Contact!

Just as I was beginning to give up on my boss and start job hunting again he called. Of course he called at the worst possible moment, and my sister accidently said I wasn’t home, but we did manage to speak. Since this is my first job in quite a long time, I’m a bit out of practice with official phone calls. I kept saying, “sounds good” as I did not know what else to day. He is an author living in Manhatten and I will be helping to edit and research for him. I want to be a writer himself so this is a great opportunity to see how getting a book published works. He is also willing to look over my writing and help me establish contacts in the writing business. Another great thing is that he’ll write me reccomendations for future jobs! My birthday is this weekend so I cannot meet him until next weekend. We decided on a time, but no place yet since I’m not too familiar with Manhatten. I’ll have to ask friends and possibly have him choose the spot if I can not. The other problem is transportation, but I can figure out the bus and train schedule and make it work.

Networking Pt. 2: Professional – In college

It is common knowledge among all those who pay attention to the hype of job searching that networking is important. Various agencies and faculties are at our disposal in order to build our network. This is the second part in a series of entries which will step through the journey I have undergone to build my network. I promised to point out steps along the way where networking opportunities were not utilized. Mostly to please Yupward Girl (the author of HELLO REAL WORLD! A Student’s Approach to Great Internships, Co-ops, and Entry Level Positions), this entry will be concerned with interships and other various methods of gaining workplace experience. I will attempt to explain both their potential and my reasons for not participating in any… until now, of course.

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Ability and Tenacity

About three years ago, I had the link to a New York employment discrimination case. A young woman, who is a congenital amputee, desired to go into medicine. Her first step in preparing for her medical career was to become an EMT (emergency medical technician) more commonly known as ambulance attendant or paramedic. She passed all parts of the employment tests except the strength test. After going through a rigorous training regimen, she retook the test and passed it. She ws still denied employment with the hospital where she applied, but another hospital did hire her.
What was enthralling about this case was when the judge asked her if she considered herself disabled or unable to do the work. Her matter of fact reply was, “I can do anything I want to do.” The other significant part of this story is that the candidate refused to use a prosthetic device. Instead she learned to adapt to her condition and, quite literally, do whatever she wanted without assistance.

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The Edge and How I Know I’ve Reached It

Though this is my first entry it has certainly not come too soon. I graduated a year ago in May and my job search has not been easy. I left my job as a bartender to get some 9-5 experience, or rather 8:30-5:30 experience.
I got a job 7 months ago as an administrative assistant at a local car dealership. I’d never worked in an office before so I thought a couple months of filing and answering phones would be good for me. I was promoted after 3 weeks to title clerk. I thought this was great! I have worked very hard for the last 6 months and have reaped the benefits, kind of. My supervisor loves me! She can’t give me enough to do. In the last year this dealership has been through 6 title clerks. They struck gold with me. A college education with no experience to back it up! Jackpot! My pay is just not high enough to support my work load anymore. I have a $30,000 education and I am still below the poverty line in an industry that I have no interest in growing with. I have no money saved up, I don’t make enough money to save, and I haven’t got the time during the day to find another job.
So where do I go from here? I haven’t figured that out yet either. I suppose this can be the beginning of my new journey. The inevitable moral of this story is to do well in school and participate in as many extra-curricular activities as possible. For those of us who have to work to pay our way through college there just isn’t time to take unpaid internships or join clubs. I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place and now I have to figure a way out.

A View of the Future for Writing Career Aspirants

Last week gave me breathing time to actually read content instead of glossing over headlines and, if there was the luxury, teasers. Last week I actually found an article quite pertinent to some of our blogging candidates. It has to do with the state of newspapers, their possible direction in light of falling subscriptions, and a few suggestions on what steps to take to survive the industry evolution.

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50 Best Undergrad Business Colleges

This is a first. Business Week has their 50 and 100 best of employers and several other categories of business and education notables (typically MBA aka “B” schools). But this week, BusinessWeek published a first. They have a PDF chart available that shows the survey results of how undergraduate business schools were ranked by current students.

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Do We Have Contact?

It has been sometime since my last entry and that is because my internship seems to be at stalemate. This sounded like the perfect internship and a wonderful writing experience. The problem is I was hired over a month ago and I have yet to meet the guy. I have e-mailed him several times, long e-mails asking questions about the job and hoping to meet. He has responded with e-mails saying “pls call” with his number at the bottom. And I have called. Many times. Each time I get an automated service without the phone even ringing. I leave a message stating my name, number and good times to call me back. He called back once about 2 hours before i said. I am currently in college so it is hard to establish contact. The best way to communicate with me is probably through e-mail, but he seems EXTREMELY reluctant to do so. I wanted to get a head start on this job before summer started and it would be the only thing I do. It’s a 20 hour a week internship which I don’t get paid for, which is probably why I was hired since it is difficult and time consuming. The fact that he is so hard to speak to is making me a bit nervous about taking the job. He does not seem very reliable, but as the days pass by I lose the chance of taking another job or internship.

Ummmmmm . . . . enough already!

Is, um, everybody, um, ready to, ummmm, read a short entry, um, that’s about something, um, we’ve all been told not to do a countless amount of, um, times.
Helpful tip alert – stop saying “um” so much, no matter where you are because you will come off as a more professional person. Watch them especially during an interview. Read that first sentence again – wasn’t that extremely annoying just reading it?
The annoying awkward silence-filling phrases are extremely distracting while listening to students (and sometimes professors) who aren’t even aware they do it. Just like an alcoholic or a person addicted to Twinkies, the first step in correcting the problem is recognizing you’re doing it. But if I, a mere Journalism and Communication senior student, can recognize the over usage of “ums,” then imagine what employers think while interviewing. They might think you aren’t a good communicator or that you might not be able to work with people or think on your feet enough if “um” is popping out of your mouth every couple seconds.
You could have the most fabulous credentials in the world, but if your job requires communication, then the employer might not hire you because of the way you speak. I’ve had many acquaintances who go in for job interviews and have no idea what went wrong, but I think a lot of those rejections are caused by not only not being prepared, but by not being able to communicate efficiently. Remember everybody, you don’t have to spurt out an answer right away – some silence is good; it shows that you think before you speak.
Watch the ums in your life; you never know where they’ll pop up, whose ears they’ll invade, or how they can affect your career.

The Temps

I’m a student worker at a housing office for a university (the one i am attending) and my office, having gone through a few months of turmoil and turnover has finally settled for hiring two temps to fill the three vacant positions (in a seven-person office). I cannot express how frustrating it is to work with these temps who have been there for three weeks now (full-time) and still don’t do anything right. I have worked there for almost seven months now (part-time) and I have to do more work now to correct their mistakes. I don’t even want to discuss how little I get paid, and yet it is obvious how much the office relies on my correction of their behavior (when I’m not in class, of course) because three three of us man the front desk, the hub of all paperwork and phones.

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Who is Going to the Kennedy Info Conference in Vegas?

Two weeks from now, Kennedy Information is hosting what promises to be a great recruiting conference in Las Vegas. While some say that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, the truth is that what you learn in Vegas becomes key knowledge for your organization so your manager absolutely must find the money in the budget to send you. Tell her that I insisted. I’m sure that will pull a lot of weight.
I’ll be at the conference. I’m part of the “why blog” panel. My counterparts in crime will be John Sumser, Founder and President of Interbiznet.com; Denis Smith, Talent Acquisition Manager of T-Mobile; and Jim Durbin, Director of Corporate Communications at Durbin Media Group. The moderator is Jason Davis of Recruiting.com. Should be informative and fun, or at least one of the two.