Browsing Category: "career"
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One of the classic debates that many soon-to-be college graduates face is the decision to either continue with their education by moving directly on to graduate school, or to immediately join the workforce and worry about professional degrees after gaining some experience. It is a question, not unlike many other important choices we face, that doesn’t have one right answer and what’s good for one person may not be for another.
Recently, I was sent an article posted on FastWeb.com that discusses both sides of this issue, and thought I would share some of the advice with all of you as well as my own experience.
The article was written by Peter Vogt of Monster.com (where it originally appeared) and it chronicles the choices of two different women, Laurie Duffy and Carolyn Kaufman, who each made different decisions after graduation. Duffy decided to go straight to graduate school, while Kaufman spent some time in the workforce getting experience before she pursued a graduate degree.
“Graduate school is difficult and very much not the traditional college experience,” says Duffy, now an assistant account executive for the Winston-Salem, North Carolina, office of PR firm Mullen. The workload alone leaves little time for relationships or a career, she says. “So I chose to get my master’s right away, before I had a job I loved and couldn’t leave, or before I had a family to take care of.”
Duffy’s experience illustrates one of the most common arguments for pursuing graduate school sooner versus later. Other commitments can get into the way of furthering your education. And particularly once you start a family, it can be difficult to fit grad school into your life, says Nancy Stamp, dean of the graduate school at Binghamton University.
As you can see, there are some solid arguments for heading straight into graduate school so work or family obligations don’t sidetrack you. Additionally you are able to relocate easier if the school you want to attend doesn’t happen to be nearby to where you went to undergrad. However, there are numerous reasons why many people head straight into the workforce, like I did, and Ms. Kaufman outlines some of them in the article.
[Kaufman] intended to go to graduate school immediately after finishing her undergraduate degree in English and psychology in 1995 but put it off, because she couldn’t decide where to go.
“That was the best thing that could have happened,” says Kaufman, who teaches psychology full-time at Columbus State Community College and part-time at Otterbein College. “Developing my confidence and sense of competence, learning new skills and contemplating whether I really wanted to go back or continue what I was doing…was priceless and has helped me make better decisions after graduate school.”
My main reason for not going straight into graduate school was similar, in that I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a career so it didn’t make sense to me to spend more time and money on a degree I may not even use. I wanted to get some experience, try some different things out and see what interested me enough to pursue further. As career expert Anna Ivey, author of The Ivey Guide to Law School Admissions, says: “Grad school isn’t going anywhere. Take some time to figure out who you are outside of school.”
No matter which way you decide to go, make sure you are doing it for the right reasons and that you will be happy with your decision a few years down the road. If you are likely to have trouble getting back into the swing of things academically after a hiatus, maybe you should plow right on through to grad school. If you are unsure of what you want to do, or need more experience to fully flesh out your interests then perhaps getting your feet wet in the workforce is the right move for you. Either way, good luck to you all.
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In case you missed it, Jeremy over at Generation X Finance wrote a post today full of job hunting tips for the new college grad (how fitting, right?). It’s definitely a great read (as most of the stuff at Gen X Finance is) worth the time it takes to check it out. He breaks the job hunting tips down into three super categories:
1. Experience Matters:
Those with real-world work experience in their field will have a significant edge over those without such experience. If you have done any work in your field while in school, either through an internship, summer job, or work-study program, this will be a great asset.
Even if your friends and classmates haven’t begun searching for jobs yet, don’t delay. You’ll want to begin looking for opportunities as soon as possible. Not only will this give you a head-start, but it may provide flexibility. Getting an early start will put you in the position of being able to turn down jobs without the potential you’re looking for and holding out for a job with more promise.
3. Networking
Networking is one of the most powerful methods of finding a great job. Make a list of your contacts and how they might be able to help you. Talk to people who are working in the field you’re interested in and in the companies you’d like to work for. Don’t limit yourself to newspaper help wanted ads or online job postings. This is where it can be a good idea to begin building a LinkedIn profile so that you can begin to network with others in your field. There are also a lot of recruiters and HR personnel who use the service to find talent.
Definitely all good things to think about - especially as graduation looms (and thus so do millions of recent grads across the country descending on an ever-tightening job market). For more tips, check out the rest of Jeremy’s post here or read some of the “getting a job” tips & tricks we’ve covered here at Real World Really.
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According to a recent MSN Money article, “If you begin saving for retirement at 25, putting away $2,000 a year for just 40 years, you’ll have around $560,000, assuming earnings grow at 8% annually. Now, let’s say you wait until you’re 35 to start saving. You put away the same $2,000 a year, but for three decades instead, and earnings grow at 8% a year. When you’re 65 you’ll wind up with around $245,000 — less than half the money.”
So it’s obvious that the key to a wealthy retirement is to start early. But I think it’s equally obvious that the number needed to retire comfortably is unique to every individual or couple, and depends upon their personal retirement goals. The number changes based on factors like marriage, children, and pre-retirement income, but as the above example demonstrates, if we start saving in our twenties, the better off we will be.
At a time when people are living longer, health care costs are rising, and traditional sources of retirement income are disappearing, Americans — even those of us in Generation Y — are heeding the call to plan wisely for their future; however, most people don’t know exactly how much they should be saving for their retirement, or how to go about achieving this number.
This is something that’d been kicking around my own mind for awhile, as I’m about to sign up for my company’s 401k plan. So I was excited when I received an email from reader Allison alerting me to a new program from ING Direct called “Your Number”.
I had seen a couple of “Your Number” commercials on TV in recent weeks but didn’t really get it. Apparently, the goal of the “Your Number” campaign is to “create awareness and help consumers better understand this essential part of retirement planning” (i.e how much they specifically need to retire comfortably). Apparently, the new site from ING leads visitors through an interactive, user-friendly experience that helps calculate their “number”. It also features a description of ING products and services, and links to financial advisors if they are interested.
For more about the “Your Number” view their TV commercial (via YouTube) below, or visit their website at ingyournumber.com
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A very important piece of finding a job, be it your first or not, is submitting a good resume. This simple document briefly sums up your qualifications and compactly and concisely tells a prospective employer what you can do. This is great, and still a very valid part of the equation in finding a job; but that equation is changing. While having a good resume will make sure you get past the first round of cuts, it won’t ensure you get hired.
More and more employers want to see some evidence of things you’ve done, in addition to what your GPA says you should be able to do. Articles like this one demonstrate that having a good academic track record is only a step in the right direction towards getting that lucrative job. You need to bolster your credentials by having some sort of portfolio or record of things that you have done. This poor guy has a 4.0 GPA in his master’s program and a 3.9 in his doctoral program and still relies on his mother for support. Odds are he is just letting his resume do the talking with no additional work to support it.
Depending on what you want to do for a job, any additional submissions you want to make with your resume will vary. If you want to be a financial analyst, show your employer your own portfolio or pick some stocks and track them for a 6-month period, providing analysis along the way. Submitting your personal blog about bird watching probably won’t be relevant here. If you want to be in digital media, graphics design or a similar field, why not have a personal website to display your work?
What if you don’t have a blog or a website to demonstrate the things you’ve been doing? Go register yourname.com, or yourname.org if it is still available and even if you have no real web-building experience, with a little persistence you can get the basics up there. Maybe your resume looks similar to 15 other candidates for a journalism job, but you’ve had a blog you’ve been operating for 3 years – show your employer!
Even if you don’t have a lot of experience on the web, or don’t think a blog would be relevant to your intended career, do something that shows initiative and passion. Spending a few hours on a Saturday afternoon setting up a personal website or beginning a stock tracking project could be all you need to separate yourself from the pack. Doesn’t that sound worth it?
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This is a guest post from the folks at slickricky.com - Affordable Website Design & Maintenance
Many people want to break away from the traditional 9 – 5 desk job so that they can work flexible hours out of their home. The web offers many opportunities especially for freelance web designers, developers and copy writers.
There are so many opportunities available that it can be difficult to know where to start looking. The problem you will find is that a lot of freelance job opportunities that are posted online do not compensate well. Others, you have to pay for (and it’s hard to know which services are worth paying for and which are not).
Since all time spent weeding through jobs board postings is time you are not able to bill we’ve narrowed your search. Here are our top freelance job board picks, based on number of projects available, pay scale and quality of jobs.
odesk.com
Jobs are constantly being posted to this website. Some jobs pay a fixed price, and others pay an hourly rate. Either way, you bid on the jobs that you are interested in. You can also showcase your skills by taking tests that validate your knowledge and capabilities. ODesk also has software that monitors your work activity to make timekeeping a breeze for your hourly projects.
elance.com
Elance has an amazing amount of opportunities available for web designers and programmers.
freelanceswitch.com
Freelance Switch requires $7 a month in order to apply for jobs. You can browse a list of available jobs before deciding whether or not to subscribe.
authenticjobs.com
Authentic Jobs is a job board for “standards-aware designers and developers” and “the companies seeking to hire them.” There is no cost to apply for these jobs. Most of the time the employers post their direct email addresses on the project announcements.
sologig.com
SoloGig is excellent for finding any kind of freelance work, whether it be for web design, or nursing. There are no project fees, and there is no bidding. You just choose which projects you are interested in and negotiate the pricing directly with the employer.
guru.com
Guru.com lists a ton of freelance opportunities on anything from web development to illustration or accounting. As a basic free member you are only allowed to apply for 10 jobs a month, but as a subscriber (between $29.95 and $99.95 a quarter) you are allowed to apply for 100 jobs a month, and Guru.com charges you a smaller project fee.
Article courtesy of the Recruiting Blogswap, a content exchange service sponsored by CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading site for college students looking for internships and recent graduates searching for entry level jobs and other career opportunities.
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As has been mentioned here in the past, there are a growing number of Colleges and Universities trying to find ways to help ease the financial burdens on their students after graduation. Several have decided to do away entirely with student loans, replacing them instead with grants and scholarships.
Tufts University is now joining in this growing trend, as they recently announced a new Loan Repayment Program. While this program isn’t designed to take the place of loans in financial aid packages (something the University is beginning to do with the class of 2011), it is aimed to help alleviate student’s debt and promote the Tufts mission of “active citizenship.”
According to Tufts President Lawrence Bacow:
“Every student who graduates with a loan worries about how to pay it off. We would like alumni to be able to pursue their passions—to do what they really want to do—without being unduly focused on the need to retire a student loan. It is especially appropriate for Tufts to make this commitment, since as an institution we seek to encourage a spirit of public service in our students.”
Therefore, the new Tufts Loan Repayment Assistance Program aims to give financial awards to graduates who are working in non-profit or public service areas, or those areas that “promote the public good.”
This is great news for both current Tufts students and alumni, but also is a huge boost for the growing trend of institutions taking steps to help reduce the cost of education and the burden of debt. Kudos to Tufts for this great new program, I only wish it had been in effect a year earlier for my own sake.
To read more on this program, please read the Tufts Journal article entitled: In The Public Interest. You may or may not find a quote from yours truly in there as well.
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I think by now it’s pretty obvious that America is in a recession (seriously, if you think otherwise just take a look around; I dare you), but is it affecting the workplace as much as the wallet? For those of us in Generation Y (people born between 1978 and 1990), it’s unlikely. According to Penelope Trunk, author of The Brazen Careerist
The health of today’s job market is not so much a function of economic indicators as it is a function of demographic trends. There is a huge shortage of employees. Baby Boomers are retiring and Generation X and Y are less able to replace the Baby Boomers than had been anticipated; employers receive fewer hours of work per person from post-Boomers because of their focus on family (Generation X) and entrepreneurship (Generation Y). Due to these factors, the employee shortage is increasing, and only a knock-down-drag-out recession will change this sunshine outlook for employees.
What this means for recent grads (and current students alike) is that, as the trickle of retiring Baby Boomers picks up steam and the Gen Xers aren’t there en mass to replace the vacancies the Boomers leave behind, employers will be forced to turn to recent grads to fill positions. Assuming you’ve done your part to prepare to enter the workplace, and your wallet can weather the recession storm then look on the bright side - landing a good job might get a little easier.
(image via citizen.co.za)
Technorati Tags: Generation Y, career, career planning, college, graduation, real world
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When you look at the day in front of you, it’s easy to think you have a very busy day planned. You have emails to respond to, a staff meeting in the morning, maybe a lunch meeting and you need to buy cat food at some point in the afternoon. Your day looks cluttered, so you think it’s jam packed. but really that’s all it is - clutter. If your day was better laid out, you’d be amazed at how much time is freed up.
A simple trick anyone can use — at work, in school, or even during the grace period after graduation while you’re looking for work — is to come up with a plan. Make a template in Excel with three columns that breaks your day down by the hour (the left-most column), task (in the middle) and comments/reactions (to the right). Save the template to your desktop and open it every morning when you get up or get to work and fill it out for the day in front of you.
photo credit: quinn.anyaMost importantly, be honest. Schedule in down time and a lunch break (if you get one). If you don’t have something planned for an hour, leave it blank. And, once your schedule is complete, stick to it. If you schedule responding to and writing emails for 1:00-2:00pm, only check your email during that hour. If you planned to write and mail cover letters from 9:00-11:00am, write and mail your cover letters from 9:00-11:00am and nothing else.
Once you see your schedule right in front of you, broken down by the hour, you’ll be amazed at how seemingly busy, stressful days work themselves out, and you will see just how much time you waste each day by lacking focus. By scheduling your day every morning and sticking to it, you’ll free up more time to be more productive.
Technorati Tags: career, productive, schedule, self improvement, college, graduation, real world
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photo credit: PhotoFusionWhen considering a job application, interview or offer there are many factors at play — the location, the commute, the atmosphere, etc. The truth is that there are as many variables as there are types of jobs a recent grad can take on. But, there are three true factors, three types of jobs to consider and weigh against one another when deciding what path to take. Whichever is best for you is entirely up to you and is unique to everyone’s situation, but — if you’re lucky enough to be able to choose between one job and another — think about each category closely and decide which is right for you (unless the perfect job — a combination of some or all of the three — awaits you, in which case - I’m jealous):
1. Taking a position due to money
There is certainly nothing wrong with accepting a position based solely on the attractiveness of the salary offered, especially with the heavy burden of debt many grads find themselves under. Taking a position with a high pay rate would go far to alleviate such a debt and quickly. Jobs with very high pay are also rarely offered to recent grads, so jumping at the chance might certainly be a good idea.
2. Taking a position due to passion
The second option is to take a job which is in a field you’re passionate about - either a cause you care about or hobby-turned-career you enjoy. Rarely will the second option coincide with the first (unless of course you really, really like hedge funds) but when can you do something you’re really passionate about if you can’t do it when you’re young?
3. Taking a position due to position
The third option is to accept a job that really doesn’t fall into either of the first two categories but will hopefully lead to one or the other (or both) somewhere down the line. Maybe it’s a job that you’re not too excited about but it’s in a company that you really want to be a part of — taking a secretarial job in a firm you really want to work for so you can get your foot in the door, for instance, or working for a company or job that you don’t really like for a year or two so that it will be very beneficial on your resume down the road.
In conclusion:
Again, if you’re lucky enough to be considering more than one job offer (or interview, or even application) than chances are that you will need to take each of the scenarios into consideration and weigh them all heavily. Ideally, however, you will be able to settle on a combination of some or all of these options; or you find yourself young (and flexible) enough to be able to try out each possibility at different jobs in the coming years. Already have a job — which route did you take? why? Please, share.
Technorati Tags: getting a job, college, graduation, career, income
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