After 16 years of schooling, you're probably glad to be graduating from college and entering the 'real world.' But have you changed your thinking to reflect your new reality? You're about to go through another transition, from college student to corporate professional. It's time to start thinking about yourself as a corporate professional rather than 'just a student.' Begin to see yourself as a corporate professional and you'll be more likely to carry out an intelligent job search that will actually make you one.
The Job Search Club
A good way for students to succeed in a job search is to share their experiences and ideas with other students. Working with groups of students is time-efficient, but a greater advantage is that students benefit from each other's comments, questions, and experiences.
This article presents the Job Search Club members simply to illustrate how to conduct your own job search. By following the advice given here, you can proceed with your own search as an individual, or with a group of friends.
To help you with your job search, I will take you through the experiences of seven members of a Job Search Club. These are composite characters, not individual students with whom I have worked over
A Level Playing Field?
Our Job Search Club contains a mixture of liberal arts students and business majors. This mixture raises two questions:
Does a choice of major play a big role in a student's getting a job?
Are liberal arts majors on a level playing field with business students?
A student's choice of major often does play a role, but not the leading role, in a job search. For example, Alice, an accounting major, has an advantage in a search for a position in accounting or finance, because of her technical training. However, a college graduate's major isn't the only thing an employer looks for. Leadership, analytical ability, and communication, among other skills, are also important. Alice isn't guaranteed a job offer in the public accounting field; a liberal arts major like Robert may get one instead.
As for competing on a level playing field, the answers are "No" and "Yes."
"No," in part, because business majors do have more course work in subjects directly applicable to running a business enterprise. But the main difference is attitude. Business students, by their very choice of major, tend to have a positive attitude about a business career. Many liberal arts students have been told, by parents, peers, or professors, that business education is really "trade school" and not a true education at all. They may also have been told that business is corrupt, immoral, and dominated by plutocrats. This condescending and hostile (and inaccurate) view of business strongly disadvantages liberal arts majors in seeking a job in corporate America. Skills can be taught more easily than attitudes can be changed.
Liberal arts students can compete on a level playing field if they can demonstrate a positive attitude toward business, a sense of reality about business life, and a familiarity with the issues that today's businesspeople must confront.
By doing their work as members of our Job Search Club, our liberal arts majors (David, Cabrielle, and Robert) will be able to compete successfully on any corporate job search playing field.
These students' experiences are good learning tools for you. We will follow our seven club members from the awkward beginning of their job searches to their successful conclusions.
Details will unfold during their job search process. For now, let's identify the seven active members in this article of the club as college seniors at a fine (but fictional) institution we will call Emeritus College in Nebraska. Here are a few facts about them:
Alice: An accounting major who came to Emeritus from Illinois; has done well academically and has been active in extracurricular affairs.
Bill: Served in the Army for three years before coming to college; a marketing major.
David: A highly articulate student of history who views businesspeople as venal and selfish; concerned that working for a corporation may compromise his principles. (By coincidence, his work experience is much like Lauren's.)
Gabrielle: A political science major who doesn't have a clue yet about her career plans; joining the Job Search Club as a first major step forward.
Hector: Eats and breathes finance; pursuing a goal of becoming the chief financial officer (CFO) of a major company someday.
Lauren: A bright finance major best known among her peers for being socially astute; a mature young woman with no sense of direction about her career.
Robert: An anthropology major who is beginning to think about a career in public accounting or finance; wonders whether a liberal arts major can make it in those fields.
The Event
Most people in college eventually realize that they're not going to be students forever--they will be looking for a job someday. The good news is that some students will start their job search preparation as juniors, or even sophomores, through attending job fairs, gaining work experience, or assuming leadership positions on campus. The bad news is that too many students won't begin thinking about a career until after graduation. Generally speaking, those who start preparing for a career before senior year are ahead of the game; those who wait until graduation are behind the eight ball. Students who seriously begin their search at the beginning of senior year are typical players in the job search game. With preparation and hard work, those who are in the game (or ahead of it) can emerge as winners.
What gets students to start a job search? Career specialists often refer to The Event--something that jump-starts a person into action. For college students, The Event can be: choosing a major, experiencing a meaningful summer job, being prompted by a friend or family member, hearing a guest speaker in a classroom, beginning some on-campus interviewing, or facing the bittersweet realization that graduation is inevitable.
Whatever serves as The Event in your life, the sooner it jump-starts your job search motor, the better off you'll be. You need time to draft and redraft your resume to identify prospective employers and to prepare for your interviews. Getting a good job is the result of a cumulative process. You won't get a good job by last-minute cramming.
What You Need to Know about Yourself
A critical part of your job search is getting to know about yourself. Of special importance are your own Positive Characteristics, the qualities that would make you an asset to an employer. What are your Positive Characteristics? What skills and attributes have you demonstrated, achieved, and learned that would be helpful in a professional context?
There are several ways to identify your Positive Characteristics and their importance to an employer. A
Short Self-Profile
I am not opposed to utilizing the well-known self-assessment exercises available to students today. However, I don't emphasize them, for three reasons:
- If you want to take advantage of exercises like the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory or Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, you should see your college counseling or placement office. There is no point in having this article duplicate those resources.
- I emphasize the value of learning about the corporate world, and your possible place in it, by meeting with practitioners. For your transition from college to corporation, it's important to rely less on familiar academic methods, like tests, and more on beneficial business methods, like direct meetings.
- One purpose of this article is to help you get many job interviews. The interview process itself gives you an opportunity to assess yourself in the context of specific jobs or companies.
- Identify their Positive Characteristics;
- Give support, through examples, to Positive Characteristics students want to identify for themselves and convey to others.
The second part of the SSP asks you to give specific examples, from your experiences, for six Positive Characteristics that are highly valued by employers. In your first try, you may find it difficult to cite as many Positive Characteristics or examples as the SSP requests. That's all right; the important thing is to get started. Write at least one Positive Characteristic or example for each item requested. You can return to the SSP periodically over the next few months until you complete it.
By working on the SSP, the members of the Job Search Club gained:
- Identification of some Positive Characteristics that they could utilize in their resume and/or interviews.
- Credibility for their Positive Characteristics by giving them context and supporting examples.
- Examples are important because they lend credibility to what you say and they help you to clarify for yourself what you really mean.
- An example with a significant context supports and strengthens statements of Positive Characteristics. A relationship with co-workers probably provides a more significant context than a relationship with roommates.
- No one expects a college student to set the world on fire. To show time-management skill, you can show that you successfully balance conflicting demands in your current life (academics, job, and extracurricular activities). A prospective employer then has a strong basis for believing that you will balance conflicting demands on your time in your future business life.
- It's best to develop examples from different life experiences--jobs, travel, and so on.
