Job Search Strategies for New Graduates

June 4, 2014 Leave a comment

Success!  Congratulations as you’ve worked hard and toiled in the classroom for 4+ years and now it’s time to see it all come to fruition as you enter working adulthood! The job market is a huge entity and for those walking in, it can be a cold splash in the face for even the most seasoned job-seekers, much less new grads just getting their feet wet! Below are 10 common mistakes of job hunters (new ones in particular) and following that are 10 tips to get your search going so that you can stand out!

Tips for a Successful Job Search

Tips for a Successful Job Search

Ten Common Mistakes of the (New) Job Hunter

1) Not Being Proactive
2) Using the Internet AS your job search
3) Not Networking Effectively
4) Not Tailoring Resumes and/or Cover Letters
5) Misusing/under-utilizing the Internet
6) Failing to Follow Up
7) Setting Expectations Too High
8) Not Appearing Professional
9) Not Taking the Job Interview Seriously
10) Not Utilizing Your College’s and/or professional Career Services

Now, Ten Tips to get you Really Moving in your Job Search!

1. Research, research and then research some more!

As with any job search plan, one of the most important steps is to do the up-front research. If you have a degree in a chosen field, it’s best to research opportunities and get a general feel as to what the requirements are to be and how organizations differ from one another. Sure, Google and Microsoft (Bing) specialize in search, but are they the same? No. Ford and Chevrolet both manufacture and sell automobiles, but are the two companies the same? No. It is your ‘job’ to be able to distinguish an organization before approaching. Today, especially, there’s an inordinate amount of information available for job-seekers, and to an employer, there’s no excuse you didn’t use it in identifying what makes them unique.

2. Get your resumes (yes, plural!) ready.

Make them specific and tailored for each position and industry. Use your headings, categories and descriptions to give your resume flow and ‘a story’ that speaks to each employer. A generic resume smells of desperation and/or indifference and when an employer has hundreds, if not thousands, it can go by unrecognized.  If it doesn’t ‘speak’ to the role and the nuance of each organization it gets put in the ‘circular file,’ damned for eternity.

3. Just as important, get your cover letters to speak.

Make them so they are not the generic – “as a new grad, I am really interested in a position at your organization… etc., etc….” This doesn’t SAY anything. Use the cover letter to speak to them.  Connect your experience, skills and, most importantly, interest to what they do. Remember, the organization is NOT thinking about you. They are only interested if they can be thinking about HOW you can help them. Your letter needs to sell them on that fact!

4. For grads, be sure to visit your college’s career services office and/or seek professional assistance.

Utilize these resources for career counseling, job and internship listings, access to recruiting programs, and career networking. The staff is typically seasoned in helping you get your materials in order and preparing you for your search. Remember, the ‘job’ of the career office is to help PREPARE you for your job search, not to conduct it for you so you need to be proactive and willing to do the leg-work.  If already out of school and graduated, hiring on a career services professional can be a great way to get objective, resourceful guidance and assistance that can be a huge investment.

5. Being connected and online is your friend.

Allows for real-time information and connection. Obviously, there are a number of online job boards for job seekers, and using your time to keep abreast of these; job listings, postings, job search tips and career advice, is important as a puzzle piece to your job search. As a side benefit, but just as important, keeping your social networks active and in the loop at the same time.

6. Promote and clean-up your on-line presence and profiles.

Use sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter to your advantage in self-branding. Many companies now use these social networks to advertise, meet and recruit.  Connecting with prospective employers via social networks could be a way to get in the door. Many organizations now gauge the aptitude of a prospective employee not only by their professional and educational experience, but their online biographical presence. What you say and how you present yourself online can, and will, translate into real-world perception. Whether positive or negative is up to you!

7. Take advantage of recruiting and career fairs.

These are a great way to strike up mini informational interviews with organizational representatives that are trying to sell you their organization. These are great venues to ask questions, pick up valuable advice and then use that in your marketing of self! Bring copies of your resume to distribute as this is a terrific way to connect and position yourself with potential hiring managers, not to mention any information gleaned can then be used in a follow-up cover letter and interview.

8. Package yourself to promote!

Learn the basic etiquette of job-hunting which includes dressing appropriately, learning the importance of a good handshake, eye contact and thank you notes and emails. Take advantage of the plethora of career articles online which outline all the basic requirements of the job search process.

9. Network extensively and politely, professionally, but shamelessly, USE them!

You cannot have too many people in your corner when you are looking to secure a job, and networking plays a critical role in the process. Networking can be both formal and informal. Friends, family, neighbors, alumni, even people you meet on the bus or at a store are potential conduits in generating job openings.

10. Volunteering or taking an internship is good and good for you.

A great way to ‘test’ an area of interest and bolster your skills. These programs, some of which can be paid, are a valuable way to gather on-the-job training which can work to make your resume stronger and give you tangible experience. In some cases, if all goes well, many organizations will consider offering you a position on a permanent basis based on what they’ve seen. As a volunteer or intern, it can help put your finger on the pulse of an organization and you can position (see research above!) yourself immediately for interviews should job openings occur.

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What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 4 of 4

April 16, 2014 Leave a comment

Choosing a major can be stressful!

Choosing a major can be stressful!

Part 4 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Where is your major leading you?

“Many people end up doing work completely unrelated to their major in college, but it still helps to know for what careers that major might matter when selecting a major or concentration. Students who really know the possible career paths with an undergraduate degree are few and far between at the time of major selection. Many students choose their majors in their sophomore year before they have much work experience at all. There would be many benefits to students if there was a consultant at the school keeping track of where their major may lead, career-wise, and what those careers meant in terms of average activities. Not only would students be making a more informed decision, but it would jump start the process of searching oneself to figure out what they really want to do before the big crunch at the end of senior year.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)

While I was at Mount Holyoke College as the Director of Recruiting and Employer Relations, I had the opportunity or working with many great partner recruiting organizations and some really wonderful students looking to make their mark in the world. One woman, in particular, that really ‘got it’ was a student that was interviewed and hired by, I believe, Paine Webber.

She was a history or psychology major, I can’t remember for sure, but the point being she was hired on by a pre-eminent financial institution after graduation in the liberal arts. Upon being installed on a team, one of her also recently graduated co-workers, had come out of a more formal business program as opposed to her degree in the liberal arts. Upon hearing of her ‘history’ or ‘psych’ major, he turned to her in a meeting and brazenly said, “what are you doing here?” Without missing a beat, she responded by saying, “to do the things you cannot!” A brilliant retort and was coming from someone that could articulate her liberal arts experience and how it would be a good translation to that financial working environment.

But for many, that transition and translation is not so easy.  College is a major expense in one’s lifetime but students who don’t follow their hearts by delving into subjects they’re most passionate about will ultimately hurt their chances of a successful—and satisfying—career in the long term, many college officials say.

For college students, declaring a major can be a stressful moment in one’s academic career. What do I major in? What should I choose? Now I have to live with this? These are some of the questions that plague thousands of newly minted college students each year, looking ahead, producing beads of sweat and who have nightmares of doing the ‘diploma walk’ only to head off the stage after graduation directly into an unemployment line.

For many, they view it as though they essentially are to say, ‘this is now what I am to do for life…’ While true to some degree, no pun intended, a major is really nothing more than saying I am specializing in an area of interest and taking the classes to support such. For someone who already has a career destination in mind; say they want to build bridges as an engineer or be a surgeon, they are lucky in that they are on a defined path and their declaration of major is more of a natural means to an end. The more difficult task is when one doesn’t necessarily have a set outcome in mind; no set path or destination, and choosing or declaring a major can be a pretty stressful addition as one feels they are essentially locking in by having to ‘choose their future.’

The good news is that, as stated above, a major is a focus and what, for many, is missing in their college experience, is a real, comprehensive understanding as to how that major is, or can be, translated to the working world and charting off on a career in the future. This is especially true when majoring in the liberal arts or humanities where the outcome can be a much more abstract path as is not necessarily a linear translation to a job or career.

Much of what happens in the classroom, and its success, is in how one, upon graduation, understands the subtlety, nuance and range of skills that are now to be articulated in a way that explains its relevance to a potential employer.

Most majors are elastic in that employers rarely ‘need’ a specific degree majored in, but instead a set of skills (both hard & soft), experiences and the ability to put them into motion. It is rare that a new hire is showing up at the door with a stand-alone skill. Employers look for a mosaic of such and future college graduates have such, but many do not know they have such and it is in this applied learning, this translation that can be the ‘make or break The college experience is too often limited in making that translation for students and many times the only discussion of such is schlepped over to the off-in-the-corner, stand-alone career services to make those connections evident.

This is a huge missed opportunity in that while these dedicated offices of careers and career transition do what they can, without the full ‘eco-system’ buy-in of the campus at large, the talk of transition from academics to career is usually too limited or late in coming and is missing a great opportunity to be as effective as it could be.

Much of what should or could be done during the college experience is a synthesizing of one’s academic studies at every corner of the respective campus, in a way that fully cross-pollinates, so that students have four years of not only academic intake, but four-years of transitional understanding of their academic history, both looking back and looking ahead? The college experience should, and can, be an artful balance of synthesizing interests, skills, personality strengths and acquired knowledge while at the same time acquiring tangible experience outside of the classroom.

In a perfect world, in the first four semesters, when wrapping up the sophomore year, if possible, this synergistic learning would make for a much better understanding of one’s choosing a major and how it ultimately can be a better blueprint for the transition to career and life after college.

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What’s Missing in the College Experience? Part 3 of 4

April 10, 2014 Leave a comment

A stands for 'average!'

A stands for ‘average!’

Part 3 of “What’s Missing in the College Experience” – Everyone’s Getting A’s

“There has been an over-saturation of high grades in the academic world lately. I am not nearly the first to write about the subject; the phenomena has caught the attention of many school administrations as well. The truth is that, statistically, most people are average. Most people fall near the middle of a bell curve, but many college professors have been awarding a disproportionate number of A’s to students. The prevalent culture dictates that if you don’t have A’s across the board, you aren’t a good student. This plays heavily into an unrealistic expectation for students of how the world will react to them, and overall it hurts their levels of success in the working world.” (Eli Lisseck ’13)

I don’t think that it’s been any secret in terms how ‘academic creep’ has seeped into our educational institutions. It has certainly been not an isolated manifestation as democratization has worked its way into the fabric of many parts of society; trophies awarded for showing up, everyone on the field getting a ball, surveys (see below) really becoming a simple pass/fail response instead of recognizing shades of grey, etc.

In terms of academia, it has been an increasing trend creeping through the college campuses and taking over the academic culture in a slow, and steadily upward way. Even reaching the Ivy Leagues with the most recent, and perhaps the most publicized showcasing in the news being Harvard and how grade inflation, or the expectation thereof, has become the new rule. In Harvard’s case in particular, the ‘average’ grade is reported as being an ‘A’ with the median grade being an ‘A minus.’ Turns out one of the nation’s most ‘rigorous’ academic programs is also one of the nation’s most lenient graders.

Now how is this even possible you ask? In fact, it is, and should be, statistically impossible for if you were to look at a bell curve, there should be an appropriate distribution of each grade, A through F with the average award being somewhere in the middle near the C range. So, whatever the rumors were about C being average, apparently that’s not the case anymore.

Currently, as an A has become the new C on students’ transcripts, it brings the question to mind, what does earning an ‘A’ even mean anymore if they’re being given out like confetti? I wrote in a previous post about an increase in employer skepticism as they have the luxury in today’s economy to really put the lens of scrutiny on potential candidates in the hiring process. It has changed the hiring process in that there’s nothing really to differentiate a candidate today if you simply look at one’s transcript and academic history; everyone is stellar, spectacular and an A-level scholar. So when an A used to mean that a student was putting in the sweat-equity to earn that mark, now it is looked upon as merely an automatic, an expectation on the employer’s part, so, again, if everyone has one, what is its real value? And if it doesn’t reflect exceptionality, what does?

Further, according to a December Washington Post article, nearly 41 percent of undergraduates obtain a grade of A- or higher, while only 5 percent of undergraduates are receiving grades of C or less, nationally. Again, this is a statistical impossibility of the true bell curve’s measurement of students as a group and, what the grade inflation obviates is, that colleges are losing their grasp on how to gauge students’ work and the ramifications attached to that.

There is a two-fold factor that has contributed to grade inflation making its creep in our nation’s colleges and universities. One is mainly because employers want the ‘best’ students and so it stands to reason that they want to see A’s. If a student receives an A then they must be good. Secondly, in combination with this, generally professors want to help their students and in addition they simply want to be liked, which is perfectly understandable but in an overarching way, in helping, they are hurting.

For an employer who’s hiring on-campus, and A means exceptional, and that’s all they’ll see in the moment. They’ll just see that A, of that student, in that moment which, hypothetically, was awarded to that individual student for his/her perfect competence in Corporate Finance or something of that ilk. They are, or I should say were, unaware that the grade they coveting, could essentially be offered by any student they are to meet.

It reminds me of a recent (analogous) interaction I had when bringing a Volvo in for service. I had the work done, paid the bill and left. Afterwards, I was asked to complete a survey on my ‘experience’ as everything is now an experience. I agreed and the survey was a typical 1-10 sort, meaning 1’s get everyone fired and 10 is exceptional!

Or so I had assumed. In thinking about my ‘experience’ and also thinking it good; I’ll give 7’s & 8’s as I thought it fair and representative of their work. For reference, to me a 1 is either losing the car I came in with or breaking something, making it worse AND charging me for it, while a 10, on the other hand, would be when the work is done for free along with a paid trip to Tahiti!

In any case, shortly after seeing the 7’s & 8’s I recorded on the survey I received a call from the dealer’s “Crisis Team” to mitigate this catastrophe….

They asked me “what was wrong and why was I dissatisfied?”

I said “I wasn’t at all.”

They said “well if that’s the case, then we really aspire to receive 10’s on the survey.”

So, I asked, “if that’s the case, why did you not qualify that to begin with and if so, then what does the 1-9 on your survey really even mean?”

They told me that “anything below a 10 was a failure and they would seek to rectify such.”

That didn’t really answer my question so I again said, “essentially what’s the point of 1-9 then? Shouldn’t it just be pass/fail instead if you’re not allowing for an gradation in the evaluative process? I stated that I was happy with the work, it wasn’t a binary situation of either a 10 (happy) or everything else (sad). I wasn’t willing to just simply give 10’s and if you’re wanting to view this as a ‘failure’ then that is your option to do so.”

Getting back to the issue at hand, academics, the real solution, and the more difficult one, like the service issue I just reflected on, is to deflate the grade nationally across the spectrum. Allow for the shades in between a simple pass or fail structure. Faculty, managers, supervisors, whatever the case may be, must grade throughout the spectrum and be willing to give D’s and C’s for average work, and students must once again feel the need and work hard for the almighty A. If this is the case then the A can once again achieve something in it’s real meaning; being exceptional!

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When Does the Interview Actually ‘Begin?’ Part 1

March 19, 2014 Leave a comment

Watch what & when you speak!

Watch what & when you speak!

As we approach nearer the end of the spring semester, graduation looms for the nation’s college seniors.  This leaves many new potential entrants of the job market starting to examine and prepare for this annual transition and individual rite of passage.

The impending interviews will be out there waiting for many that have started to plant some seeds in their job search.  With that, the talk about when and where the interview actually begins becomes a topic for many career professionals and pundits.  Many say it is when you arrive the obligatory 10 or 15 minutes early before your slated time-slot.  Some say it’s once the handshake has taken place and a welcome into the office has been given. Many theories and opinions are bandied about.

Frankly, while all can be ‘true’ for the interview proper; the actual sit-down, face-to-face with your interviewer, the ‘rules’ for such, can be a bit misleading.  Anything that transpires within the actual framework of the interview, no matter how good, can be undone in a heartbeat after such when the employer starts to put in a little time to research your candidacy, with intent or not, and what you need to understand is that as a new job seeker, and for the future, your interview definitely does not start when you show up for a meeting! What many people fail to realize is that interviews begin even before the moment of contact is made with an organization as evidenced by the anecdote to follow.

When I was Director of Recruiting and Employer Relations for Mount Holyoke College’ Career Development Center there were many instances, but one in particular, when this really came to light.  We had a great recruiting program and many organizational and corporate ‘heavy-hitters.’ On this given day, one of the recruiters, who was from PriceWaterhouseCoopers, was up from NYC for a day of interviewing on-campus.  He had a full-day’s roster and was ready to vet some aspiring students.

In hearing he was to be on-campus for the day, his sister who was in the area and also happened to be an alumna of Mount Holyoke, had agreed to grab lunch together during his interviewing schedule break.  On a full-day 12 to 13 interviews could be conducted by a recruiter and our campus’ recruiting program was also open to other colleges in the area as we shared opportunities collaboratively.

On this day, like many other days, an aspiring senior from one of the neighboring institutions was on the interview roster and he just happened to be scheduled for the 11:30 slot just before the lunch break.  He did all the proper things for his interview. Was appropriately dressed, researched and well-prepared.  Was even about 20 minutes early before his interview and was planning to sit quietly and wind-down, which he did.

At 11:30, he met the interviewer, went in and ‘hit it out of the park!’  Great interview!  Great candidate!  Seemed really interested and knowledgeable and in addition, one who really wanted and was willing to learn.  Perfect, right?  The interview ends, he thanks his interviewer and off he goes as is practice.

In the interim, as the interview was being conducted, the PWC rep’s sister had also come a little early to meet her brother for lunch. While sitting there, she saw the candidate come out of the office and she hasked her brother, “did you just meet with him?”

He said, “yes, great, great candidate. Really nailed it.” “Why?”

Then she told him….

What no one realized at the time was that while he, the candidate, was walking across campus to get to the career center for his interview, on-time yet, he was chatting with his friend the whole way.  During this ‘chat,’ he had nothing good to say about this particular organization or the field in general and was just complaining the whole way about having to ‘work the machine.’
As she was scheduled to meet her brother for lunch and, also heading over early, she happened to be right behind this candidate AND his friend listening to the whole conversation along the way! She didn’t realize the context or the connection in the moment and he was unaware that forces in the world are indeed around him.

So, when she saw him come out of the interview, she connected the dots and put it all together; guess what she told said recruiter?  Yep, you guessed it!  She relayed all the negativity coming out of him that she heard on the way over to the interview.  Sadly, as great a candidate as he was, his chances of joining with that organization ended in that very moment!

Needless to say, he never did get that role or join PriceWaterhouseCoopers back then.  Sadly, also, was that he never knew the reason why an offer nor a continuation of consideration was not extended as many employers, even more so now, are reluctant to say anything in terms of feedback or criticism.

I thought this was a ‘teaching moment’ (I really dislike that term/buzz phrase) so I did later follow up with him to try to offer some clarity on the issue and the circumstances in particular which he was both oblivious to and very thankful for.  If nothing else, I am confident that he realized that the process can be much larger than it seems and the ‘six-degrees’ of separation are out there, watching you, working either with you or against you.  It’s up to you to decide how much help or hindrance they are to be though as every action, motion and on-line post is being watched and part of the over-all evaluation!

To all the aspiring new graduates, recent graduates and Millennials in general, keep the path traveled well-groomed and clean behind you as it will clear what’s in front of you too!

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