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Career, College

The College Hangover

June 17, 2009

As the alarm buzzes so begins the debate. The debate whether or not getting up and getting ready for class is really worth it. As you weigh your options you debate over the following: (a) You can skip class and get the notes from someone else or (b) go because your class grade depends on it. While the responsible choice is to go to class, not everyone is responsible.

For many recent college graduates, it appears that nothing has changed. You still want to sleep in and you don’t want to get up yet. The big difference is that if you decide to sleep in and ‘skip’ class you can’t just make up what you missed by getting the notes from a fellow classmate. Instead you are missing out on your future. While it is easy for many of us to just hit the snooze button, and sleep for what seems like an amazing 5 minutes, too often do recent college graduates carry over this mentality into life after college.

It what can be described as a sort of college hangover, what many fail to realize is that time waits for no one, and the sooner you can ‘sober’ up, the better. Reminiscing about all the good times you had during college is great, but it is even more important to look toward the future. Continue Reading…

College

College: Name Brand or Generic?

March 29, 2009

When you go to fill your prescriptions one of the first decisions you have to make is whether to go for the name brand or generic drug. While most may say that their is a huge difference, if you ask a doctor if their is, they will tell you their really isn’t. Just like with medicine, everyday brings new choices, and among those choices is whether to choose the name brand, or the run of the mill generics.

Currently, we are recruiting talent college students to be part of our Entrepreneurship Internship Program. For our internship program we listed at the top 50 schools across the nation. After interviewing many students who are interested in the program, I began to think how big of a role a college’s name has to do with getting a job. On a resume, one of the first things that you list is where you went to school. For my own personal opinion, if someone wrote down on their resume that they went to the best school in the nation, I would be impressed. But the question I asked myself was why? While I didn’t want to create a bias against other applicants, it is hard to not to have some expectations of the applicant. Still, the interview proved to me that a college’s name can only get you so far.

The applicant that I interviewed was anything but stellar and made me realize that ‘brand names’ are just a name. The applicant was incoherent during the interview and was obviously unprepared. No matter what your resume says, your resume cannot speak words nor can it tell others why you should get the position. After having more interviews that resulted in the same way I began to think if we were targeting the right colleges. As a startup company you face many big decisions, one of which is finding the right personnel to join your company. If you think of your company as a boat, then your employees are the propeller that moves you.
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Career, College, Economy

Who Says You Can’t Find A Job?

March 23, 2009

One of the most common complaints that people have is that they just can’t find a job. Largely, if not entirely due to the economy, unemployment is at an all-time high and more and more individuals are finding themselves at home. Many of my friends have told me that they have applied to several jobs only to never hear back from them. So what is the problem here? When people say that they can’t get a job, the first thing I ask them is “where have you looked for a job?”

Saying that you can’t find a job should mean that you have tried every possible job opening available and still can’t get an offer. What most people mean when they say is that they can’t get a job is that they can’t get a job they feel they are best qualified for. Take for example the recent college graduate. After 4 years of hard work, they would expect to be rewarded with a full time job that somehow justifies their hours of studying and hard work. In reality, because of the economy many recent college graduates are finding themselves unemployed and back at home.

Graduating college, you come away with some expectation of what life post-college would be like. You expect to have a job that you have prepared for all during college and expect to have some sort of ‘plan.’ With the economy the way is though, you should expect nothing and should be ready to change your ‘plans’ at any moment. The point I am trying to make is that Yes, you should apply to all those jobs that you feel you should get but that you should also be flexible in the jobs you apply for. Just because you were an accounting student in college doesn’t mean you can’t apply for jobs you are overqualified for or out of your focus.
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Career, College

Why You Should Do An Internship

March 2, 2009

Recently, a friend of mine who is a senior in college told me of the situation they are in. With just a couple months remaining before they graduate, they are scrambling to find a job. After spending months sending out resumes and going to career fairs, they have gotten very few interviews and no job offers. My friend, like so many others who are soon to graduate are worried that after 4 years of sleepless nights studying and hours thinking if they were in the right major, that it may all have been for nothing. While it is an exaggeration to say that it has been for nothing, to some that is what it feels like. The best way to describe this could be through an analogy. Imagine you are training to be a pilot. After four years of training and hard work, imagine now that airplanes have become obsolete. Would it not feel like you had spent all that time for nothing? This is the same kind of feeling that some of my friends have expressed.

For those of you that are in the situation where you are graduating soon and are unable to find a job, the question that you must think about now is “What will I do next?” My advice is to find an internship. Speaking to a friend of mine who works at a career center, they told me that one of the common reasons that students don’t apply for internships is that they assume that internship’s are a waste of time and that it is just ‘grunt’ work with no pay. While this may be true in some situations, it is not entirely correct.

The main difference between internship positions and full-time/part-time job positions is that internship programs generally don’t pay their participants. Instead, interns are usually offered school credit. In some situations, interns actually get paid for their work. Now that I said that, I must recommend that to anyone who is looking for a job just to pay the bills and to strictly make money, not to take an internship.

Internship programs are offered as a learning experience for individuals who are interested in learning more about a career path they are interested in. This is one of the best parts of an internship. Unlike jobs where you are expected to have a somewhat firm understanding of the work, internship programs teach you the in’s and outs of the job. If you are a college student, internships are a great opportunity because of the flexibility that many companies offer. Companies know that most interns are balancing work and school, so they always want to make sure that school comes first. When you have a job, they worry only about your performance in the work place, not how you did on your chemistry test.

For college students, one of the biggest issues when applying for a job is the lack of experience that they have. There are two ways to address this. The first is to identify this early on while you are in college. As a freshman all the way through your junior year of college you should be attacking every internship opportunity that comes your way so that you develop the skills and experience for when you are going for that full time job offer. If you are already a senior in college and realize that you don’t have the experience then the best strategy that you can do is to jump into an internship right now. With the economy not helping the job hunt, college graduates with no experience are facing an uphill battle. With companies looking to save money, many are more than willing to give students a chance to earn some experience in exchange for course credit. In some situations, some companies don’t even require students to get course credit for their internship.

The biggest advantage I think that students can get from doing an internship is getting their foot in the door with an organization they are interested in getting a full time job offer with. For interns that are dedicated and work hard, they are sometimes rewarded with a full time job offer at the end of the program. I myself was able to get a full time offer from Future Delivery upon completion of their internship program and am currently working with them to promote and build fun and creative tools for students and young professionals.

For any student or young professional that is looking to get into an internship program here are some tips and advice that I learned during my internship program:

  • Email Etiquette


    • One of the key things that students forget when writing to recruiters and employers is that they are not your friend. Using instant messaging lingo like “lol” and “thx” are not acceptable. Remember that everything from how you address others to how you structure your emails reflects what kind of applicant you are.


  • Cater Your Resume


    • A common mistake that most students make when applying to an internship is that they send the same resume that they would send to a full-time job position. While this is okay, it is helpful to cater a resume to the learning aspect of an internship and also to list relevant experience or coursework that relates to the internship.


  • Time Management


    • As mentioned earlier, internship programs are very flexible and understand that you are still in school. Still, this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to go to meetings because you would rather go to a party. Internship programs want to choose candidates that want to learn and be there, not students that want just want to get credit for it. Remember that just like a full-time job, companies will cut you from their internship program at anytime.


  • How To Find An Internship Position


    • Many schools have their own job listing database that employers will list their internship programs on. I highly suggest that you start your job search here. This is the main hub that companies will list their programs on because students are their main target for internship programs. Another tip I would suggest is that even though a company doesn’t have an internship position posted online, it never hurts to call their human resources and ask them if they have an opportunities for students. It is hard to turn down a students desire to learn.

Using an analogy one more time, an internship program can be thought of as training wheels for your career. Given the option of jumping on a bicycle with no prior training or the option of jumping on a bicycle with training wheels, which would you choose? I’d take training wheels any day.