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Knowing your own work style and how it integrates with the work style of the workplace and others is critical to your career success. Think the generation gap went out with bell-bottoms and love beads? Think again. Take a good look around your IT d...
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 The AT&T Financial Leadership Program was named as one of America's Top 10 Finance Internships based on multiple factors, including mentorship availability, career advancement opportunities, intern ...
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Make sure you disguise your email address if you are going to get into some serious blogging.  I doubt if a prospective employer would be too enthusiastic about hiring this person. Your internet footsteps will haunt you. "And there's the key....If yo...
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Thousands of new college grads will enter the workforce this year, but with unemployment at 8.2% and underemployment near 18%, many will put off the taxing job search process and opt out of the weak job market to pursue graduate degrees. Here are the...

Benton Howie and Carol Horner Chat

AboutUsBentonBenton:
Last week I was talking to a young sales professional who told me that her boyfriend, a computer science major, turned down an internship with IBM because it was unpaid. When I asked her if he absolutely needed the money, she said no, but that even though he knew it was a great opportunity, he still wanted to be paid.

That got me thinking about my opinion of paid vs. unpaid internships. In this very competitive labor market, the student who gains the most practical experience is the one with the most value to a prospective employer. Is it unreasonable to ask students to forgo a 2 or 3 month $12 or $15 an hour job for the chance to gain 2 or 3 months of great practical experience with a top prospective employer?

AboutUsCarolCarol:
There is no substitute for experience directly related to the field you plan to enter after graduation. In fact, if you take an internship - you've already entered it. You now have experience to put on your resume. If money was not the issue, this student would have been well served to take the internship just for the experience with an employer as big as IBM.

In this economy, money may become more of an issue to more people. In that case, internships might be more difficult to accept. Factor in the additional earning power a student has after graduating with the internship on their resume. Was it worth working for free to gain experience which could lead to a higher starting salary or higher level position once landing that first career job?

AboutUsBentonBy Benton Howie

OK….you are about to graduate from university having spent the last four or five years working your tail off and having expended an exorbitant amount of money on tuition/ books/fees and other expenses, and maybe having incurred a tidy amount of debt that you will be required to repay….now what?

Your first stop will more than likely be the university placement office and your introduction to the trials of on-campus company interviews.   This is a good thing. You have the opportunity to interview with companies that have come to your university specifically to interview, screen and possibly hire students who are about to graduate…hopefully you will be among those who are offered a job. Both you and they have a captive audience.

KEY---These are as much your interviews as theirs.

Here are the steps to this dance.

You’re Preparation

  • Go to the placement office interview preparation sessions if they are offered at your university. Pay attention; they know what they are doing and can give you some good advice.  

  • Find out which companies are coming and sign up early. Schedules fill up quickly.

  • Start interviewing early in the year, even if you are only casually interested in the companies. This is your chance to practice interviewing. And, who knows, the companies just might surprise you.

  • Research the companies you are interviewing with prior to the preview sessions and interview dates. This is important. Remember, these are as much your interviews as theirs.

  • Prior to the interview, prepare some questions you want to ask. You want to have as much information about a company as possible before considering them as a prospective employer. Remember, you only have thirty minutes.

  • Prepare your resume. There are a lot of places on the web you can go for resume preparation tips.   Monster and Careerbuilder offer good resume preparation advice. However, here is an important quick tip—put the good stuff first; recruiters read from the top down.   A resume is a career marketing tool. It won’t get you a job, but it may lose you and interview.

  • Prepare your business card. That’s right---your business card.   Here’s why you should have one and what it should look like.

    • Recruiters will interview students every forty-five minutes for one or two days. Names, faces, and facts run together. You need to give them an easy way to remember you. The resume you give the recruiter will probably go to a central source for entry into a database or disappear into a pile along with other resumes.   The business card will stay with them. The business card will give them a quick place to make notes about you….i.e., sharp, motivated, articulate, confident, good internship experience….etc.
    • The card should have your picture on the front…faces run together after a while for recruiters…you want to be remembered. You should also have your name (note which name you use), your contact information, your degree, GPA, and your graduation date. On the back include a bulleted synopsis of relevant employment facts…i.e. major educational emphasis, internship (company names and departments) extracurricular achievements, etc.   List what you believe will make you employable and differentiate you from others.
  • I like the card to be a fold-out (business card size when folded). This allows you to provide more information and allows you to designate a section for NOTES, which will be appreciated by the recruiter.

KEY: You may have to have slightly modified cards for different companies—allows you to provide industry specific achievements.

A conversation with Monica Garrett
University of South Florida (class of 2014)
Major: Fine Arts

Monica graduated from West Boca High School in Boca Raton, Florida. She attended their Culinary Academy and is a member of the academy’s first graduating class. Careerzing asked Monica to share her experiences in the academy and tell us how it helped her explore her college major and career choices.

CZ: Why did you choose to go to the culinary academy?

Monica: I didn’t go there with the idea of becoming a chef. I was interested in learning about food safety, how to properly using kitchen utensils and learning my way around a professional kitchen. I thought all of those lessons would be helpful in life. What I was learning was very cool. I had fun telling my mom she’s using the wrong knife or cutting the wrong way.

CZ: How interested were you in cooking when you started there?

Monica: When I started I wasn’t as interested. The first year is all book work and baking cookies. But as we got to work with meats and other types of foods, I started to like the class better and decided to stay on another year.  

How to Make Them Work for YOU

AboutUsBentonBy J. Benton Howie

Career Fairs are a golden opportunity. They are an excellent way to jump start your career exploration.

Career fairs are a great place to:

  • Do one-stop shopping for career information.

  • Assess companies as potential employers

  • Find an internship or co-op opportunity

  • Exercise and refine your interviewing ‘chops’. It’s also a great way to get rid of interviewing stage fright.

However, in order to make it work for you, you need to do a few simple things:

  • Be organized, methodical, and professional

  • Know your reason for why you are there.

  • You may find yourself overwhelmed with information so you need to be prepared to take plenty of notes.

  • Do you research and learn about any companies that you know will be represented AND that you are interested in

  • Do your homework by preparing questions for the employers you meet.

  • Make plenty of copies of your resume and personal business card.

  • And don’t be shy. The companies attending are there to meet students and talk to them. Simply walk up, look them in the eye, smile, hold out your hand and say “Hi, I am XXXX and I am an XXXX major, graduating in XXXX (you are exploring a career in XXXX), do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your company?” That’s it. It’s easy. And it just may be the best opportunity you have to start your career or job search.

Here’s the inside information from the Company’s point of view. Companies participate in career fairs for one or all of the following reasons.

  • They may be looking for candidates to hire in the near term.

  • They may be building an inventory of future hires for two, three, or even four years out. Some companies use career fairs as their primary college recruiting method, preferring them to on-campus interviews.

  • They may be looking for interns or co-op students

  • They may be using the career fair to build their image and visibility on college and university campuses.

  • Some may just be there to satisfy what I call a “place-holder” opportunity to meet their obligations to the career center and are not actually recruiting at the session.

Just as companies utilize career fairs to serve an essential purpose, students can find them helpful in many ways too.

AboutUsBentonBy J. Benton Howie

Salary and terms of employment negotiations…what works and what may not work so well.

In Salary negotiations try to avoid putting a number on the table first. It places you at negotiation disadvantage. A good first response would be something like…”I am sure your company pays its employees fairly and I am open to any offer similar to what you would pay an existing employee in the same position with comparable skills and experience.” If pressed further quote a range, or an “in the neighborhood or around” amount.

Stock options, memberships, flexible work hours are negotiable for those companies that offer them, although company paid memberships are usually only offered to executives and some sales professionals for networking purposes. And they are falling out of favor due to current business conditions.

Benefits are usually not negotiable, especially in larger companies which have standard policies. Often these benefits, especially medical and vacation are ERISA defined, which means they must be consistently applied. My advice is to not go there; it won’t work. Besides, the last impression a prospective employee wants to give is that they are overly concerned about time away from the job. Companies hire individuals to work, not to be absent.

“College is the best time of your life.”
- Anonymous
                                               

“The freshmen bring a little knowledge in and the seniors take none out, so it accumulates through the years.”
– A. Lawrence Lowell (Former President of Harvard University)
                                               

“I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”
– Mark Twain
                                               

When Dorothy started her journey down the Yellow Brick Road in the Wizard of Oz, she had no idea what direction it would take her in. She knew only that it would take her to her goal. What am I thinking as I start this next big step in my journey of life? What should I be thinking as I begin my first semester of college? I have absolutely no idea what to expect! Should I pay extreme attention in class and work on papers well in advance so that I don’t get sucked into a vortex of late nights spent at my laptop and countless cups of coffee? Should I lay back and let the experience come to me? Should I be out partying till two in the morning? All the definitions of a good college experience that I have heard are so different that basically I’m walking into a room with my eyes closed. I am feeling excited, nervous, scared, and ecstatic – all at the same time.

InterviewKellySophieMarielle2

CareerZing recently attended the reception held in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for University of Florida’s new Dean of Engineering. Three of our CareerZing readers went along and spent time with Dean Cammy Abernathy.

In this interview, they talk about their memorable meeting with Dr. Abernathy. They also share their impressions of the faculty presentations given at the reception by Drs. Scott Banks and Peter Ifju on their latest research in engineering for worn out joints and unmanned air vehicles.

Finally, the students share their thoughts on career exploration and give some valuable advice to high school students following in their academic paths.

Our interview subjects, Marielle, Sophie and Kelly, just graduated from Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Florida and are headed to universities this fall.

CZ: Now that you’ve all graduated from high school, what colleges are you attending next year and what will you major in?

Sophie: I’m going to Georgia Tech and will study in environmental engineering

CZ: What made you consider environmental engineering as your major?

Sophie: The last 4 years I’ve been involved in the environmental club. Even though meetings were held on Friday’s after school and I would rather have gone home to sleep, when I realized I was good at math, things just connected and I enjoyed it.

Marielle: I’ll be at the University of Florida and will major in aerospace engineering. I’m really good at physics and math. That’s why I chose that major. I’ve always been interested in it since I’ve been a little girl.

Kelly: I’m going to the University of Florida and am interested in chemical engineering and biology. I’ve been in the biotech academy at Spanish River and have always been interested in biology. I also did well in AP Chemistry.

CZ: We all attended the UF reception where we saw presentations by two professors and met the new Engineering Dean - the first female Dean in the 100-year history of UF’s engineering program. First, what did you think about the presentations? Which did you like the most and how helpful do you think they were?

Marielle: I always understood that mechanical engineers used their background to do biomedical stuff but some use ME to make smaller airplanes to do environmental stuff. I better understood with the ME and aerospace majors – you’re not as limited as I thought you would be. I enjoyed the second faculty presentation since he was in the aeronautical field which is what I want to pursue.

Sophie: I thought they were both interesting. They did not change my mind because they are not my fields, but also because they were research oriented. The presentations were geared towards getting money for what they are doing. I appreciate that but it’s not related to undergrad work. That kind of thing is out 5 or 10 years for me.

Kelly: I like them equally. Those presentations showed even if you don’t want to do research it shows all the work they put into it. If you weren’t interested in research, you wouldn’t be interested in spending so much time in the major itself. So I think it was helpful to figure out which engineering disciplines were right for me. It helped me isolate what I wanted and what I didn’t want.

The supreme accomplishment is to blur the line between work and play.
--Arnold Toynbee, English economic historian, 1852-1883

Destiny is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of choice: it is not to be waited for, it is a thing to be achieved.
--William Jennings Bryan, Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, 1860-1925

When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home.
--Betty Bender. President of the Library Administration & Management Association from 1986-1989

Do you know the difference between education and experience? Education is when you read the fine print; experience is what you get when you don't.
--Pete Seeger, American folk singer

In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure.
--Bill Cosby

There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed, also, are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play.
--William B. Given, Jr., President, American Brake Shoe Co.

The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves.
--Carl G. Jung, founder of analytical psychology, 1875-1961

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.
--Elbert Hubbard, writer, 1856-1915

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
--Theodore Roosevelt

A  CareerZing reader asks…

“I have a friend who is majoring in Biology and is thinking about a minor in business or at least supplementing his curriculum with business classes.  What do you think?”


AboutUsBentonBenton: Taking business courses is never a bad idea.  It is always good to know the fundamentals of business...i.e. accounting, management skills, statistics, finance, and business law.  

However, I will get up on my soap box about majors and careers.  There are many reasons to go to college, two of which are to gain more knowledge - learning for the sake of knowledge.  Another reason is to obtain a degree in something one is really interested in that will prepare that person for a specific career.   And that's where the rubber meets the rub.  If a student is not worried about a career, and my experience is that few are, especially early in their college years, then learning for the sake of knowledge is just fine.   However, if the student wants to prepare for a specific career, they need to study a curriculum that will prepare them for employment in that career.

Not all college majors are created equal, especially as directing a student towards a particular career.  The most career specific majors are engineering, computer science, accounting, finance, law, medicine, education or majors that directly link to a specific career option.

The second tier of majors are what I called "indirect career" majors such as business, marketing, economics, biology, chemistry, mathematics, history, English and fine arts, etc.   These majors do not direct a person to a specific career since there are many career routes a student can take with these majors.  The problem is that these routes are, as the name suggests, indirect and require the student to dig through the job market to find a career that he or she is interested in that will link to this major.  This is not easy.  In fact, unless a student is pointed in a particular direction, it is difficult and confusing.  I know many students who are sitting home wondering what to do next...AFTER getting their degree.

The third tier is what I refer to as non-directional majors...such as liberal arts, fine arts, music, sociology, political science, anthropology.   Very few companies are going to interview on campus, looking for anthropologists, sociologists, political scientists, musicians, fine artesian, etc.   Again, students are going to have to dig and dig deep to find a career that interests them AND one that their major qualifies them for.

Careerzing talked with Kelly Horner, a Senior at Spanish River High School in Boca Raton, Florida. Kelly has taken several steps on her journey to discover her career interests. In our interview, she shares her experiences with us and offers advice to others who want to do the same thing.

You’re a senior in high school now and you’re thinking about your career. When did you start doing things to discover your career interests?

I always liked science and math so I decided to go into the biotech academy as a freshman. In my sophomore year I started thinking about biotechnology as a career. During my junior year I wanted to do a summer program related to the field and decided on Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida working with a professor in a laboratory in the biomedical college. I thought that would be a good way to find out if I liked research.

What did you find out?

I realized that spending five hours in a lab was a lot different than spending an hour in the lab in school. With lab work you’re definitely going to be indoors all day. You’re working alone and not as part of a team necessarily. You have multiple projects going on at the same time. and they could last years on end. You have a lot of failures; very few successes. The preparation time is much longer than the actual experiment.

Obviously, there are things I didn’t like about it. I don’t think the rewards were enough to satisfy me as a full-time job. The lady I was working with was really excited about the results of what we did. I, on the other hand, didn’t find myself really loving what came out of it. It was true what she told me - kids who go into research are expecting to be working at a fast pace, when it’s really not like that. Any lab experience I’ve had in the past has been in the high school classroom where you have one lab per class. Classroom labs are designed to be successful and give you results that are interesting to you.

Careerzing catches up with Andrew Horner after finishing his first year at Georgia Tech.  He writes about his summer co-op and his plans for the coming academic year.

What did you do this summer?

I worked as a co-op employee at AT&T in Atlanta, Georgia for my summer semester. As a co-op, I was able to do some real-world work for the company in developing and maintaining telephone, internet communication, and television systems for residential as well as commercial buildings. I used a computer-aided drafting (CAD) system to produce construction plans and records for new cable lines, poles and underground conduits. I did a lot of surveying and field work to research possible cable routes and get accurate measurements for construction. I really enjoyed this assignment. I felt that it was an informative and interesting introduction to some engineering basics, and it provided a very neat look at the inner workings of a service that I previously took for granted.

Can you explain in more detail what a co-op program is and why you decided to participate in one?

A co-op program is a way to get real work experience before you graduate. A student will work at the company in a full-time environment for a semester, fully compensated, and ideally with real employees to gain experience in his or her field. After that first semester, the student will go back to school for a semester, then back to work, etc. for an alternating work/study schedule at the same company.

There are several benefits to being a co-op that I took into consideration before joining the program. Earning money is an obvious reason, especially to an out-of-state student like me. I intend to use my salary to help my parents pay tuition and housing. I also wanted to get some experience in my field to see if it is something I would like to do as a career choice. In addition, it is very rewarding to see concepts learned in the classroom being applied in a job situation.

Participating in a co-op program is also a great way to take a break from studies and get in the field for a little bit. I anticipate hitting the books with a fresher mind in the fall after working in the summer.

Finally, a successful, multiple-semester co-op student almost always gets a very lucrative job offer from their company upon graduation, usually earning more money and having greater advancement potential than a graduate that did not participate in the program. Even if you decide not to stay with your co-op company, the experience is great to have on your resume.

 

 

 
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