You Majored in What? (25 page)

• Play tennis or other sports, even if you’re awful at it. You’ll have a good laugh and meet new people.

• Learn to play golf if you’re going into business.

• Join one of the thousands of professional organizations, such as the American Marketing Association or the American Philosophical Association. You’ll get a bargain student rate, newsletters and journals about the field, and access to private job listings.

• Set a goal to meet a new person in each class you’re attending.

• Set an intention to find helpful people who can assist you on your search.

• Never miss an opportunity to make a new friend—people of all ages, in your classes, on your floor in the dorm, or in your apartment complex.

• Ask questions. A famous mystery writer used to go up to people at parties and ask them what they did for a living. When they told her, she would say, “Now why would someone want to murder a person in your profession?” Their responses gave her lots of inspiration for her books. What questions could you ask that might inspire you in your job search?

• Find hidden gems at your school.

• Many presentations, programs, workshops, and other opportunities are poorly attended or receive few applications. Show up. Ask questions. Participate. (Hint: Even if you’ve graduated, most schools advertise their special programs and lectures and allow the public to attend. Here’s your chance to connect with the speakers you didn’t have time for when you were in school.)

• Select an office at your school that interests you. Ask if they could use your help with a survey they don’t have time to do, writing brochures or information sheets, greeting visitors, or whatever you’re good at.

READ, LISTEN, AND RESPOND

• Find textbooks related to your career field if you didn’t major in the subject. Usually your school library will have them, so you can read them for free. Mine them for keywords, industry terms, phrases you should know, and so on.

• Read bulletin boards and kiosks. Look for interesting opportunities.

• Start your own blog about your interests or what you’re learning about your career plans (keep a positive mindset—no whining). Several students have gotten job offers from their blogs.

• Encourage readers to respond with helpful information or suggestions for you.

• Respond to other people’s blogs.

• Find podcasts with tip-of-the-day-type information about management, marketing, or other things everyone in the workplace needs to know.

• Find podcasts that will help you learn or keep up your skills in a foreign language.

• Play music on your MP3 player that inspires you to move and take action.

• Read your professors’ Web pages. Find out what research activities they are involved in and offer to help. For free. At the very least, you’ll get a recommendation letter out of it. Maybe even credit or some money.

• Get books on CDs from the library on management or other business ideas and download them to your MP3 player, or play them in your car while commuting to school or work.

• Surf the Internet. Google words related to your interests.

• Read a magazine devoted to something you know nothing about. How could what you’re reading apply to your interests? Remember, creative thinkers connect the unconnected.

• Subscribe to a magazine in a field of interest. If you’re interested in working in a spa, for example, and the nearest one is fifty miles away, reading
Spa
magazine (
http://www.spamagazine.com/
) each month might keep you informed about the field and identify sites for future employment.

• Subscribe to (or read the Web site of) the newspaper from the location where you want to live. Become as knowledgeable as a native before you’ve even lived there.

• Check out your school’s alumni database. If they don’t have one, talk to someone in alumni relations to get some names of alumni who might help you.

• Join LinkedIn (
http://www.linkedin.com/
), the professional version of Facebook and start networking.

• Join
Meetup.com
(
http://www.meetup.com/
) and find groups in your area interested in what you’re interested in. No groups? Form one.

• Look for opportunities for grants, scholarships, and funds. Start reading about them as soon as you can, because many have long application periods.

WATCH, ANALYZE, AND FIND THE CONNECTION

• Watch a movie and analyze it for what you can learn about life and/or the workplace, even though you know not to expect a completely realistic portrayal.

•
Ocean’s Eleven
for leadership and team development

•
Dead Poets Society
for what can go wrong in a first job and how it all could have been prevented

•
Wall Street
for a look at a trading floor and the pressured environment

•
Peaceful Warrior
for perspective and developing a wonderful mindset

•
Office Space
so you’ll know the importance of a red stapler (just kidding)

• Take random photos across your campus and analyze the culture.

• Watch a football game and analyze it.

• Go to a cultural event (one that is not part of your culture) and discover what you appreciate about it.

• Read the advertisements in a magazine related to your interest area. Are there hidden jobs with any of those companies? For instance, if you’re interested in sports and read
Sports Illustrated,
notice the advertisements. Would you be interested in working for a company that manufactures athletic gear or energy bars?

BE BOLD AND DARING

• Tell ghost stories late at night to your friends to practice your storytelling skills. (See Chapter 10 for the importance of building these skills.)

• Move: get a summer job in the city where your best opportunities are.

• Have you always wanted to live in_ ? What about moving there now?

• Set an intention: “I want to find a way to live in Washington, D.C., this summer.”

• Can you find others interested in spending a summer elsewhere as well? Maybe you can share an apartment? Check colleges for cheap summer dorm rentals.

• Take a “survival” job that puts you in your desired location. While waitressing or bartending in Washington, D.C., you can use your free time to learn all about the city, decide where you might want to live, and so on.

• Write a poem about the job search. Read it at a poetry slam.

• Ride a horse. If you can manage a thousand-pound animal, you can tackle a lot of things.

• Write a reality show based on your job search experience. Pitch it to a network.

• Go up to a famous guest speaker at your school, tell him or her what you want to do and seek their advice.

• Get lost in a strange city and explore.

• Write a screenplay, memoir, poem, or short story and submit it to a contest.

TAKE TIME FOR REFLECTION AND INSPIRATION

Inspiration is everywhere and some of these activities are designed simply to give you the downtime you need to process all the thoughts whirling in your head. Remember the value of reflective mindset in Chapter 3?

• Go to an art gallery and ponder your favorite pieces, but also spend some time studying ones you don’t like. What turns you off and why?

• Get near water: a lake, swimming pool, or even a shower. Some creative thinkers say their best ideas come when they’re near water.

• Download some meditation or hypnosis podcasts—maybe even one on anxiety to help you get through college and the job search!

• Throw the I Ching coins and ask about your future.

• Go to bed an hour earlier and set an intention that while you’re sleeping, a new career idea will come to you . . . and then let it go.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

So how does this all experimental wandering come together? Obviously, it’s going to be different for each of you, but here’s one story of how a student found a job by conducting experimental wanderings at his desk and beyond:

Brandon had been planning to go to law school since his junior year of high school. He started working as a residence hall adviser in his sophomore year of college just to help with college expenses. He discovered he enjoyed living with the first-year students and helping them with typical issues they faced, such as homesickness or getting along with their roommates. After reading about an opportunity posted on a campus kiosk, he found a summer job in Baltimore, a city he had always wanted to see, working as a resident adviser for high school students attending special summer programs at a college. He learned that he truly enjoyed this type of work and now was less enthusiastic about going straight to law school. His senior year he was asked to sit on a freshman orientation panel along with the dean of admissions to talk about college life. Even though he was applying to law schools, Brandon began thinking that he might want to work in a college or university setting for a few years first. He talked to the staff in the residence life program at his college about working in a college setting. Everyone gave him lots of information and advice about the field and recommended he start his job search in February.

To carry out his job search, he defined what he wanted: a position in a college or university setting working directly with students. He then identified the likely offices that might hire him: residence life, housing, financial aid, development, and admissions. If he was unsuccessful in his initial search, he figured he would expand his search to boarding schools and junior colleges. He isolated the areas in which he most wanted to work: New York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, knowing he could expand this as well if he needed to. To his delight, he learned that just those three states had over six hundred colleges and universities. He then created an online folder called College Jobs and bookmarked the human resources Web sites for each college in which he was particularly interested. He also created his résumé and a cover letter that he modified as needed. Every week he searched the sites and applied for positions for which he was qualified. Ultimately he uploaded twenty-two résumés and cover letters for positions at a variety of colleges.

Within a few weeks he began to get calls and e-mails from colleges, and started completing phone interviews. His research and knowledge of the field paid off, and he was then invited to several campuses until, ironically, the dean of admissions with whom he had served on the panel called to ask him if would be interested in applying for a job in the admissions office. And that’s where he’s working.

You could say Brandon got his job because of the butterfly effect—a random job he took to pay the bills and a coincidental appearance with a college administrator. But it was Brandon’s work and his knowledge of the field that ultimately sealed the deal. The butterfly just got him started. And now he knows how to do the search if he wants to again in the future. He’s now planning to start taking classes to get his master’s degree in higher education with a specialty in counseling so he can go even further in the higher education field. Key steps for Brandon included:

1. Applying to law school while seeking a Plan B: a residential life position

2. Targeting his résumé to the settings for which he was applying

3. Creating a basic cover letter that he modified based on the position and school

4. Speaking with people already doing the job he wanted so he could be better informed

5. Targeting a large but manageable range of potential employers

6. Creating a system for checking on job openings that fit the field

7. Knowing the right season for applying for the job

8. Being flexible yet focused in his search—wanting a college setting but willing to work in a variety of areas

WISDOM BUILDERS

1. EXPAND THE SCOPE OF YOUR EXPERIMENTAL WANDERINGS

You may have settled on a particular field of employment, but particularly in tight job markets or situations where you face a lot of competition, it’s a good idea to think of ways to expand your options. You can expand geographically by changing the location of your search, and/or you can expand within the career field by considering related job titles or occupations that are in the same general area as your prime target.