Career Chat

CareerBuilding just came out with their new list of common and some unusual interview mistakes, and some of their unusual examples were rather weird. (“Tossing his beer can in the outside trashcan before coming into the reception office”? Whited-out diploma?)

But the main reason I’m writing is because of the interview reminders included at the end.

• Keep it upbeat
• Prepare, prepare, prepare
• Keep it professional, not personal
• Practice does make perfect
• Honesty is the best policy

You can read the whole CareerBuilder article at CareerBuilder.

Adrian Ackerman of Briefcases Direct, LLC e-mailed us with information about “Dress For The Job You Want“, a 50 page book that is totally free to download. It’s full of tips on how to dress professionally, as well as the importance of interview attire for the type of position you seeking.

Sorry ladies – this book is directed at the guys.

We just had an information session from the Student Conservation Association (SCA) who has amazing expense-paid internships in a wide variety of fields.

As a history nut, I was particularly drawn to their “Cultural Interpreter” and “Historical Educator” internships, as those at archeological sites. Oh, and then there were ones for GIS and GPS…..and so on. Interns work with agencies such as the National Park Service, National Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and other state or local agencies.

And not only are the internships expense paid opportunities, they also offer a lot of other benefits. Check them out at thesca.org.

Avoid the automatic “REJECT” pile by paying attention to these 10 common resume mistakes.

The Don’ts

1. Don’t forget your name and contact information at the top of your resume! Make sure that this extremely important information is easy to read.
2. Don’t state that your MS Word skills are excellent and then go on to clearly demonstrate your LACK of skills by using the space bar to indent, dates that don’t line up, or use a “resume builder” product.
3. Don’t state that you have excellent business correspondence skills on your resume and then send it with a cover letter that is not in any acceptable business letter format.
4. Don’t rely on spellcheck! Have someone proofread your resume to make sure you are using correct grammar, consistent punctuation and no typos. If you aren’t certain of an adjective, look it up! An employer delighted to learn you have proficient MS Word skills might raise an eyebrow if you declare you have efficient MS Word skills.
5. Don’t use narrative paragraphs to describe your experience. Use bullet points on your resume to describe your work experience.
6. Don’t include your “responsibilities” or what you learned as work experience. Use action words to tell the employer what you did, how you did it, and what the results were.
7. Don’t overlook your valuable volunteer experience! Include it, along with any other meaningful experiences that demonstrate your experience and skills.
8. Don’t just guess what a resume looks like or includes. Download or pickup a copy of the Career Development Center’s Resume Guide.
9. Don’t forget that the career advisors in the Career Development Center would love to help you with your resume and cover letter! Drop by during our WalkIn hours for a resume or cover letter critique. WalkIn hours this semester are Mondays-Fridays, 1:30-3:30 at the Sullivan Center Room 295, LSC and Mondays & Thursdays, 1:30-3:30 in Room 705, Corboy Law Center (25 E. Pearson), WTC.

Did you ever try to search a jobsite with the phrase “any job”? Anything pop up?

How many of you feel that if you are willing to take any job, it will make your job search easier? Quite a few, I’m sure. It’s a very common misunderstanding of the job search process.

That’s because what employers REALLY want is someone interested in THEIR specific and THEIR specific company. In this economy, why would they want to settle for just ANY candidate?

It’s really important to know the type of career or jobs you are interested in. Now more than ever, you want to customize your cover letter to let an employer know how much you want to work at their organization and how you are a perfect match for their advertised job.

My daughter recently almost didn’t get a dream career-starting internship, because in the interview, didn’t state that she saw herself with the XYZ company 5 years from then. Luckily they were really interested in her and gave her a second chance to explain. Companies like to think that THEY are your future.

If you aren’t certain about your career or job choices, if you don’t know how to write a good customized cover letter, if you don’t feel confident you can “sell” yourself to an employer in an interview, contact your Career Development Center for an appointment to get some help with this.

Every now and then, I accept employer job or internship postings into our RamblerLink system that really excite me because they are so different. The Red Cross has just posted three internships that really grabbed my attention:

Disaster Health Services Intern
Health and Safety Events Intern
Outreach Team Coordinator

While each one requires a commitment of 300 hours (15-20 per week) with a stipend of $500 so they wouldn’t be right for everyone, take a look at the descriptions, responsibilities and imagine what you could take away in terms of experience.

I attended an great conference last weekend for people who use the open source software WordPress to create websites and blogs. Many, MANY of the attendees were people who essentially blog for a living. They work as independent contractors who set up and manage blogs for companies, bringing their marketing and PR efforts into the wonderful world of social and digital networking.

RamblerLink has received a number of generally unpaid internships seeking candidates to do the whole web presence for companies and organizations. While caution is urged in making sure that your free labor could pay off in gaining valuable experience, networking, and a potential salary, if you are interested and marketing or PR and enjoy blogging, check out some of the RL listings. Search by Job Function Digital/Social Media.

            In my short time working with career conscious college students, I have come to notice one thing above all else, when asked about a possible career most students tend to repeat their majors at me. I ask them what they want to be when they grow up, and they say that they want to do something in sociology or history. Hey, these are good choices but that is plain vague. What is a career in sociology or history? Or you can even take it a bit further, what is a career as a doctor? These answers may be great for a family gathering but they are not really careers, they are more like majors or fields. The ideas are big and when you actually have to live these ideas out in the world, you are going to have to shrink them to something that fits you. There is nothing wrong with wanting to do work in sociology, history, or a medicine but figuring out what that can mean for your future can be far trickier. In this blog I hope to provide a couple of tips to shrink your big ideas about the future into more concrete ideas.

Tip 1: The Career Development Center Website is your friend

                Type in the URL: www.luc.edu/career. This site is not some back alley webpage on the Loyola site. This is where exploration of your field and future can get started. Click on “Career Planning” under the “Current Students” heading and you will see a variety of options to start. I personally recommend starting with “What can I do with a major in”. This is the very question many students have so why NOT start here. After clicking you will see a long list of majors linked to a PDF document describing majors’ areas, employers, and strategies. For many this alone will be a miracle document, but we have only scratched the surface.

Tip 2: Government Statistics are not entirely boring

I’ll be honest with you, I hate stats. The class was ok but come on, it was work with numbers and generally numbers and I don’t get along. Thankfully the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics did all the hard work for us, so lets take advantage. Now that you have your PDF document better describing possibilities in your major, you can research what that all means. For this example I clicked on Accounting because I have no real clue what they do, stupid numbers, but the document listed things like budget analysis and financial management.

 The next thing you can do is go to the Occupational Outlook Handbook, this is where those government statistics are kept for us to look over. There are two ways to arrive at the Outlook Handbook. One, the Loyola Career website has a link to it and a list of other career databases under the heading of “Career Reference Sites” after first clicking the “Resource Links” tab. The second and possibly easier way to find these government stats is by googling “OOH” and clicking on the first search option. Having found the site, you can type in any jobs you found on your PDF. I typed in “budget analysis” and found information on the nature of the work, job outlook, training/qualifications, and even something I am sure no one will have any interest in: wages. Another link you will find on this page is about related fields, the beginning of yet another trail to follow.

Tip 3: “Get” a job

            This next tip tends to be a little more fun because it is a window to the world you are going to step into. At this point you have position titles and information of what they are, this next step makes the process real. All the information you have found still resembles big ideas, doing a search on a job search engine will push you out of the “concept” department and into the “wow, I can get PAID for that” department. I recommend searching for a job on Indeed.com, this website pulls from all the other job sites like Careerbuilder, Jobfox, and Monster. The goal at this point is not necessarily to get a job. This exercise is more about looking at what the real world has to offer. You can find specific employers and their requirements. You can search by salary and location so you can start building real concrete ideas about what real people are doing in your field.

These tips can provide real answers but they are not going to solve all of your career problems. Maybe you will find a dream job that you want to work toward or maybe you will find that further exploration will be of more benefit. Either way, your future career is no longer a general idea and you now know how to research any and all career ideas you might have in the future.

I recently read an interesting piece at TechRepublic.com about why you need to use bullets in your resume and in other important communications. In this 30-second sound bite world, you may have already skipped this paragraph and gone right to the bullet points. For example, let’s pretend this is quiz and my instructions in this paragraph are that you should not take the quiz.

True or False:
• Bullets draw one’s eyes directly to a key point.
• Bulleted items on a resume should be short – even short paragraph is too long.
• Bulleted items should always be a complete sentence.
• Bullet points should be limited to 6 items or less
• It is important that bullets line up

Please scroll down to score your answers.

Answers to the Quiz:
Items 1, 2, 4, and 5 are true; item 2 is false.
Score yourself 5 for each item you didn’t answer. Score yourself 0 for each correct answer and 0 for each incorrect answer and re-read the instructions in the initial paragraph.

Now pretend you are a busy employer reading a batch of resumes. See why bullet points are so important? For more, read the entire article The Lost Art of Paying Attention in TechRepublic.com.

As the calendar finally turns to March, there are many things to look forward too. There’s spring break, warm weather, the end of the school year and to a lesser degree searching for jobs and internships. Recently at the Career Development Center (CDC) we’ve had a wave of students coming in for resume/cover letter assistance in preparation to begin their job search.

Everywhere we look we hear the same thing about the economy and job outlook for the recent grads and future grads. To sum it up IT MAY NOT BE THE BEST TIME ENTER THE WORK FORCE! But fortunately at the CDC, we can hopefully provide you with some of the tools to enhance your job search. First, for the seniors, juniors, and even sophomores, if you’re not a member of linkedin please join after reading this. This website is a great way to start creating new professional relationships and to give yourself more visibility. What if I don’t have any professional friends? Well, start with your professors and add your friends, you will be surprised how quickly your network will grow.

http://www.linkedin.com/

Another effective way to network is to join a professional organization. Once you indentify your major and/or career, start looking for organizations to join. As students, you will get a great discount ($30-$50) for a year. There are organizations for basically every job out there. The great thing about joining the professional organizations is that they will give you access to job boards, and offer the chance to go to national conferences… A great way to network with individuals in the field of you choice!

Finally, come to the CDC to find out about how to conduct an informational interview. This is a highly effective method, and has the potential result in a direct referral or at the very least making a new connection. From now to the end of the school year, every week you should be taking steps towards expanding your network to increase the chances of landing the job/internship that you desire.. And don’t forget to stop by the CDC!