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You are invited to join a focus group for recent college graduates!

Next Step Career Consulting is a career coaching firm that specializes in helping recent graduates and young professionals figure out their career direction and navigate their job search.

Next summer we are launching a new job search boot camp for recent graduates and we need your feedback as we create this exciting new program.

We are looking for two types of folks to participate:

1)   Students who are seniors in college or recent graduates from a 4-year institution

2)   Parents who have a student in college or a recent graduate

The session will be held on Thursday, December 1^st from 8-10 a.m. at the conference room in the Starbucks near Juanita Beach Park (9721 Northeast 119^th Way, Kirkland, WA 98034).

To thank you for your participation in this important focus group, we will be offering a complimentary 30 minute coaching session to you (or a friend or child) in addition to a drink at Starbucks. To sign-up for this event, please RSVP to Daniel Hallak (dan@nextstep-careers.com).

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a guest post for Matt Youngquist, a mentor of mine. The post talks about how parents can with with their college students or recent graduates to ensure that they land a job. You can view Matt’s blog here. Enjoy!

Failure to Launch

The smell of trendy new clothes, slick backpacks, and platitudes of “you can do anything you want” fill the air… ah, the back-to-school season is in full swing. While this ritual will continue each year, for some parents whose children are approaching the end of college, this season is rapidly coming to a close and “real life” is about to kick into high gear. Jeans will be swapped for slacks, backpacks will be traded for briefcases, and parental pleas to earn high grades will turn into anxious prods to find a job.

It is no secret that this employment market is bleak for recent college graduates but the good news is that there are number of actions that you can take to ensure that your son or daughter doesn’t have to apply their Chemistry degree to remembering the finer points of the Cheese Cake Factory’s menu. After all, it is more complex than the Periodic Table of the Elements.

Here are a few ways that you can help your student position themselves for a smooth, college to corporate transition:

1)  Get help… early

When I was in college, I was clueless about the resources at my fingertips through my institution’s career center. Encourage your student to talk to their career center as early as possible. While a tough job market is certainly cause for concern, one of the biggest transitional issues with college graduates, particularly those with liberal arts majors, is a lack of direction and focus. Many students don’t know what they are “selling” and consequently spin in circles in their job search. The folks in career center offices can offer a number of assessments or reflective activities to help your student sharpen their focus and can often provide connections to alumni with similar career paths. If the career center doesn’t prove to be beneficial, consult a career coach who is familiar with the needs of recent graduates. Regardless, start this process as soon as their sophomore year.

2)  Open up your network

Most college students are willing to network and are fluent with social media. However, they often express frustration with their lack of professional connections. Spend some time to create a list of your personal relationships and identify enthusiastic, helpful people who may be willing to meet with your student. Look for people who your student can approach to either conduct an informational interview and learn about a new career, or meet with to glean insights into a target industry along with key referrals to hiring authorities. Bring this list to your student and show them the number of connections they have access to when they are ready. Make sure that your student understands the power of LinkedIn and leverages your connections as often as possible. For a cursory overview of LinkedIn in video format that is accessible to students, have them click here.

3)  Sell your student

Recently, I met with a fresh graduate whose parents were incredibly supportive. He had attended a good school and his family was rooted in the community, but he was still having a tough time capitalizing on his parent’s connections. I realized that while his parents would willingly introduce him to anyone, they didn’t know how to best “pitch” him. Discussions with their friends lacked the specificity required to create opportunities for meaningful interactions for their son. If your student is clear about their job search target, take some time to practice talking about the exciting directions that your son or daughter is planning upon graduation. Be sure to mention specific companies that your student is interested in working for as well as specific job titles or career paths that your child is embarking on. Once you have your talking points ready, turn them into a “broadcast” email to send to colleagues and friends on behalf of your student. See Matt’s recent post on this topic here.

4)  Work WITH your student, not FOR them

My father often repeats that you can lead a horse to water, yet you cannot make it drink. As trite as the adage is, it is completely true. You cannot and should not work for your student in their transition to professional life (see this Wikipedia article for a description on “helicopter parents”). Provide resources, emotional support, and personal connections among other things, but avoid the temptation to take the reins from your student, even if you could do a better job at getting them employed than they can. In the long run, this will develop the sort of perseverance and creativity that your child will need to manage their career.

So enjoy the back-to-school rush but don’t forget to begin the process of collaboratively supporting your college student in their post-graduation transition. Get your student some help, learn how to sell them, and connect them to your network – and don’t worry if they find themselves serving you food at your favorite restaurant – it will only be for a stint and if you work together now, they might be picking up the tab next year!

About four months ago, we chatted about internships on KUOW 94.9 (NPR) about internships and how to find the right one. If you are interested take a listen. Oh, and yes, people of all ages are obtaining internships these days. The downturn in the economy may decrease paid jobs, but unpaid internships (even legitimate ones) are increasing in their numbers.

Here is the radio show. Enjoy!

Yesterday, I had the wonderful opportunity to speak with Michael Surkan who leads the podcast series, “Tales from The Job Search”.

We had a great conversation about how to transition from college to your career and what resources are available to college students in the area. An interesting discussion also developed about professionals who return to school and then bridge the gap to professional life again. Hope you enjoy it!

http://surkanstance.blogspot.com/2010/09/job-search-tales-grades-alone-arent.html

Fashion? I thought this was a career blog? And doesn’t your wife dress you anyway? They answer is yes on both counts, but I sometimes I do pick my outfits in the morning! But seriously, my experience is that résumés are a lot like fashion, there are a lot of opinions and style are always changing. For example, if you have not got the memo, functional résumés are out and unlike retro style, they are unlikely to come back around!

Thankfully for me, the changing styles in résumés keep me in a job, unfortunately for many job hunters, this can keep them from a job (or at least make them look outdated). If your résumé does not look good or sound good, it will come across to an employer like tye dye at a funeral. Enough said…

Here is the Résumé fashion tip of the day: Tell the employer what you are!  Sometimes the most simple change can make a world of difference. I am amazed at the number of unfocused résumé that are cluttering the employment gutters. This can be as simple as a nice, bold tagline stating a few key skills or your most likely job titles when you land. Another option is to call out what you are at the beginning of your “Summary” Section.

Examples:

 “Technology Director | CTO | Technology Leadership”

“Anesthesiologist & CRNA”

“ Proven Sales Leader who…”

“Research Analyst with…”

The point is to immediately alert the reviewer that you are what they are looking for. Tell them who you you are! Unless of course you want to stay unemployed. 

If you want something to lighted your job search (for about 5 minutes at least), check out unemploymentability. Keep up the old styles of resume writing and you too might be able to stay on someone elses couch! But at least then no one would classify you according to the way you dress…

Job hunting is so much harder today than it was 5 years ago. Heck, it is way different than it was last September. Undoubtedly the economy has changed the way jobs are found and then numbers available. While I certainly hope that the economy shapes up as much as the next guy, the reality is that what we are seeing is going to continue for a while longer and although people are claiming a light at the end of the tunnel, we will certainly emerge in a different environment than we are used to. I was chatting with a young lady about her job search and in the discussion she lamented on how bleak the job market seemed to be and how hard it was to locate appropriate jobs.

I feel for her. Job searching seems very foggy for many people right now. The reality is that job security, or rather,  Income Security is based on your ability to manage your career.

In other words, if you want a successful career, you need to learn how to job search, and you need to get good at it. If you are a student, you have a golden opportunity to develop this lifelong career competency. JUMP ON IT! If you are not in school, no worries, just realize that managing your career happens real-time, not once-a-job hunt. Make your you are the driver.