Archive for February, 2010
“How to Get Any Job: Life Launch and Relaunch for Everyone Under 30,” by Donald Asher (Ten Speed Press, 2002 & 2009) aims to advise college-aged people on their future careers. He structures workshops for the readers to figure out what they’re all about, throws in some anecdotes to support his workshops, and ties it all together with economic advice.
Asher recommends that we take our time now to figure out what we want, because we have yet to be indoctrinated in the “adult working world.” He says to hold out for an ideal opportunity, instead of taking what you can, and chastises us losers who live in our parent’s basements.
He has some good advice, but he didn’t realize how expensive housing would become (as compared to the book’s first printing in 2002), the growing unemployment rate, and the fact that most of today’s college kids have been in the “adult working world” since they were 14. The economy is changing, and here’s how to confront it:
1. Living as a team is the new recipe for success: Living in your parent’s basement isn’t the travesty it used to be. To save on funds, many grads are opting to live with their parents. You are no longer weird for wanting to save money!
2. Take what you can get: We typically want to start an actual career right out of college. But what do you do when people who have worked in your field for twenty years are suffering massive layoffs? There are also lapses in insurance to think about. You may want to think about having a “day” job with benefits, while you pursue your passion in your off time.
3. Get creative: Perhaps Asher was able to wait around for his career opportunities, but we can’t. If you want a job, sometimes you just have to invent one for yourself.
If you want a career, sometimes you have to invent your own path. Try taking more responsibilities on at your current job. For example, if you’re a future editor working at a minimum wage job, offer to edit the training manual. I know a fellow who works in data entry that just got a raise for using his IT knowledge. Otherwise, you can always contract your skills privately or start your own business
Today, many business leaders tend to believe that the most profitable way to operate is to establish a relationship with their customers. Marketers use terms like “connection strategy” to describe their attempts to satisfy their customers’ needs and develop loyalty.
Writers have it all over them, and have for a long time, at least based on the one focus group I conducted back when I was 16. I didn’t know anything about business strategy when I and my friends wrote fan letters to a number of people 
we admired back in the 70s. We were bored high schoolers, and our plan was to have a fabulous dinner party to liven up our small Connecticut town. We invited Woody Allen, Rudolph Nureyev, probably Bob Dylan and several other unlikely guests. No one showed up, which didn’t surprise us too much. But what was striking — and made the entire enterprise a huge success — was that all (and only) the writers replied.
I don’t think a single one was thinking overtly about “satisfying our needs” or “developing loyalty.” But they certainly did both, several with a simple postcard. John Updike answered with a question: were we surprised he wasn’t coming? Maurice Sendak had a little printed drawing of a dog on his. Paul Zindel, author of The Pigman and The Effect of Man in the Moon Marigolds, wrote back on blue stationery. Robert Penn Warren’s wife declined on his behalf, as did Thorton Wilder’s secretary. Best of all was the response from J.D. Salinger, who sent a handwritten rejection that called us ‘winsome’ girls. It couldn’t have been sweeter. And it sealed our loyalty, requiring not another word, for nearly 40 years.
As an author myself, I know that books are a strange combination: works of art that are sold as products. But I also know you get very far, in any field, if your connection with your customers is viewed solely as “strategy” cooked up in a corner office. It’s got to come from someplace more sincere and unstoppable – like a reflex — that is found deep inside.
Here’s one word of advice for college students thinking ahead to graduation and recent grads still looking for a job. And it’s not - as young Ben (Dustin Hoffman) was advised in the 1960s movie The Graduate - “plastics.” It’s “internship.”
While barely 30 percent of employers consider a college transcript useful when evaluating a recent graduate for employment, two-thirds of them would consider a supervisor’s assessment of an internship or community-based project “very” or “fairly” useful in evaluating their potential for success, according to a survey by Association of American Colleges and Universities. Be sure to keep copies of your positive evaluations and offer them as part of your packet of application materials.
Selecting an internship with a focus on science and technology, or one with an international flavor, can help a new graduate applying for a job stand out from his or her peers. The percentage of employers who want colleges to place more emphasis on these areas are 82 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
In addition to impressing prospective employers and gaining valuable experience, interning gives students a chance to examine a chosen career field from the inside out. Based on what they learn, they may decide to pursue a slightly different position, or even switch fields.
Those interested in moving to a new city may find that securing an internship before searching for a full-time job may make for a smoother transition.
Internships and co-op programs have become powerful recruiting tools for employers, according to research by The National Association of Colleges and Employers.
While budget cuts and downsizing have forced employers to hire fewer interns, the programs have become an important pipeline for new talent. Among the findings of the most recent NACE study, published in March 2009:
• About 35 percent of full-time entry-level college hires from the class of 2007-08 were from company internship programs.
• Employers extended offers of full-time employment to an average of 67.7 percent of their 2007-08 interns. More than four out of five of their offers, on average, were accepted, the highest intern acceptance rate NACE has reported since it began collecting data in 2001.
• Most internships (98.6 percent) are paid. The average hourly wage in 2008: $17.13.
This post was first published as a “Quick Study” column, available on philly.com and dozens of daily newspapers around the country.
Boredom can be tied to premature death. That’s reportedly the finding of two researchers at University College London, who will publish their study in April’s issue of the International Journal Of Epidemiology. They don’t point to boredom alone, but say it could be a sympom of other risky behavior such as drinking and smoking, according to this article by Maria Cheng of the A.P.
Boredom-may-be-an-early-killer
What really caught my attention were experts who say that “boredom is potentially as dangerous as stress.” This is yet another reason to add creativity to your job description. How can you shake things up? Turn things around, or just a little sideways? Even small attempts to do a routine task in a more productive or more enjoyable way, or both, can quite literally help you “earn your living.”
