Feature Article: Job-Hunting Lessons from the Street: A Roundup of Recent College Grad Experiences
Quintessential Reading: QuintZine's Review of Career Books
Quintessential Site: Featured Career Web Site of this Issue
The Career Doctor: Answering Your Questions
What's New on Quintessential Careers: Latest Additions
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Tips to Guide Your Job Search
Notes from the Editor: About this Issue...
The themes of our QuintZine issues have changed over its five-plus-year
history, but a consistent theme each year has been our College Grad issue, which
celebrates the initial role of Quintessential Careers as a resource for publisher Dr. Randall
Hansen's own marketing students at Stetson University. In this, the year of QuintCareers'
10th anniversary, we enjoy looking back at our history and success stories.
One such success story is the record-breaking number of visits that Quintessential Careers enjoyed in
March: More than 4.7 million page impressions from a record 1.27+ million unique visitors. We
also became the 8th most visited employment site (up from 9th), according to Alexa, a service that offers
user traffic rankings for each Web site link it offers.
We continue to add more content that job-seekers find valuable, making QuintCareers the most comprehensive career site
on the Web. We also strive to improve the site to be as reader-friendly for our visitors as possible with, for example,
our implementation of printable articles.
We're celebrating these successes and many more in this 10th anniversary year, and we invite you to take
a peek at our 10th anniversary site, 10CareerStories.com,
as it develops and culminates in our big November festivities.
--Katharine Hansen, Master Resume Writer, Credentialed Career Master,
Certified Electronic Career Coach, and editor at
kathy@quintcareers.com
Feature Article: Recent Grad Stories
Job-Hunting Lessons from the Street: A Roundup of Recent College Grad Experiences
by Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D.
A word to you college seniors as you hit the pavement (real or virtual) in your quest for the ideal job upon graduation:
the road you travel on may be as smooth as the best superhighway or as full of ruts as that country dirt road -- and you won't know
which until you begin your journey, so if you've been delaying your job-search now is the time to hit the road.
And to help you on your journey, the team at Quintessential Careers asked a number of recent college graduates -- all graduated in the
past year -- to tell their stories. These are stories filled with every emotion you may feel on your road to success, including frustration,
joy, anger, happiness, resentment, elation, contentment, fulfillment, longing.
Besides being a journey, job-hunting is work. It takes many, many hours of assessing, preparing, researching, networking, interviewing,
and negotiating before you get that job offer you desire. When should you start your job-search? Ideally the beginning of your senior year.
If you are in no rush, or plan to take the summer off to travel, then starting after you graduate is okay, too. Just remember that for
most of us, a job offer won't be immediately forthcoming.
As you read the stories in our full article
and begin your journey, you'll find a quick overview (with links to tools and articles with much more depth) of
what your job-search should entail.
In some ways, this book is the perfect read for college students, perhaps a must-read for younger
and more inexperienced college students. Hello Real World! is full of great internship and job-search
advice and tips while being short enough to read and digest in one sitting. Probably every student
will learn at least a few tips -- or be reminded of one they should know.
The book, reviewed in full here,
reads like an insider's guide to getting and succeeding in internships (with some job-hunting after
graduation also thrown in). And there's a good reason for why the book feels that way as the author tells
of her experiences in finding and landing three paid, full-time internships with three different
Fortune 100 companies.
This job and internship site for college students and recent college grads enables
you to post your resume or search for job openings by job type, industry, type of work, location, and
keyword. It also includes some basic career resources, such as tools to research salaries,
cost of living, student loan help, and working abroad.
AfterCollege maintains an exclusive network of more than 1,300 partnering academic
departments and student groups, as well as a proprietary database of 15,000+ faculty
and student group contacts at the nation's top universities. Through its network,
AfterCollege delivers targeted employer content to a diverse
audience of students. These students range from undergraduates
to PhDs, 95 percent of whom have bachelor's degrees or higher
and 84 percent having GPAs of 3.0 or above.
Ad: Start Your Job-Search Right with a New Resume!
Quintessential Resumes & Cover Letters is now providing solutions
with unmatched quality in the areas of career planning, professional resume writing, and interviewing, having
successfully helped tens of thousands of clients, from executives through individuals beginning a career,
succeed in their career goals.
Pete writes: "With my college graduation staring me in the face, I am concerned about landing that perfect job.
I thought by now that I would already have one or more job offers as some of my
friends have had. I am facing the prospect of no job upon graduation. I sort of do have one offer,
from one of my internships, but I did not really have a great experience there and kind of want
and deserve something better. Should I take the job? Should I hold out? Should I move back
home in defeat?"
Julie writes: "I was fired from a job last December (2005). My employer and I had personality conflicts, and she labeled me
a negative person. At the time I was not angry at her for firing me. I didn't really care. However, I have had leads for
several good jobs and have filled out applications for them knowing I was qualified, have had several interviews,
but am still unemployed. I have put on the application for reason for leaving 'will explain in interview.' I
do not know what else to do. How do you explain a personality conflict without sounding like a whiner?
How do I find out what the previous employer is telling prospective employers? How long does a past
employer count?"
I interviewed at a major pharmaceutical company where
I was initially contacted
by a recruiting manager requesting my availability. After my first set of interviews,
the hiring manager's administrative assistant emailed me for availability to meet with
2 additional people. I went back 2 days later. Then 2 days after that, a recruiting
consultant contacted me asking for my availability for an additional round of interviews.
It's been 3 days since I sent that email and have received no response; I also left
him a voicemail. I want the hiring manager and recruiting manager to know that
I am interested in the position. Should I follow up with the people that interviewed
me as well as the recruiting manager or just wait for some type of reply from the
recruiting consultant?
Jay writes: "Dr. Hansen, I love your column, so please help me. I am a male in my mid 40s I have had
the same blue-collar job for several years now. I want a career change and am trying to go back
to school for training in pursuit of my new career. The job will consist of working with either city or
county government. My problem is I served in the navy 20 years ago, five years with honor, but my last year I made
a couple of big mistakes and received a bad conduct discharge. Should I leave this off my resume, or
be honest up front? Does the city check on military background? Thank you for any help."
CareerGear --
a non-profit organization dedicated to helping low-income men and men struggling to get off public
assistance to obtain and keep jobs by providing men with interview clothing, motivation and
follow-up support that helps them get and keep jobs. Donations of suits (and more) accepted.
No cost to job-seekers.
ColorsNWCareers.com --
a top diversity site for job-seekers in the Northwest, where job-seekers
can search job listings, post your resume, register for a job-search agent,
and find great career advice. From the publishers of ColorsNW Magazine.
No cost to job-seekers.
EHSCareers.com --
a job site for environmental, safety, and industrial hygiene professionals, where you can
search job listings and post your resume. Also includes a great collection of industry and career resources.
No cost to job-seekers.
LocalJobs.com --
a job-search site for job-seekers looking for employment in the Greenville/Spartenburg/Anderson, SC,
and Asheville, NC, areas, where job-seekers can search job postings (by keyword, industry, location, type)
post your resume, and register for a job-search agent. No cost to job-seekers.
Find even more career and job site additions to Quintessential Careers by visiting our
Latest Additions section.
Q TIPS: Quick and Quintessential Career & Job Tips
The largest percentage of 1,200 respondents to a recent survey conducted by CollegeGrad.com
said that finding a job in their major is the most important consideration when deciding which job
offer to accept, placing finding the right type of job well ahead of other considerations,
including salary and location.
College students often spend a great deal of time and effort deciding on their college degree, including
sometimes switching majors multiple times, or dedicating their first two years of college testing out
their likes and dislikes, finally finding the best fit for their skills and personal strengths. Once a student has declared
the major that he or she will graduate with, it's usually something he or she has a vested interest in and
wants to pursue. Following are the overall survey results:
What's most important to you when choosing your first job?
Finding a job in my major: 34.2 percent
A high salary: 26.6 percent
Location: 14.6 percent
Making a difference: 12.7 percent
Company culture: 11.9 percent
For new college graduates looking to enter the work force, participating in an internship is likely to
be even more important in the future than it is now, according to a study published by
the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
Nearly 1,000 college career services and HR/staffing professionals
who participated in NACE's study cited internships as an important
issue now; when asked about the importance of such programs
in the future, both college and employer respondents said internships
would be even more important.
Employers rated the current importance of "identifying talent early"
through internships and similar programs at 4.2, and rated its future
importance at 4.6, moving such programs toward the "extremely important"
end of the rating scale.
Complimentary copies of the 24-page
"The Future of College Recruiting and Hiring Executive
Summary,"
are available here
or through the home page of
NACE's web site.
From USNews.com: Those new to the job market may wonder why an employer would want a
new graduate, with so little real-world experience. For several reasons. As somebody fresh out of school,
you probably have plenty of energy and time, so you're less likely to balk when your boss gives
you a project that requires extra hours.
Your technical skills are probably more current than those of someone who has been out of
school for a couple of decades. And you're cheap: You probably cost half of what a
45-year-old expects. Even your inexperience can be a plus because an employer
needn't rid you of the "bad habits" you learned from your previous employer.
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.
Need a career expert for a story or article you're working on? Searching for college,
career, and job news? Interested in learning more about Quintessential Careers?
Our Press Room
is your one-stop location for getting the information and resources you need.
QuintZine: Topics in Upcoming Issues
WATCH FOR feature articles on these topics in upcoming
issues of QuintZine:
* 6-Figure Jobs
* Deploying Intuition to Find Your Ideal Career
* GLBT Job-search Issues
* The Demand for Good Writing Skills
* Annual College Admissions Panel
* Alternatives to College
* Storytelling that Propels Careers
* Annual Career Doctor Compendium
* The Value of Internships Abroad and Study Abroad
* Top 10 Fears of Job-seekers
* For Job-hunting Success, Develop a Detailed Job-Search Plan
* How to Build a Personal Advisory Board
* Keep Your Career Dreams Alive
* MBA Career Portfolios
* Pre-Hire Background/Credit Checks
* Noncompete Clauses
* Financial Aid/Scholarship Timetable
* Build Confidence and Avoid Insecurity in Job Interviews
* Empty Nest Job-seekers
* Are You Sabotaging Your Job-Search/Career?
* Lifelong Networking
* Networking for the Shy
* Working Night Shifts/Odd Hours
* Quintessential Career Profiles of YOU, our readers
* Q&As with well-known career experts
* Book reviews
. . . and much, much more... including Quintessential Careers' 10th Anniversary!
