Feature Article: The Career Doctor's Cures & Remedies to Quintessentially Perplexing Career and
Job-Hunting Ailments, Part 2
Special Feature: Quintessential Career Profile of Kerri Laman
A Quintet of Quick Questions: QuintZine's Q&A with a Career Expert: Ellen Mulqueen
Quintessential Reading: QuintZine's Review of Career Books
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
The Career Doctor: Answering Your Questions
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
This issue has a dual theme. We bring you several items aimed at groups traditionally
under-represented in the workforce -- women, the differently-abled, older workers, minorities,
and the formerly incarcerated.
We're pleased to bring you our second Career Profile. These profiles are special because they're the stories
of YOU, our readers. We hope you'll share YOUR story with us.
It's also the fourth anniversary of the Career Doctor, and the Doc provides the
second installment of his Cures and Remedies to Quintessentially Perplexing
Career and Job-Hunting Ailments, which is tantamount to 10 articles!
Take our "Real World" Survey and be Eligible for a Prize Drawing!
If you've graduated from college in the last three years or so, we encourage you to complete our quick, 12-question
Real World survey to assist us with a couple of upcoming articles. (You can be quoted completely anonymously if you choose).
Those who complete the survey by April 21, 2003, will be eligible for a drawing for a complete Resume or Resume
Makeover and Cover Letter Electronic Package (a value of up to $165) and from our sister site, Quintessential Resumes
and Cover Letters. Winner will be drawn at random on April 22, 2003.
The Career Doctor’s Cures & Remedies to Quintessentially Perplexing Career and Job-Hunting Ailments: Part II
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
Career Doctor/Career Coach Note: This month, Dr. Hansen celebrates his fourth anniversary of writing The Career Doctor
column. In that time he has written more than 100 columns, helping more than 400 job-seekers with their college, career,
and job-search problems. This article, the second in a series, addresses answers to common college, career, and job questions.
The Career Doctor writes: In the four years that I have been the Career Doctor, I have
received more than 1,000 emails from teens, from college students, from career changers, from older job-seekers. . .
in fact, from just about every type of person seeking advice about college, careers, job-hunting, or career advancement.
From all of these email questions seeking advice, I offer you my second list of 10 of the most common career and job-hunting
ailments -- and my cures and remedies.
hope you'll find the answer to your problem among these 10 career ailments, but if not, please feel free to send me
an email to the Career Doctor,
and then read my column while you await my response.
Finally, as you read these 10 questions and answers, please
remember that while I believe I offer the best advice to these questions, you should always seek multiple opinions
to your job-hunting problems. . . so, please take my career advice to heart, then take two aspirins and begin your
job-search anew in the morning!
Special Feature: Quintessential Career Profile
Having the courage to be at the right place at the right time pays career dividends for
blind-from-birth Kerri Laman
by Kerri Laman as told to Katharine Hansen
Kerri Laman has been blind since birth. "I was a premature
baby weighing only 1 lb., 7 oz.," says the 25-year-old,
who grew up in Colorado. Her earliest ambition was to be
a meteorologist. Up until her last year of college at
Colorado State University, she wanted to be a teacher
"until I figured out I didn't really want to teach kids
anymore," she recalls.
Kerri doesn't hesitate when asked who was the single biggest
influence on the direction of her career. "That is easy,"
she says. "The biggest influence was my first guide dog,
Gina. If I hadn't traveled to Columbus, OH, and Pilot Dogs
[a non-profit organization that trains dogs in a "seeing-eye"
capacity] to receive her, I wouldn't have discovered I liked
this city so much, and wouldn't have moved here to find a job!
So I owe it all to Gina!"
Read about the obstacles Kerri encountered as she planned to
move to Columbus and what happened next in our complete
Career Profile.
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Within minutes you'll be seen on Monster, HotJobs, FlipDog, Dice, CareerBuilder and more, where 1.5 million employers
and recruiters search for candidates daily.
In the Spring 2003, "Best of the Web" issue, here's what Forbes wrote about Quintessential Careers:
"Start your specialty job search here. Use the pull-down menu on the homepage to access annotated lists of job hunting
sites, sorted by industry. Choose from 15 groupings, which cover the gamut from business, legal and teaching to science,
architecture and sports. Site rosters are longest in technology (53 job sites, including workinwireless.com)
and healthcare (48, with listings as specific as podiatristjobs.com). Each hotlinked site is accompanied by
a helpful description of its areas of specialization, resources and fee/registration requirements. Check out the Job Sites
by Category page for sites devoted to "Cool, Unusual and Seasonal" job listings in national parks, resorts and the
like (lifeguardingjobs.com, anyone?). This full-service job-hunting site also offers a wealth of career content,
including articles, quizzes and tutorials."
This set of capsule reviews of career books targeted at women joins our collection of previously published
women's career book reviews.
In the introduction to her book, The Girls' Guide to Power
and Success, Susan Wilson Solovic observes: "Many people
have asked why I wanted to write a success book for women
when there are already so many on the market." Good question.
With so many success books out there for women, we decided
that uniqueness and originality of message should be a good
litmus test for the value of these books. Most career books
for women seem to espouse variations of the same basic set of
advice -- get educated; plan your career; tap into the Internet
(the great equalizer of power and information); take advantage
of your unique communication and networking skills; get a mentor;
be confident; promote yourself; and go into business for yourself.
So, as we reviewed this round of women's career books, we asked
the questions -- What's new? What's cutting edge? What unique
contribution does each book make to the body of knowledge women
need to get ahead?
Read all of our Quintessential Reading book reviews.
Ad: Get Help Mapping Out a New Career
Based on years of research, the Jackson Vocational Interest
Survey (JVIS) accurately measures your interests, showing how
they relate to the worlds of study and work, and mapping out
your route to an interesting career.
Ellen Mulqueen is a vocational counselor in the Department of Rehabilitation Services of The
Institute of Living, Hartford Hospital's Mental Health Network, Hartford, CT.
In a job interview, how should a job-seeker respond to any questions about mental competency/ability to
handle the pressures of the job? In our Q&A with her, Ellen Mulqueen says that the job-seeker should first
discuss the idea of returning to work with his or her therapist, caseworker, and/or career counselor to be sure
he/she can handle the pressures of a job, or consider some volunteer work or a job with few pressures until he or she
feels up to speed. "There should be no need to discuss mental health with most employers," Mulqueen notes. "Because of the
stigma and lack of knowledge about mental illness, I strongly recommend to my clients that they don't specifically mention
mental illness during the
job-search process. If the person has gaps because of mental health problems, he/she needs to be
honest but not necessarily detailed [in interviews]," Mulqueen says.
"If someone has been incarcerated, he/she needs to be able to discuss it in a positive way if asked. Many
employers do background checks or ask whether applicants were convicted of a crime; the client should be honest about
it, but give it the most positive spin possible," Mulqueen advises.
Read more of Mulqueen's advice, including sample responses for the above interview situations, the right way to network,
suggestions for excellent free/inexpensive career assessments, and why it takes time and work to land a job, in our
Q&A with her.
This excellent site offers the opportunity to search for jobs with diversity-committed employers,
resume posting, a free, customized resume and career-management tool including job-search agent, the opportunity
to research and learn more about diversity-sensitive employers, as well as news, tips, and tools for career-development needs.
The site encompasses an African-American Village, Asian-American Village, Hispanic-American Village, Native-American Village,
Women's Village, and Minorities' Global Village. It also includes channels for Graduate/Professional School, Information
Technology, Healthcare, and Legal.
Feature articles, daily news items, and a monthly newsletter also are offered.
IMDiversity is listed among the 50 Best of the Best job and resume Web sites by CareerXRoads.
Instantly email your resume to 1000s of recruiters,
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you will be happy that we guarantee our service!
Happy Fourth Anniversary, Career Doctor!
To celebrate, the Doc is offering his ninth set of
tips taken from Career Doctor columns. Watch for more
Career Doctor Tips to be added in the coming weeks, and
enjoy the latest set of tips.
Astro writes: "Should I write a follow-up letter after not receiving a response after an interview for almost
a month? If so, I need your help in writing a letter for that scenario. I browsed your site but
was unable to get any sample letter for such a situation."
Anonymous writes: "I accepted a job offer over the phone and now, a week later, I have decided that I do not want this
position after all. I am supposed to start next Tuesday, a week from now. How do I go about declining this offer now?"
N.C. writes: "I read with considerable interest your article on
Developing a Strategic Vision for Your Career Plan. After
reading it three or four times, I have some points for clarification and will be obliged if you can please clarify them for me.
1. Are career plans related to the
age of the individual? For example, I am close to 50, and our organization has a policy of retirement
at age 58. I am currently in the middle level of management. I have a master's degree besides professional banking certification. What
could be my vision for my career plan for next five years, and is there any possibility of long-term career planning at this juncture?
2. Given the increasing trend of employers to go in for persons who are young, what could be the opportunities within and outside the
organization for a person who is close to 50 now?"
Anonymous writes: "I need advice on what steps I would need to take if I am interested in becoming a sports psychologist.
I have an undergrad degree in international business. Would I need to get a master's in psychology in order to practice? Where
can I get some direction?"
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Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and
Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston
and Chicago and submitted multiple resumes from phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names
on the resumes, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among
whites. So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from
the same pool of want ads and had equivalent resumes. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women,
white women, black men, and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four resumes were
typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to
mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews. The results
are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were
those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7
percent of those with black-sounding names.
Within racial groups, applications with men's or women's names were equally likely to result in calls for interviews, providing little
evidence of discrimination based on sex in these entry-level jobs. Their most alarming finding is that the likelihood of being called for
an interview rises sharply with an applicant's credentials -- such as experience and honors -- for those with white-sounding names, but
much less for those with black-sounding names. A grave concern is that this phenomenon may be damping the incentives for blacks
to acquire job skills, producing a self-fulfilling prophecy that perpetuates prejudice and misallocates resources.
Created by psychologists at Yale University and the University of Washington, "Dig Deeper: Test Yourself For
Hidden Bias" is a collection of Implicit Association Tests (IAT) that measures unconscious bias. From the site: "We
invite you to test yourself and reveal what may be lingering in your psyche. Each test takes about five minutes, and your
privacy is protected -- no identifying information is collected or distributed. Your test results may disturb you -- more than
1 million tests have been taken, and the majority reveal unconscious bias."
Find the tests here. (Suggested by this issue's Q&A subject, Ellen Mulqueen.)
An aging workforce means that critical shortages of workers will emerge as baby boomers retire en masse, especially in such
fields as government, energy, manufacturing, and health care, reports The Five O'Clock Club. Knowledge transfer is just as
big a worry as not being able to find people to fill jobs. If 78 percent of the current workforce at the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission, for example, is out in five years, who'll be left running the shop and passing on knowledge about how things work?
No matter how smart younger workers may be, no matter how many
advanced degrees they may have, they can't be expected to run the shop if knowledge transfer has been neglected.
In many cases, it takes years to transfer the intricate knowledge at the core of business. The Five O'Clock Club says
every company must do four things to survive:
Change the attitudes and perceptions about mature workers.
Develop more effective structures to recruit and retain older workers.
Create training and development initiatives to level the playing field for all employees.
Build effective succession planning to enable knowledge transfer.
If your school, organization, business or other
entity has a Web site, we welcome you to link to Quintessential Careers.
If you already have a link from your site, we want you to know we
appreciate it. If you don't have a link to us, please
send a request to your site's Webmaster to establish a
link to Quintessential Careers. Thanks so much!
For more details (including sample HTML copy), see our
Link to Us page.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* The interview as sales call
* Getting the raise you deserve
* 10 things I wish I'd known before starting my first job
* Letters of recommendation
* Employer research: step by step
* Learn about careers through job-shadowing
* 10 job-search reality checks
* Is job flexibility right for you?
* First days on the job: Strategies to get ahead
* Dealing with a bad boss
* Making your case for telecommuting
* Don't wait by the phone: Following up on all job leads
* Dining etiquette
* The relationship between personality and career choice
* What employers are really looking for
* New series: 10 mistakes to avoid in: resumes, cover letters, interviews, salary
negotiation, career change, networking, job-search
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more!
Quintessential Careers also offers writing services
for those who have been asked to give a speech and
need assistance in researching and writing their
remarks.
Need a speaker for your career-oriented conference or
event at your college or organization? The Quintessential
Careers Speakers Bureau can help! Our quintessential experts
can provide presentations/workshops on a variety of
career-related topics.
To test whether employers discriminate against black job applicants, Marianne Bertrand of the University of Chicago and
Sendhil Mullainathan of M.I.T. conducted an unusual experiment. They selected 1,300 help-wanted ads from newspapers in Boston
and Chicago and submitted multiple resumes from phantom job seekers. The researchers randomly assigned the first names
on the resumes, choosing from one set that is particularly common among blacks and from another that is common among
whites. So Kristen and Tamika, and Brad and Tyrone, applied for jobs from
the same pool of want ads and had equivalent resumes. Nine names were selected to represent each category: black women,
white women, black men, and white men. Last names common to the racial group were also assigned. Four resumes were
typically submitted for each job opening, drawn from a reservoir of 160. Nearly 5,000 applications were submitted from mid-2001 to
mid-2002. Professors Bertrand and Mullainathan kept track of which candidates were invited for job interviews. The results
are disturbing. Applicants with white-sounding names were 50 percent more likely to be called for interviews than were
those with black-sounding names. Interviews were requested for 10.1 percent of applicants with white-sounding names and only 6.7
percent of those with black-sounding names.
