportunities. Since 2004, there has been a six percent increase in the number of college students pursuing international internship opportunities.

Continue reading "Intern Abroad to Gain Critical Skills" »

An increasingly large number of employers and college students view a great internship as the best path to landing a great entry level job upon graduation. Want an example? PricewaterhouseCoopers hired about 2,800 college students this summer for internships in their various offices. That's up from "just" 1,100 in 2002. But unlike some other employers, PwC does not see interns as merely temporary workers or short sources of labor. The evidence for that is that PwC extends offers for permanent employment to a remarkable 85 percent of its interns and, even more remarkably, 90 percent accept.

"We invest in them. We spend time developing and coaching them," said Amy Van Kirk, PwC's vice president of recruiting. Well, Amy, your success is well deserved.

Source: ABCNews.com

College students and recent graduates are always asking which city is the best for them to live in. The short answer is that it depends. It depends upon what is important to them and that will be different from what is important to me, my sister, my friend, or others. When you have that type of discussion, invariably you'll find out that the college student is really asking which cities have the most internship opportunities and the recent college graduate is really asking which cities have the most entry level jobs and other career opportunities.

Continue reading "10 Best Cities for College Grads" »

When it comes to career development, many companies have an "it takes a village" mindset. According to a just-released study conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp), 60% of the 382 polled companies have a career development program in place and 41% of those use in-house coaches and/or mentors to drive development. The study also suggests that people who want coaching and mentoring are better off working in the rich and diverse “villages” of large corporations.

Continue reading "No Surprise: Big Organizations Provide Better Training and Mentoring" »

casual work dressThe summer months often allow for more relaxed dress codes in offices and for some employers defining a specific dress code may be difficult. Giving employees the option to dress down at work allows for a more comfortable work environment and saves employees time and money. Also, it has been proven by successful companies such as Microsoft, that a casual dress code and work environment can still provide optimum results for a company. Many argue that a professional dress code will create increased productivity but that is not always the case.

Continue reading "How to Appropriately Dress for Work in the Summer" »

One of the biggest concerns for Millennials and their (sometimes too involved) parents is the rapidly escalating and crushing cost of post-secondary education. I've written before about the high cost of college and the resulting huge student loan debts that today's students are forced to incur but fortunately there are some organizations who can help. They aren't going to solve the problem, but they can help.

One organization that I've looked at is Next Student, which offers services such as student loan consolidation. Unlike a lot of other student loan consolidation companies, Next Student offers visitors to its web site a wealth of helpful resources such as:


  • Student Loan Advice;
  • Financial Aid Tutorial;
  • Scholarship Search;
  • Compare Loans;
  • Tools and Resources;
  • Directory of Schools; and even a
  • Blog .

I recently wrote about the best paying jobs for recent college graduates and listed the percentage increases to the starting salaries that these college grads should expect to receive. The highest paying job for recent college graduates were economics (business / managerial) and finance grads with average offers at $53,449 and $47,877, respectively. But the grads who saw the biggest increases in compensation were marketing graduates with an average 10.3 percent increase from 2006 to 2007 to $41,285.

So what is it that marketing grads do? There are a variety of jobs, but many become marketing managers. To see what they do, watch this short career video, which is just one of 350 career videos available courtesy of CollegeRecruiter.com:

Continue reading "Marketing Grads Make the Biggest Salary Gains, But What Do They Do?" »

  1. Lehman Brothers - In 2006, Lehman hired 530 college grads and analysts received an average starting salary of $60,000. Almost 90% of new hires are mentored.
  2. Electronic Arts - Employees given five to 10 free games a year, average starting salary for entry level workers is $60,000, restricted stock grants (i.e., 300 shares for new software engineers), on-site gym, free DVD library, employee stock ownership plan which allows workers to buy company stock at a 15% discount. In 2006, 5,000 applied and 200 were hired.
  3. PricewaterhouseCoopers - Hires 4,000 college grads as CPAs, actuaries, attorneys, and IT consultants. Starting salaries average more than $50,000 a year. All new hires mentored and, assuming satisfactory performance, promoted within three years. Most of their 2,100 interns last summer were offered full-time jobs.
  4. Randstad - Global staffing company offers 14,000 on-line training courses. After 30 days on the job, new hires given full health benefits and a 401(k) plan. After 90 days, you get 18 days of paid time off.
  5. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory - Got a bachelor's degree in physics, nuclear engineering, or chemistry? You're qualified for entry-level science and engineer positions with starting salaries in the neighborhood of $45,000.
  6. Rockwell Collins - All employees (including new hires) at this communications, aviation and electronics engineering company receive 100% tuition reimbursement. New hires can take classes at flight ground school then take cockpit and flight training. New hires also receive nearly five weeks of paid time off, including 15 vacation days, six national holidays, and an eight-day winter break.
  7. Teach for America - Since 1990, more than 14,000 college graduates have taught in mostly urban school districts and completed what some liken to a domestic Peace Corps program. The hours are long and pay is low, but how many other opportunities will you ever have to make such a huge difference in the lives of our children?
  8. Qualcomm - In 2006, this telecom company hired 300 recent grads and paid them very well: starting salaries averaged more than $60,000 plus 22 vacation days, stock options, and a rich 401(k) plan.
  9. Key Bank - This financial services company loves motivated self-starters and gives them 12 weeks of intensive training right away. Their 58 new college grads in 2006 were paid an average starting salary of $45,000.
  10. Northrop Grumman - This aerospace and defense fir values team participation and hires recent engineering and business students who excel as leaders.
  11. Intel - Always encouraging its employees to invest in themselves by furthering their education. All employees eligible for cash bonuses, profit sharing, a stock plan that lets them buy company stock at a 15% discount. Like to travel? You can work at any of its 48 worldwide locations.
  12. Capital One - In 2006, they hired only 190 candidates out of 10,000 applicants hoping to work as analysts, data analysts or statisticians. One of the big reasons is that salaries for new graduates start at $53,000 per year along with a competitive bonus and benefits package.
  13. Microsoft - Likes problem-solvers and creative thinkers who like a youthful work environment (average age of employees is 36.8 years). Highly competitive average starting salary around $75,000 per year, full medical coverage with no deductible, signing bonuses, options grants, and 401(k) matching. Oh yeah, and you get to play Xbox and can drink all the free soft drinks and Starbucks coffee you want. In 2006, the company hired 1,200 college grads out of 60,000 applicants; 40% of those new hires were minorities.
  14. Stockamp & Associates - Small health-care consulting firm with just under 400 employees but 50 were new grads. Get lots of responsibility from the start: you'll be assigned to a client and meet directly with them in the first week on the job.
  15. Progressive Insurance - 400 new college grads were hired in 2006. Jobs tailored to meet individual interests and business-casual dress code rules.
  16. Sprint Nextel - Development program teaches new grads the skills needed and helps them plan for their future career.
  17. Citigroup's global banking division - Think they're all business school grads? Think again. More than 3,000 new college grads from many different fields, each of which had a minimum GPA of at least 3.50, applied and only 175 were accepted. New hires begin their employment with a six-week accounting and finance training program.
  18. Hyatt Hotels - About 350 new college grads are hired each year and immediately placed into five-month training programs. Corporate management trainees start at an average of $36,000 and nearly 85% of management was promoted from within.
  19. CDW - Like sales and computers? New hires given 401(k), profit sharing, and an employee discount on the computers, digital cameras, and other gadgets sold by CDW.
  20. L'Oréal USA - New college grads rotate through the training program to get hands-on experience in sales, marketing, management, and finance.
Source: CNNMoney.com

In recognition of the talented businesswomen in the non-profit sector, MENTTIUM Corporation, on behalf of its Advisory Councils, is offering several full scholarship awards to the prestigious MENTTIUM 100 (r) leadership development program.

MENTTIUM 100 (r) Program participants are paired with a more senior executive from another company for a year-long mentoring partnership accompanied by business education and networking opportunities.

Continue reading "Corporate Mentoring Program Makes Scholarship Awards Available for Top Female Talent in Non-Profit Sector" »

Getting From College to Career book coverI had the pleasure earlier this month of being a guest on Minnesota Public Radio's Midmorning show with Lindsey Pollak, author of Getting from College to Career: 90 Things To Do Before You Join the Real World. In addition to writing, Lindsey is also an accomplished editor and speaker specializing in career advice for young professionals. She speaks frequently at colleges, universities, and corporate settings across the country. She's insightful, intelligent, positive, energetic, and funny.

Continue reading "Getting from College to Career" »

Yesterday I wrote about how college students who are looking for an internship or recent graduates who are hunting for an entry level job or other career opportunity could best negotiate their salaries. Let's continue the conversation today.

You want a higher salary in your next job, right? Yet, you're worried about discussing salary, right? If you're like most people, you answered, "yes" to both questions. Let's face it, discussing salary is a touchy subject in any job interview -- what if you ask for too much or not enough? Here's how you can navigate the salary question and position yourself to make more money, before and during the job interview:

Continue reading "More Salary Negotiation Tips for Interns and Entry Level Job Seekers" »

Joe Grimm of the Detroit Free Press provided some great advice to a recent college graduate who was entering the world of journalism and wasn't sure if the salary being offered by her employer was sufficient even though they were giving her a raise from her previous position. He essentially recommended that the candidate use a salary calculator to determine what others in her position and geographic area were receiving. I agree but I believe that is only one part of the process.

Continue reading "Salary Negotiation Tips for College Students and Recent Graduates" »

Rodney DangerfieldBy anybody's measure, Eddie Murphy is a successful entertainer. A huge hit on Saturday Night Live before his 20th birthday and a crossover to movies shortly thereafter, he's been a prominent figure in the entertainment business for 25 years. During his promotional tour for Dreamgirls in December, 2006 he made a visit to Inside the Actor's Studio that revealed an particularly interesting insight on taking advice.

Usually when you see Eddie Murphy on a talk show, like with Leno or Dave, he's playful with a hint of cockiness. Like a lot of people who sit opposite James Lipton, he was almost all business during this particular interview. Stoic much of the time and, as the environment tends to foster, very reflective of what he's done with his career, Eddie was very different than every other time I've seen him plug a movie. Throughout the main part of the show with Lipton, he made multiple references to studying the successful aspects of those who had come before him. He made the expected references to people like Richard Pryor and Bill Cosby, but it is clear he does his homework based on his other comments. For example, he went as far as to admit stealing aspects of certain performances for his own such as Charles Laughton's Hunchback of Notre Dame and its influence on Eddie's version of The Nutty Professor.

Continue reading "Eddie Murphy on knowing when to follow advice " »

One of my favorite people in the recruiting blogosphere is Jim Durbin. He posted a blog entry today about the tremendous growth he and his wife/business partner Nikki have seen with their firm, Durbin Media Group. They're looking for dependable, creative, and fabulous Web 2.0 people to work with them, initially as project based, but eventually as full-fledged contractors or employees. The Durbins will be heavily involved with the work, and can either bring the Web 2.0 professionals projects to work on independently, or farm out web work as it comes in.

Does this sound like you? If so, email Jim and Nikki a list of your skills (don't bother with a resume), some url's of projects you've worked on, and what you're looking for in an hourly corp-to-corp or 1099 rate.

Guerrilla Marketing for Job HuntersOne of my favorite career authors is David Perry. He recently teamed up with Jay Conrad Levinson, author of the Guerrilla Marketing series (14 million book buyers can't be wrong) to write Guerrilla Marketing for Job Seekers: 400 Unconventional Tips, Tricks, and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job.

What makes Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters so great? It uses the unconventional guerrilla marketing approach while also covering topics such as how to:


  • Use the Internet to research employers and search for jobs but also how to use it create your own Web site, blogs, and podcasts;
  • Make over your resume to create a higher-powered value-based resume;
  • Harness the full power of Google and business networking sites such as LinkedIn and ZoomInfo to find great opportunities in the hidden job market; and
  • Brand yourself and sell your strengths in the resumes, letters, e-mails, etc. that you send to employers and in the interviews you have with them.

For those who learn well from stories, and I definitely fall into that group, Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters also includes real-life stories from job seekers who have used these methods successfully and expert tactics and strategies from over 100 recruiters.

1. New York/New Jersey
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Silicon Valley
4. Los Angeles
5. Chicago
6. Boston
7. Philadelphia
8. Dallas
9. Atlanta
10. Seattle

Source: Dice

Best Entry Level Jobs: Paying Your Dues Without Losing Your MindI had the pleasure of having dinner a couple of weeks ago with our primary contacts from Valpak, which pioneered local cooperative direct mail in 1968. Today, they have approximately 200 franchisees in North America and print and mail 19.4 billion coupons a year to nearly 46 million homes each month. They hire hundreds of entry level sales representatives a year.

Continue reading "Best Entry Level Jobs: Paying Your Dues Without Losing Your Mind" »

Brazen CareeristPenelope Trunk is one of this generation's greatest career writers. In addition to her regular work as a career columnist for the Boston Globe and Yahoo Finance, she's the author of a great new book, Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success.

One of things that I like so much about Penelope is that she has a varied background, which is pretty unlike many so-called experts who have never walked-the-walk yet feel entitled to talk-the-talk. Penelope has been employed as a software executive and also experienced the world of entrepreneurship as the founder of two companies. She's been through an IPO, acquisition, and bankruptcy. Did I mention that she also played professional beach volleyball?

Continue reading "Brazen Careerist" »

  1. Make meaning. This is the reason that a start-up should start. Don't start a business to make money. Start a business to make the world a better place.
  2. Make mantra early in the life of the business. Mission statements are too long and don't get to the core essense of companies. Mantras are two to three words that describe a business. For Wendy's, "healthy, fast food." For FedEx, "peace of mind." For Nike, "authentic athletic performance." For Target, "democratiize design." For CollegeRecruiter.com, "college career connector."
  3. Get going. Don't over analyze and spend all of your time writing business plans. Think differently. Embrace polarizations. Think of Apple's Mac computers. They don't try to be everything to everyone and, as a result, some people love them so they've been able to carve out a highly profitable niche even though others hate them. Find one or two partners who are soulmates to help balance things off.
  4. Define a business model. Be specific. Always think about who your customer is and have the attitude that you're just trying to figure out how to get your money out of the wallet of your customer. Keep your business model simple. Your products should be innovative, not your business model. Make sure that you ask women to review your business model because their natural inclination is to succeed rather than kill the competition. Killing the competition is not the goal. Succeeding is the goal.
  5. Weave a MAT (Milestones, Assumptions, and Tasks). Milestones are like when you start shipping your products, not ordering business cards. Assumptions are things like the number of sales calls you can make in an average day and how much you'll sell to an average customer. Tasks are things that enable you to accomplish a milestone or test an assumption. An example of a task is ordering business cards.
  6. Focus on the ability of the organization to provide a unique product or service. Organizations which offer great value but have a lot of competition tend to compete on price. Organizations which offer great value but have little competition tend to sell their products at premium prices. The Dot Bombs offered little value to their customers and had a lot of competition. Your goal is to offer a product which is highly valued by your customers and only you can produce the product.
  7. Follow the 10/20/30 rule for how to make PowerPoint pitches. You should have a maximum of 10 slides: title, problem, solution, business model, underlying magic, marketing and sales, competition, team, projections, status, and timeline. Be prepared to deliver the presention in 20 minutes, even if you're allotted 60 minutes as that will allow time for questions and discussion. Use 30 point font as that will force you to minimize the number of words in a slide so you'll spend more time discussing and less time reading.
  8. Hire infected people. Human resources tends to want to hire people with perfect backgrounds. What you really want are people who love what you do. Do they get what you do? Are they better qualified to do what they'll be doing than you are? Apply the shopping center test: if you were to spot them across a hall at a shopping center before they see you, do not hire them unless they're the type of person that you'd go out of your way to greet.
  9. Lower the barriers to adoption of your products. Flatten the learning curve by making your products plug-and-play. Don't ask your customers to do something that you wouldn't do, such as pay $0.50 to do your wash when you're staying at a Hyatt. Would the owners of the hotel be willing to pay $0.50 to do their wash when they're paying $400 a night to stay at the hotel? Of course not, so why should they expect you to do so? Embrace your evangelists, who are those who think that your product makes the world a better place. These are not people who you pay but may be your customers or other admirers.
  10. Seed the clouds in order to increase future sales. There is an ancient adage that says you need to let a hundred flowers blossom in order to get one great flower. You may not know which customer is going to be right for your new product and that's fine. If the product is being used in ways that you did not anticipate, that's great and don't "fix" it in order to change the product so that it fits the need of the customers that you first anticipated selling it to. Instead, figure out why the unexpected customer is buying and then sell to them. Good sales fixes a lot of business problems, so don't be concerned if your sales come from unexpected places.
  11. Bonus tip: don't let the bozos grind you down. So called friends and experts will tell you that your new venture has no merit or that you should take the safe road by staying an employee. Let them travel the safe path -- it often heads no where. Stick to the path less traveled if you want to live your dreams.

Continue reading "10 Tips for Starting a New Business" »

A tip of the hat to search engine optimization expert Joel Cheesman for bringing this video about video resumes to my attention. According to the very tongue in cheek Jon Stewart's The Daily Show, the best practices for video resumes are:


  1. Keep it short.
  2. Do not nap while you're filming your video resume as that makes you look lazy.
  3. Do not cry on camera unless you're seeking a position that requires crying. If you are, then cry it out.
  4. Work at a TV show because their production people can help you make a really cool video resume.

Want more information? Watch the video:

Continue reading "Tips for Great Video Resumes" »

Steven Rothberg speaking at Kennedy Information conference in Las Vegas on 5/10/07I'm at the Kennedy Information conference in Las Vegas. As usual, they've done a great job with lining up a perfect facility, great and varied speakers, solid exhibitors, and a large number of primarily corporate recruiters who seem to be very happy with the value that they're receiving.

I spoke yesterday about how employers can and should use social networking sites such as MySpace, Facebook, and the Second Life virtual world. When I put up the slide showing how much larger MySpace's traffic is than even that of Careerbuilder and Monster and how the traffic to the social networking sites is growing fast while the traffic to Careerbuilder and Monster are sliding, you could see light bulbs going on. Recruiters who couldn't figure out why they should care about social networking sites suddenly understood. They can't recruit people who don't know they exist and if the recruiters rely exclusively on job boards such as Careerbuilder and Monster they're only able to demonstrate their existence to a small portion of job seekers and an ever smaller portion of job seekers. Employers who want to not only survive but thrive in this ever changing world must embrace social networking.

The Timmins (Ontario) Daily Press ran an editorial yesterday on eighth graders being disciplined by their schools for defaming their teacher. Seems that the students posted some defamatory statements about the teacher to Facebook and then issues a half hearted apology when told that they would not be allowed to accompany their class on a trip to Montreal. What does that have to do with college students hunting for internships and recent graduates looking for entry level jobs and other career opportunities? Nothing and everything.

Continue reading "Pretty Smart Advice from Timmins, Ontario" »

1. Take stock - (Know Yourself)

If you know your strengths and weaknesses and what you want in a career, then you have a much better chance of finding your perfect job. Finding that dream position starts with understanding your personality, values and what drives you. Taking a career and personality assessment is a huge first step towards optimizing your personal career path. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is the most widely used personality instrument. More than 2 million worldwide assessments are performed each year by job seekers, professionals, and organizations, including 89 of the Fortune 100. Take a Free Personality Test now to find out what motivates you and find the perfect job today.

Continue reading "10 Tips for Finding a New Job" »

Joe Grimm, recruiting and development editor of the Detroit Free Press, recently wrote that it is never enough to give two week's notice to an employer that you're quitting. To be fair, Joe's blog article made it clear that he feels that two week's notice is standard and is a fair compromise between the needs and wants of the employer and those of the employee. But his "never enough" point is worth pondering: if it takes far longer than two weeks to find a replacement, is two week's notice sufficient?

Continue reading "When Two Week's Notice is Not Enough" »

Just spoke with an employer-client who was pretty frustrated by an on-campus interview with a high achieving student at a respected school. The employer is a big accounting firm. The student thought they were investment bankers. Wrong.

Job interview tip: do some research. Know who you're going to be interviewing with. Know who their vendors (suppliers) and clients (customers) are. Know about their industry. Be able to speak intelligently. Don't worry that you aren't as knowledgeable about the firm or the industry as the person interviewing you. It would be pretty bad for you to know more about them than they do. But you've got to know a lot more than the investment banking wanna be who went into his job interview sorely unprepared.

What does it take to be the "ideal" job candidate? Employers have a tall order, but communication skills are at the top of their list in what they look for in potential employees, according to a report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Employers responding to NACE's Job Outlook 2007 survey named communication skills and honesty/integrity as a job seeker's most important skills and qualities. "Communication skills have topped the list for eight years, and honesty and integrity have tied for the top spot for the last three years," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director.

Continue reading "Who is the 'Ideal' Job Candidate?" »

Surveys indicate that about 90 percent of recent college graduates would re-locate with or without financial assistance for a good entry level job opening. But if you're a college student searching for an internship or seasonal job or a recent grad looking for an entry level career opportunity, which cities should you focus your job search efforts on? A good option is to look at the cities with the most entry level job openings. The cities with the most jobs for recent college graduates are:

Continue reading "Top Cities for College Students Looking for Internships and Recent Graduates Hunting for Entry Level Job Openings" »

Our 333 career videos allow candidates and others to get a quick understanding of this and 332 other professions. The videos can be posted for free within seconds to any MySpace page, blog, or any other web page.

So still curious about what phlebotomists do? Hint: blood tests save countless lives each day. Patients in hospitals and doctors offices are diagnosed by using valuable tools.

Continue reading "What the Heck is a Phlebotomist?" »

The Good, the Bad, and the UglyWe just added 333 career videos to YouTube. If you've ever wondered what it is like to be a Farm Equipment Mechanic, Cost Estimator, or Agricultural and Food Science Technician, now you can watch a video that gives you the good, the bad, and the ugly within just a few minutes.

Continue reading "YouTube: 333 New Career Videos" »

Bloom County Presents Night of the Mary Kay Commandos Featuring Smell O-ToonsOne of our competitors recently posted a note to a college hiring discussion list regarding multi-level marketing companies and other such business opportunities. A college career service office professional had asked for advice because a MLM had asked to participate in the on-campus interviewing process. Our competitor argued that the MLM should not be allowed on-campus and argued any job which "requires an up-front investment to participate (MLM does) and focuses more on the recruitment of others to sell rather than the selling of the product itself (MLM again) is not a real job." He is, of course, correct that MLM opportunities are not jobs, yet is that really the issue?

Continue reading "When is a Job Not a Job?" »

According to the Brazen Careerist, there are 10 ways to manage your boss:

1. Understand the person you're dealing with.
2. Ask for your quarterly goals, in writing.
3. Know your boss's biggest worries, and help him address them.
4. Look at your boss's weaknesses as opportunities.
5. Focus on your own needs by focusing on your boss's needs.
6. See the good in people.
7. Get a list of your boss's priorities.
8. Prioritize your own work in terms of what matters to your boss.
9. Give weekly updates.
10. Don't get stuck on personality types.

Can you think of other ways, including perhaps some ways to get even?

The Right Job Right NowWith all of the advice out there today, it's hard to get the best advice on how to find a job and what kind of job is right for you. Plus it can be time-consuming and expensive to get the best advice and to get it quick!

You're probably always wondering:

- What kind of job should I look for?
- How do I find that job?
- What's the best way to start my new job on the right foot?

Continue reading "Free Spring Teleconference Series" »

Chicken Little

If you read virtually any article in the mainstream press about the information that employers can find out about candidates in their blog, Facebook, and MySpace pages, you'd think that the sky was about to fall and every candidate with such pages was Chicken Little. Those media stories have some merit as about 75 percent of employers do search the Internet as part of their background checking process and those searches include blogs and non-password protected social networking sites such as MySpace. But the problem isn't with blogs and social networking sites. The problem is with the content posted to those pages and how that content is being used by some employers.

Continue reading "Turn Your Blog, Facebook and Myspace Pages from Threats Into Opportunities" »

My friend Dave Mendoza of JobMachine.net is at it again. I first met Dave just a few months ago at a recruiting conference in Denver. I was acquainted with him before that meeting, but we have become friends since. He really left me no choice, and for that I am grateful. The guy gives, gives, gives, and then gives some more. If you look up the word networking in the dictionary, his picture is probably part of the definition.

The latest example is his blog entry for today. He posted an entry about how employers are using Facebook to background check students and other potential employees. Essentially, they're using the entries that students post to their Facebook accounts against those students. If the students post information that is not appreciated by the employer, then that employer is likely to exclude the student from the hiring process. So what makes this a giving entry? Have a look and you'll see pretty quickly.

Susan Strayer is a frequent contributor to CollegeRecruiter.com, including as an author of many very helpful blog entries and a commenter to blog entries written by candidates and others who have questions or need some guidance. After graduating from college a decade ago, she apparently decided that she wouldn’t know true joy until she had suffered some true pain, so she went back to school for an MBA and had a job hunting advice book published by St. Martin’s Press…at the same time.

Continue reading "The Right Job, Right Now Book Review" »

This list of the 100 best companies to work for in 2007 is based upon the most extensive employee survey in corporate America. More than 105,000 employees from 446 companies responded to a 57-question survey. Two-thirds of a company's score was based on the survey, which was sent to a minimum of 400 randomly selected employees from each company and asked about things such as attitudes toward management, job satisfaction, and camaraderie. The remaining third of the score came from an evaluation of each company's responses to the institute's Culture Audit, which included detailed questions about demographic makeup, pay, and benefits programs, and open-ended questions about the company’s people-management philosophy, internal communications, opportunities, compensation practices, diversity programs, etc. After the evaluations were completed, if news about a company came to light that may have significantly damaged employees’ faith in management, that company may have been excluded from the list. About 1,500 companies participated. Any company that was at least seven years old with more than 1,000 U.S. employees was eligible.

Got that? Good. Then with no further delay, here are the top 100 employer to work for in 2007:

Continue reading "Top 100 Employers for Which to Work in 2007" »

Leadership makes a difference, according to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Employers responding to NACE's Job Outlook 2007 survey said that the job candidate who has held leadership positions has the edge over those that have no such record.

Continue reading "Job Candidates With Leadership Skills Have the Edge" »

interview photoWhen interviewing for a new job, it is important that you walk the walk (look professional) but also that you talk the talk (ask the right questions and give the right answers). In order to do the latter, avoid topics such as sex, politics, and religion unless they are directly relevant to the position (they almost never are) as well as the following:

Continue reading "Don't Go There: Taboo Topics in Job Interviews" »

In the “Are You Having Fun Yet” chapter of my book TRUE PROFESSIONALISM I reported on a survey I have done for more than twenty years around the world. I ask people what percent of their work they would put in the “I love this” category versus “It’s OK It’s what I do for a living. It doesn’t excite me.” There’s also a third category called “I hate this part of my work life.”

Continue reading "How to Get into the Flow of Better Work" »

working in the mail roomFor much of the U.S., people are more concerned with digging out snow shovels at this time of the year than they are in finding a great, paid internship for next summer. When then would I want to write about how to find an internship when it is still November? Because many employers have already started their hunt for interns. If they're looking for interns, then students should be looking for internships.

Continue reading "Searching for a Great, Paid Internship" »

Warning to the college Class of 2007: If you’ve got a profile on a social networking site such as MySpace or Facebook, be prepared for potential employers to view it, according to a new study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).

Continue reading "11.1% of Employers Use MySpace, Facebook and Other Social Networking Sites as Part of Their Background Checking Process" »

the road to a jobCollege students take note: For many new college graduates, the road to a job is through an internship.

A study conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) found that employers extended job offers to more than 70 percent of their interns. Employers responding to NACE’s 2006 Experiential Education Survey also indicated that nearly three-quarters of their job offers to interns were accepted. Overall, they reported converting 53 percent of their interns into full-time hires.

Continue reading "College Students Find Internships Can Pave Way to Job" »

Tamara N, one of the bloggers at Honeywell, has some brilliant advice for college students and recent graduates who are seeking internships or entry level jobs. Make sure that you market yourself to the needs and wants of the organization to which you are applying.

Continue reading "Candidate: Market Thyself" »

One of the pleasures of my work is that I am able to meet and collaborate on a variety of projects with some truly wonderful, insightful people. Two of my favorite people are Terese Corey Blanck and Peter Vogt of College to Career. Along with Judy Anderson, they recently published two outstanding books, one targeted to the parents of college students and the other targeted to the college students themselves.

Continue reading "College to Career Books for Students and Parents" »

The month of October is a busy month as relates to observations. Of the several, Roy Grizzard, Assistant Secretary for Disability Employment Policy of the Department of Labor today released an announcement of the Department's recognition of individuals with work differences.

There are resources, recognition dates, and programs to assist employers, job seekers, and college career counselors in opening the diversity doors and creating employment empowerment for those typically called "disabled." One of the most significant programs encouraged by the Department is mentoring. Having a counselor who can guide a worker through the intricate employment maze and over the rungs of success is imperative to anyone's career. One who can help an intern or "young" worker navigate these trails is a proven factor to success on both sides.

So many times individuals with disabilities are rejected from employment opportunities because of their observed impairment without testing or asking if they feel they can perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. It would behoove us to face the facts of workplace access and the opportunities that abound in creating a diverse environment.

How can you recognize the phoney resume? Excellent question. There was a recent debate about the practice of recruiters' posting fake resumes on job boards in order to assertedly test the waters and evaluate the interests of hiring managers. The recruiter also seemed to admit that this was actually a technique for getting job requisitions. There was an argument that this is an honest practice and carries absolutely no taint because of the research value, potential for building connections, and a "take it or leave it" opportunity.

Many recruiters who saw the admission decried the practice citing the fact that these ruses are a major waste of time. The time to cull a database, read and evaluate, and then do outreach is time that could have been spent on a real person who is legitimately looking for employment and is willing to entertain a potential situation. Even more vexing was the realization that the discussion was drummed up in order to draw attention to an article that was published the next day, to make innuendoes about a start-up business, and to promote the formation of a new discussion group. But those are somewhat tangential issues. Drawing all three together, however, is honesty about what is presented. That was what stirred up the most controversy -- honesty, credibility, ethics, trustworthiness, and respect -- respect of and value of one's time.

Continue reading "Surviving the Fake Resume" »

Learn a few simple and unintimidating ways to ask friends or business associates for letters of recommendation.

Kay LaRocca photoThere comes a time when you need a little help from your friends, business associates, or co-workers. That is when you are asking them for a letter of recommendation for yourself.

You will want to be sure and get good letters of recommendation. Just because someone is your good friend or co-worker doesn't mean they are good at writing letters of recommendation.

Continue reading "How to Ask for and Receive Letters of Recommendation" »

A tip of the hat to Amitai Givertz for bringing to my attention the BusinessWeek article entitled The Best Places to Launch a Career: The Top 50 Employers for New College Grads.

This is the first time that BusinessWeek has compiled this ranking of the largest employers of college students and recent graduates. The ranking of the biggest employers of college students and recent graduates in part reflects a beauty contest because employers with name recognition with students will tend to outperform those employers who do not have a strong brand name on-campus. But the rankings go beyond mere name recognition with students by first including feedback from directors of undergraduate career services to find out which employers were creating buzz on campus. Those organizations which had the most buzz were then asked to complete a questionnaire about pay, benefits, retention, and training programs. BusinessWeek then compared those answers with other employers in the same industries in an effort to create an apples-to-apples ranking within various industry sectors. Finally Universum Communications supplied data on the finalists.

I was happy to see that of the top 55 biggest employers of college students and recent graduates, 32 currently have jobs posted to CollegeRecruiter.com. Some of the others don't have job postings but are using our resume bank, targeted emails, banner ads, etc. The largest employers of college students and recent graduates were:

Continue reading "Top Employers for College Grads" »

Sample resumes are one of the most frequent requests we receive from the visitors to our site, whether they are are searching for entry level jobs and internships or jobs which require years of experience. Thanks to Kevin Donlin of Guaranteed Resumes, we now have well over 300 sample resumes available on our CollegeRecruiter.com Insights by Resume Writers Blog.

Since the tragedy of 9/11, one of the biggest areas of employment growth in the U.S. has been in fields related to homeland security. Some of the positions require experience but many of them are entry level job opportunities and therefore perfectly suited to students and recent college graduates.

Continue reading "Entry Level Jobs in Homeland Security" »

Today's guest blogger through the Recruiting.com Blogswap program is Beth Carvin of Nobscot Corporation. While this introduction may come across as advertising to some, trust me: it is not. In order for the reader of this blog to fully appreciate Beth's entry, it is important to understand that she knows of what she speaks. Nobscot's WebExit® Online Exit Interview Management System is an award winning system that provides employers with a continual stream of employee satisfaction data. The WebExit product Identifies reasons for employee turnover and measures the success of workplace initiatives through a web-based interface. That said (written?), I turn the floor over to Beth.


Fiddler on the Roof yenta photo I spend a lot of time looking at exit interviews and helping companies pinpoint why employees quit.

In doing so, one of the things that I noticed is that recent college graduates usually end up taking several different positions before they find the one that is right for them. I've taken to studying why this is so and have determined that the reason is because new grads often use the wrong criteria for accepting a position.

Continue reading "Matchmaker, Matchmaker Make Me A Match" »

This blog entry is courtesy of Alise Cortez, who is the co-author with Claudia Faust of the ImprovedExperience.com blog called It’s ALL About the Experience. This is one in a series of blog entries that come to CollegeRecruiter.com via a swap of content between bloggers who write about employment-related issues. And now to the Alise's excellent advice for job seekers:

Having been a former technical recruiter who has critiqued and developed countless student resumes, there is one point I like to emphasize to those preparing a marketing blitz with potential employers. It's a rather simple point, but one that often gets lost in the translation: in your race for the job, make sure that “you” show up in the resume.

What's that, you say? How can I not be in the resume? That's all of my experience and course work in there! My internships, my summer jobs, my extracurricular activities!

"You" means your personality, your uniqueness, and your strength of character. In addition to the other data points, these are the things that should show up in your resume. After all, recruiters and managers hire people, and not pieces of paper.

Showing your individuality can be as easy as starting with a personally descriptive "Objective" statement. For example: “I'm seeking a challenging, entry-level Sales position where my passion for being the best, my unbridled enthusiasm, and my adoration for all things technical will be welcome.” Then, where appropriate in the resume, use statements that tell the story behind that objective.

Most resumes focus on the duties that someone has carried out: the verbs, if you will. Create copy, test code, answer phones, file memos. Telling the story means adding the adjectives and adverbs - and it can be a competitive differentiator for your resume in the job market. Statements like:

“Ranked No. 1 in customer satisfaction and service for my cheerfulness and determination to see the job through to completion.”

Or

“I was recognized by the professor as undoubtedly being the most determined and creative problem solver in the class.”

These statements, full of adjectives and adverbs, describe not only what you did, but how you did it - and they offer your sense of confidence that you will behave in a similar way for your employer. Conviction is another insight to your individuality; after all, if you are not sure of your own worth, how can you convince someone else?

But, you say, what if the company doesn’t like enthusiasm? What if they confuse my conviction for arrogance?

What if, indeed. The purpose of a resume is to get the interview, and the purpose of the interview is to help both parties determine if there's a match for the job. Be professional, but be yourself - both in the resume and in the interview. A company that says no to enthusiasm may not be the place for you. Would you be happy there? Could you be yourself there? Honoring who you are and being truthfully bold in your resume speeds up the selection process and it ultimately makes getting that first post-graduation job much more satisfying. Employers know what will work in their environments and what won't; they can weed you out quickly, which saves you time and later heartache, OR they can select you in.

Putting forth a strong, personally demonstrative resume is like offering a firm handshake, a big smile, and a few words that make a great first impression. What else could you hope for in the few brief milliseconds someone looks at your resume?

This blog entry is courtesy of Amitai Givertz and is another in the series of blog swap entries as organized by Recruiting.com.

If I was a student today – like you are perhaps – I would be pretty ticked off with the quality of online services and resources being provided by my college’s career center. Of course, there are always exceptions and I’m sure that somewhere out there is an unbelievably terrific resource that provides everything that would give me a competitive edge in my job search, but I haven’t seen it yet. What I have seen ranges from what I can only describe as mediocre, a typical offering of generic and conventional blah. Admittedly, my sampling for this missive was random and limited to the relatively few colleges who at least understand that students google. But you know what – this is a rant about shortchanging students working stuff out online and not an article about best practices. If career counselors or recruiters want to argue the toss – and I wish you would – hey, leave a comment.

Here are my top three peeves and some practical suggestions for you to consider:

Continue reading "College Career Centers: Reality Online Checks Out" »

It is widely believed that 90 percent of candidates apply only to advertised job openings even though only 10 percent of job openings are advertised. Logically, if you're looking for a job, you're going to do whatever you can to put yourself in the group of 10 percent of the candidates who are applying to the 90 percent of job openings even though those openings are unadvertised. But how do you do that? Networking tactics such as informational interviewing are great approaches, but I just learned about another.

Create a blog specifically about the organization for which you wish to work and the work that you would do for them. Can't possibly work? Wrong. C.M. Russell just wrote about Carolynn Duncan of Provo, Utah who did just that. Carolynn wanted a job with Provo Labs so created a blog that outlined why she wanted to work for them but, more importantly, why they should hire her. Awesome.

Today our guest blogger is David Kippen, PhD and Vice President Global Brand Strategy for TMP Worldwide.

david-kippen.jpgLet's face it: established brands have a huge advantage in competing for talent. Names like Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, Nike and others--brand names that each generation grows up with have an allure and appeal that's hard to beat when it comes to finding that first job. Though brands like these are developed and cultivated to cut through the clutter on the consumer side, that very drive to relevance makes them ever so attractive as places to work. And yet….

And yet, if you've been in the talent space for any length of time, you know well that big name brands aren't necessarily the best places to work--or to learn how to work. Wherever your organization finds itself, it's an interesting problem to have.

If you have no brand--or not much of a brand--you actually have a great opportunity to define yourself starting with a blank sheet of paper. And, while you might assume this would cost a fortune, it doesn't have to: after all, there's a far greater difference between saying nothing and saying something than there is between saying something and saying it more loudly.

What should you say? Beyond the cardinal rule of recruitment that you absolutely must tell the truth, what you should say will obviously depend on your particular business situation, but as a rule of thumb you'll want to message to the higher, or more aspirational ways in which the work experience you can provide intersects with the kind of people your prospects want to become. In other words, no matter how good the pay and benefits are, don't let them be the message, and as appealing as "fun work environment" sounds, many of the best and brightest actually want to, ahem, work for you. So go easy on the pizza Fridays and focus on the real-world development opportunities your company offers.

Continue reading "Bright Lights, Big City: The Allure of Big Brands" »

I'm pretty passionate about Facebook and other social networking sites. I love them -- and hate them. I love them because they make college campuses and other environments smaller by helping people find other people who share common interests. I hate them because they're so easy to misuse.

One of the dangers of Facebook for employees and job seekers is that employers are starting to use Facebook as part of their background checking process. Many students mistakenly believe that the only people who can or will access their Facebook profiles are other students. Those naive students will post naked photos of themselves, stories of sexual exploits, and write about getting drunk, stoned, or otherwise trashed. Sometimes those stories are true and sometimes they're not. If they're true, employers are less likely to want to hire those students because of concerns that their lifestyle and lack of judgment will spill over into the workplace. It has happened before with people named Bill. If the stories are not true, then employers are still not going to want to hire the student because posting that type of information in a public place is proof of your lack of judgment, even if the story isn't true.

One of the missing links in all of this has been finding students who have not been hired as a result of their Facebook postings or fired as a result of their Facebook postings. Well, there's now a poster child. C.M. Russell just wrote in his blog that the founder of social networking site Ziggs fired his intern after reading on the intern's Facebook page that the intern gets paid for "screwing around on IM" and "talking to [his] friends and getting paid for it." The irony is delicious.

This post is part of the Recruiting.com Blogswap. Your HR Guy writes today about interviewing effectively with bad hiring managers.

Part one of my post runs with the assumption that most in-person interviews aren't going to be ideal for determining what your skills are and whether or not you are the best fit for a company and/or position. So while you are preparing to do a job search, here are some helpful steps to get past even the worst of interviewers (the type that thinks he is the greatest interviewer in the world):

1.) Be a great interviewee. Take that part out of the question. Some hiring managers will hire based on interview alone so practice, practice practice. College career centers do a good job of setting up mock interviews and at the least, they can get you comfortable talking about yourself.

2.) Be prepared for any interview style. Some might give you a behavioral interview. Some might give you a conversational interview. Some may be reading off of notes in a cramped office and some may be walking you through the warehouse floor. Be prepared for anything to happen and know how to best react.

3.) Showcase your knowledge. Both your own knowledge and your knowledge about the company and the position. If your interviewer doesn't ask you a question that you feel helps establish a job fit, ask a leading question during the appropriate time such as: "Would it be useful in this position to have general accounting knowledge with specific A/P expertise?" If you've done your research, this question will rarely backfire.

Those three things will help you overcome a bad interviewer or a good interviewer on a bad day. And even if it doesn't ultimately win you the job in the end, it will help you become a better interviewee.

The dynamics of an interview ebb and flow in interesting ways. As things progress, it seems that the outcome is easy to predict. However, there can be one small thing that triggers a change of course and a very different outcome. It just happened that I parked myself at a fast food establishment a few days ago that was in the process of conducting several interviews. As fate would have it, I sat at the table next to where all the interviews occurred.

Continue reading "The Dynamics of an Interview" »

Communication in a business is part of one's brand. Novel idea. But it's true. The tone of the communication, its timing, the content, to whom it's directed all say a great deal about the inner workings of the organization. And the focus is not on the newsletter, the correspondence, the web page blurbs that talk about the mission and focus and purpose and driving force. Today's examination is the oral communication that exists in the business.

Continue reading "Communication and Branding, It's All-Important" »

Recruiters and candidates alike are striving to essentially do the same thing -- meet the right person to fill the bill. For candidates, they want to find the person who will point them in the direction of the career opportunity. On the other side of the coin is the recruiter who's looking for the person who has the experience, expertise, education. Each of them goes "fishing" using the usual bait, the job board, the resume databanks. Those are great places to start. Those venues have a very valid purposefulness in their existence. But there are other places that prove to be even more effective for results. Personal contact at association meetings.

Continue reading "Finding the Right Connection through Associations" »

The day is winding down and the feasibility of trying to continue working at this hot spot is growing scant. Since I'm in my writer's mailbox, the opportunity to steal a look at some of the news overtakes my fingers. Ah, the 8th of June should be a good one. And it will have some juicy tidbits for those eager interns at CollegeRecruiter.com. It held a lot more than I suspected.

Continue reading "Whatever You Do, Just Keep Your Eyes Open and Keep Plugging Away" »

The polls have closed. The votes have been tallied. The envelope please. The hottest jobs and career choices are:


  1. Hedge Fund Analyst/Manager
  2. Infomatics Specialists
  3. Specialized Accounting
  4. Private Banker/Private Client Services
  5. Market Researcher
  6. Sustainable Business Management
  7. Supplemental Educational Services
  8. Software developer
  9. Biomedical Engineer/Scientist
  10. Medical Technician

-- Wetfeet

To run a search on CollegeRecruiter.com for these or any other hot job, go to our search page.

Four excellent tips from Chief Jobster Jason Goldberg for young, aspiring professionals who want to succeed:


  1. Don't expect handouts. Make it happen yourself.
  2. Demonstrate your passion for your work regardless of how big or small the task.
  3. Don't appear to be too ambitious. Your superiors want you to first excel in your current position before they promote you.
  4. Prove that you've mastered the facts through solid research, including poring through the data and analytics. Your supervisors won't trust your gut decisions because you have not accumulated the experience yet for them to trust your gut.

So we've been talking about matters of safety during the job search, especially for non-traditional employers. Areas that still need some discussion are attire, demeanor, speech.

Actually, I talk about these areas of interviewing style in a recent post, "Interviewing Form - Some Candidate Examples." The prime factor that should be taken from that post, the video, and the ensuing discussion is that you need to be as professional as possible in your entire presentation. This is the person who will be representing the business if hired. And, of course, you've already researched whether this is a real business. That's why you're attending the interview.

Continue reading "Interview Deportment" »

1. Take stock - (Know Yourself)

If you know your strengths and weaknesses and what you want in a career, then you have a much better chance of finding your perfect job. Finding that dream position starts with understanding your personality, values and what drives you. Taking a career and personality assessment is a huge first step towards optimizing your personal career path. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment is the most widely used personality instrument. More than 2 million worldwide assessments are performed each year by job seekers, professionals, and organizations, including 89 of the Fortune 100. Take a Free Personality Test now to find out what motivates you and find the perfect job today.

2. Networking - (Know others)

Many jobs are obtained through networking. It is a very important tool for job seekers and is an extremely fast and effective way to find your next job or career. While many employers advertise open positions on internet job boards like CollegeRecruiter.com, you should find out about the “hidden job market” as well by talking to as many people as possible and letting them know you are looking for a job.

The best place to start developing your network is with your family, friends, and neighbors -- and with their family, friends, and neighbors, but dont stop there. Reach and re-connect with old friends and former classmates from your school days. We recommend getting a free account at Classmates.com to start that process.

3. Accomplishment oriented resume - (Know how to write it well)

The purpose of a resume is not to get you a job, but to land an interview. An organized, industry-specific and accomplishment-oriented resume will get employers to take notice. In todays hyper-competitive job market, you simply cannot afford to send out a resume that is less than perfect. 

Two Common Yet Easily-Avoidable Resume Mistakes
1. Always use a professional email address on your resume. While footballfan@aol.com may be fine for conversing with friends, it will give employers a negative perception of your level of professionalism and commitment to your job search.

2. If your resume includes an objective statement, it should be geared to both your personal goals as well as the goals of the company.   Describing how you can add value to the company will give potential employers the impression that your goal is to provide a long-term commitment.

4. Job proposal - (Know your value)

Get the attention of decision-makers at a company through a Job proposal. It’s a one or two page “mini business plan” that’s intended to get you an interview with the decision-maker of a targeted prospective employer. While a resume tells someone what you have done in the past, a job proposal shows in some detail what you are going to do for the company down the road. Specifically, it lays out how you will help them achieve their vision of success. It generally explains the vision you have for a new product or service, how to enhance an existing program, or why to implement a new process. It may also outline your plan to increase company sales or improve accounts receivable. When you challenge the relevance of traditional job search strategies and begin utilizing tools and techniques that clearly distinguish you from the pack, most anything is possible, including winning a dream job with a great company during a down economy.

5. Industry Knowledge - (Know your market)

In today’s competitive job market, staying up-to-date on your industry is crucial to your future success. To be a truly outstanding business professional, you must not only understand trends and developments in your own industry, but the trends and developments in an average consumer’s industry. The fastest and easiest way to do this is through industry trade journals and publications. During your job search, it is imperative to show initiative and drive while continually looking to improve your industry knowledge.

6. Research - (Know the players)

There is no substitute for hard work and research. Knowing which companies are hiring in your area is only half the battle. Take your search to another level by getting access to key contacts, decision makers, and hiring managers.  Check out sites like Hoovers.com to gain access to these types of lists.  You can visit CareerConsultation.com for more information regarding customized research to meet your needs. 

7. Interviewing - (Know how to communicate)

The biggest mistake in interviewing is not being fully prepared. It is crucial for job-seekers to use every conceivable means possible to prepare for an interview and to allow ample time to fully prepare. Understand that interviewing is a skill; as with all skills, preparation and practice enhance the quality of that skill. Preparation can make the difference between getting an offer and getting rejected.

Practice Answering These Commonly-Asked Interview Questions:
1. Tell me about yourself.
2. Where do you expect to be in five years?
3. Describe a work-related problem you had to face recently. What did you do to deal with it?
4. What are your strengths? Weaknesses?

8. Marketing - (Know how to sell yourself)

An interactive marketing portfolio of yourself pulls together your accomplishments, education, experience and awards in one place. It is a highly-effective job-hunting tool that you develop that gives employers a complete picture of who you are -– your experience, your education, your accomplishments, your skill sets, and what you have the potential to become -– much more than just a cover letter and resume can provide. You can use your career portfolio in job interviews to showcase a point, to illustrate the depth of your skills and experience, or to use as a tool to get a second interview. Dont forget to setup your portfolio at CollegeRecruiter.com.  The best kinds of portfolios can be built and distributed to employers through the internet.

9. Background Check - (Know your history)

With thousands of resumes to choose from, employers often select from pre-screened candidates first, as these job seekers appear more serious in their job quest and commitment. Pre-screening by the job seeker saves the employer valuable time and money, and places pre-screened candidates ahead of the competition. For more information on getting a background check, you can take a look in our Career Resources section at CollegeRecruiter.com

10. Learning never ends - (Know more)

The investment of time and money in continuing your education sends a powerful message to prospective employers that you are serious about improving your skills and abilities. Employers are more likely to hire candidates that show the desire and commitment for lifelong learning. Whether it’s a certificate program, associates, bachelors, or masters degree, there is a program to fit your lifestyle, schedule and budget. To find a school that fits your needs, browse our index of over 200 schools or try out our school matching program.


Isn't it great that you've mastered all of the preceding topics. Now you're ready to actually go to the interview. You start the telephone screening or interview and learn that this employer is a solo practitioner. They work from home or they're in town for a short time. An interview needs to be scheduled. Well, here are some more things to think about.

Continue reading "Interview Savvy: Non-Traditional Employers" »

Employers can have thousands of applicants for each job. Making yourself more valuable to the employer helps improve your chances of being selected. Having a completed background check is one way of improving your value and gives you a competitive edge.

Knowing what is in your background check allows you to address issues before they cost you a job.

So we've talked about safety issues related to determining whether the job ad is real. Let's say it seems as though it is. It's still a good idea to practice good safety measures when giving out your contact information.

Continue reading "Job Hunt Safety: Contact Info" »

I attended an all-day seminar on writing and publishing yesterday. My knees buckled at the density of information delivered. My head spinned at the quality of the five speakers. All of my nerve endings were ignited with the overwhelming networking opportunities that arose and were captured.

One of the important things one should do when attending a seminar is learn the new concepts. However, if done well, you not only learn new concepts, your instructor nudges you just a bit to recall some old concepts. Thus, if you already know some things and have forgotten or simply let certain principles fall by the wayside because of over-scheduling, you have the opportunity to refocus and reorganize in order to retool and become even more effective.

However, I write at this moment because there were a lot of things presented at this seminar of importance to those striving to make a career in writing. Related to that (and all things are related) was advice on how to market yourself. Isn't that what a job search is all about -- marketing yourself? So there are some things I learned at the seminar that are important to you job seakers, especially those desiring a career in writing and publishing.

Continue reading "The Amazing World of Writing and Publishing" »

Searching and interviewing for a job are times when you quite literally can put yourself "out there" when it comes to exposure to danger from the unknown. First, there's the matter of being able to discern whether the ad is legitimate or not. Then there's the matter of actually connecting with this unknown advertiser and sending your personal information and work history to them. Next, is actually meeting this person. And if this employer is an individual doing business, there is also the matter of where the interview and the work will be. We haven't even gotten into what to say, what to bring during the interview -- the initial meeting. Nor have we broached the subject of attire, demeanor, speech.

Women, and men, it's time for us to talk.

Continue reading "A Few Words About Safety: Legitimate