Monday, December 19, 2011

Your First Impression May Say It All

You may possess a remarkable skill set, impressive experience and an excellent grade point average. But, you are at a disadvantage if you don’t know how to present yourself to employers. What am I getting at? Professionalism.  More specifically – professionalism and interviewing.

Employers take your interview appearance very seriously. How you dress for that important meeting reflects how much you respect the people you are talking with. Do you take them and their company and opportunities within their company seriously enough to dress your best? If not, why should they make time for you on their already busy schedule?
You need go no further than the video links on our website to see a comprehensive set of guidelines for how to dress for an interview (http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=CAREERSERVICES2&p=/Featured_Videos/).
In brief, wear a solid color, conservative suit and professional shoes. Women, add a coordinated blouse and neutral hoisery.  Men, add a white, gray, or blue solid long sleeve shirt, a conservative tie, and dark socks.  Hairstyles should be neat and professional and nails trimmed and clean. Women, keep makeup to a minimum. A same day shower is imperative and use only very light perfume or aftershave.  Minimal jewelry is advised—one pair of small tasteful earrings is appropriate for women. Otherwise, body piercings need to be covered. The same goes for tattoos. Carry a portfolio containing a pen and several copies of your perfect resume printed on bond paper with a laser printer.  
That’s it. Think “professionalism”. In the words of an employer, “you can never dress too conservatively for an interview”.  In the words of another employer, "why would you shoot yourself in the foot by not dressing professionally?"   
Questions? Call a counselor. We are happy to answer your questions. Or. . .better yet, schedule a mock interview and wear your interview attire. You can practice feeling professional as you practice answering professionally. 
Get a job!
~jan
WSU Career Services    

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Finals

At this time in the semester, I am glad I am not a student. So I don’t have to take finals.

At any other moment in the semester, I would be happy to be a student.  I moved to Wichita to attend Wichita State 25 years ago. I was recently divorced and strongly believed a college education would make me more employable and allow me to take better financial care of my kids. It is a decision I do not regret.  
Which brings me to the point of this blog. Education is so valuable for so many reasons. In many cases, it teaches you skills directly transferrable to a job in your field of choice. Ideally, education teaches you to think. And, problem solve. And affords you immeasurable amounts of knowledge.
So, continue to study. Study hard. Take advantage of the opportunities available to you in college. As you turn in your final, take a big sigh of relief. And, smile. Smile because that final is over. More importantly, because you have the opportunity to get a college education.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Rachel's Job Search: Celebration

Phase 4: Celebration

 I will always remember the phone call of my first job offer. I was driving home and heard my phone ringing so I pulled into shopping center and answered. The director of the department got right to the point and said they would like me to be part of their office. I was completely overwhelmed. What I meant to say was “I am so thrilled! Ever since the interview, I have known that this is the job that I want and the news couldn’t come at a better time.” Instead, I said “I have to tell you, my grandmother died.” The eternally gracious director expressed her apologizes as I whacked my palm against my forehead thinking “Why did you say that, idiot!” I stumbled through awkwardly trying to explain that both my husband and I had lost grandmothers in the past week and we both needed some good news and this was good news. The very kind director saved me by moving on the explaining the next steps of the process.

After hanging up, and thinking “Did I really just start that conversation with ‘my grandmother died?” it dawned on me: I had a job. I drove home in silence with a huge grin on my face. I wanted to tell my husband in person to see the look on his face. We went out for dinner that night and saw friends, all the while celebrating the payoff for ten months of the unknown. There were plenty of hurdles to come, the paper work, moving, the first day, training, making new friends, etc., but at that point, the search was over. Later I would reflect on the experience and realize how much I had learned about myself, how lucky I was to have such a wonderful supportive family, and how I had developed patience and coping skills I would use for a lifetime. But in that moment, all I could do was smile and think “I have a job.”

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Rachel's Job Search -- Interviews

·         Revisiting my skills. I pulled out the notebook from my Career Development class and reviewed all of my reflections and personality assessments. This was perhaps the one thing that made me feel the most at ease with the process because it helped me feel truly confident in my abilities and able to communicate how those related to the position.

·         Practicing interviewing. Once I had the invitation for an interview, I knew I should practice by actually saying answers to questions out loud. I felt really uncomfortable with the idea of mock interviewing so I didn’t take advantage of that and I probably should have. Instead I used my daily 45 minute commute as practice time, recording the entire trip on my phone, asking and responding to questions out loud. Later I would play the recordings back to identify areas or questions I needed to work on. 

By the time interviews came around, I felt well prepared which alleviated a lot of the nervousness and stress. However, the most difficult part was not the interview itself, but the emotional piece that went with the dealing with rejection to being constantly on edge waiting to hear something. It took me awhile but I slowly found ways to cope:  

·         Identifying a support system. In my situation this was mostly my family and my mentors. I actually found it kind of difficult that the rest of my friends and classmates were going through the process and often didn’t turn to them to support. It was too likely that we would start comparing or trying to one up each other in misery points.

·         Keeping busy and remembering I still had a job. Because I was a student, my internship supervisor was very supportive of my job search but after about a week of spending all my energy and focus on my search, I realized I needed to refocus my energies back to my work projects. That actually worked out well because it helped keep me distracted.

·         Setting up search process rules. When I first entered this stage I checked my email almost every ten minutes. My phone was either on my desk where I could see it or on vibrate so I could hear it. I was as jumpy as a cat. Once I realized I could not continue this way, I instituted a rule that I could only check my job search email every two hours and my phone stayed in my purse on silent only to be checked during breaks. It may sound ridiculous to have rules, but I think I was a much better functioning human being for it.

·         Staying organized. Again, the job search process involves a lot of lack of control so by staying organized I was able to have some sense of ownership. It was also helpful once several applications were out there. After a while all the job descriptions started to run together so having things organized made it really easy to review everything if I did get invited for an interview.

·         Widening my search. By April, I was still waiting to hear back about two jobs but all the others had come back very clear “nos.” It didn’t seem like any new positions were being posted to my regular circuit of HR websites. I was going to go crazy if I didn’t do something so I decided to start looking outside of my ideal area. This meant widening my scope from working at a college to working for anything related to education or non-profit organizations. I revisited my skills and tried to think about how they could be utilized in different areas in addition to starting to scope out different job postings sites.

April was a rough month. Even though I had an in person interview that went great, the pressure was beginning to get to me. In addition to the search, I had the Comprehensive Exam for my Master’s degree, my husband and I were making regular trips to Wichita to find a place to rent, we were making concrete moving plans, and work was getting busy with not only projects but the added work of preparing to transition all of these projects to a new person. This sort of limbo lasted for about a month and a half and almost every day I had to remind myself, that eventually, something would work out.

Tomorrow: Celebration!

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Rachel's Job Search Phase 3

Phase 3: Interviewing (The Waiting Game)

 This part of the job search process can only be described as an emotional roller coaster. With several applications out, there were the highs of invitations for phone interviews followed by the lows of cold form rejection emails. The interview part was actually easier for me than the waiting so I’ll start there. I had both phone and in person interviews and ended up being happy with all of them even though only one turned into a job. I think the reason they went so well was because of the prep work I did which included:

·         Reviewing the application materials. Remember my computer files where I saved all the documents relating to each position I applied for? Yep, those came in very handy here. I would go back and review the job description and my notes, doing some reflection on the way to see if there was anything I could add. I also reread my cover letters and any short answer responses so I was reminded of what they knew about me from my application.

·         Researching the position, office, and organization. I spent a lot of time on different department websites reading mission statements, taking note of special programs or projects, and reading about staff members. I also always looked at the bigger organization (in my case the student affairs division and the university) to know about recent important issues.

·         Reaching out to my network. I knew several people who had worked at one of the schools I applied to and sent a few emails just letting them know I had been invited for an interview and asking if they had any tips or insight. This proved invaluable in the sense of getting a real understanding of the school’s culture and values.

*Be careful with these last two. It is good to be aware and knowledgeable but not a good thing to be creepy or to misrepresent your skills, values, or abilities to get a job. You won’t be happy in the long run and hiring committees can usually tell. Always think about middle ground of what they need and what you offer.


Monday, December 5, 2011

Rachel's Job Search Continued

Phase 2: Applying (Jumping in Feet First)
 
There was no magic time when I suddenly realized I should start applying for jobs. During Fall 2010 I had found a few jobs that had seemed interesting but I always had a reason to not apply. “I could do this, but it isn’t exactly what I want,” or “It is really too early, they would probably want someone to start before I’m done with school.” One way or another, I talked myself out of submitting an application. That was until one Monday in January, when one of my good friends announced that not only had he applied for a position but he had a job offer. Uh-oh, I thought, I should probably get a little more serious about this. 

About a week later I applied for my first job. I was on the fence about applying because it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. I had sought my mentor’s advice and she wisely reminded me that there was no harm in applying and that job searches were kind of like dating: both the interviewee and the interviewer were simply trying to figure out if they were a good fit. So the first job I applied for was an “I don’t really know if this is right for me at this point in my life” which was fine because I didn’t get invited for interview. This was not surprising in hindsight. As I explained before, this was apparently just my chance to practice writing an atrocious cover letter and to turn in a resume with the word “education” misspelled. Irony at its finest. Did I mention have your resume reviewed 8 million times by 8 million people? Also, just a tip, if you spell out your headings in all capital letters, Microsoft Word doesn’t spell check those words so you might double check all of those. 

Once I got my resume all fixed up, I also started to work my connections. A close high school friend offered to pass my resume along to an administrator at one of the colleges I was interested in. My mentors contacted old colleagues to inquire about jobs. In the oddest turn of events, my mother started up a conversation with a stranger on a plane that somehow ended up being a potential job lead. For me, none of these actually panned out in my search process out. Although, oddly enough, once I started working at WSU, some of these connections showed back up and have led to opportunities after being hired. This was a great reminder for me that my field, like most others, is very interconnected and every contact could be somebody who knows somebody.

Once I got past the hurdle of applying for that first job, the rest came much easier. Through the roughly three months (January, February, and March of 2011) of this phase, I applied for six jobs, all the while keeping the following advice in mind:

·         Apply for anything you think you might be happy with and are qualified for. Let the employer decide if you aren’t qualified enough and use the interview to determine if you are a good fit for each other.

·         Get good at seeing your transferable skills and how they relate to different positions.

·         Write a separate cover letter for each position. You might even reorganize or tweak your resume for each job depending on what you want to highlight.

·         Create a “Job Search” folder on your computer and in your email. I created a subfolder for each job and saved the job description, confirmation emails, and all of the documents (resume, cover letter) I submitted to help keep things straight.