Here is another Top 5 List for the Pro Blogger Writing Project.

A simple list of five ways to ensure that you always have a job or will get another faster if you lose your current one.  This isn’t a magical formula but more of a practical list.

Top 5 Ways to Always Have a Job

5. Hard working

4. Ethics Still Matter in Business

3. Innovative Employees will never be unemployed

2. Those that aren’t afraid to change are invaluable (flexibility / teamwork)

1. Your professional network is more valuable than you could ever measure

This post is a part of the ProBlogger Top 5 Group writing project.

Top 5 Ways for a College Student to Get a Job after Graduation by: Justin Driscoll 

5. Job shadowing at various companies during college

4. Short term project work during your school year with various companies

3. Internships, internship, internships!

2. Co-ops (multiple year work assignments with the same company)

1. Networking, networking, networking

Freshman Year Career Plan

This is the first installment of a series of articles on a Career Development Plan for college students freshman through senior year.  Yesterday, I posted the introduction article about the series.  I would recommend reading it for some background.

These lists of tasks for your freshman year are in no particular order and of course are a suggestion of the items you should try and accomplish over the course of your first year in college related to career development.  Will you be able to do all of them?  Maybe not but at least try to do as many of them as possible; the more you do the more likely you will have a clear sense of direction about your career as your college career moves forward.

• Meet with you career service advisor at your campus career center.  These professionals are paid to help you find direction when it comes to your career.  They can be a wealth of resources most students over look.
• Take a career assessment test.  Your campus career service office will most likely have some type of career test available for you to take.  I highly recommend you take a look at their assessment tools to help you gage your interest and strengths.
• Schedule a meeting with your academic advisor after you have spent some time talking with career services.  Most students do it backwards; they pick a major and then visit career services.  How can you pick a major before you know what type of career you are interested in working toward?  Your major is a large factor in choosing your career.  Once you have met with career services you may need to meet with your academic advisor to change your major.
• Work with career services or professors to try and schedule tours of local companies.  Most companies are open to hosting tours of their facilities, especially for local schools.  If you are interested in engineering maybe you can tour the local manufacturing company or a technology company.  Tour the companies that fit within your interest.  Maybe you could even take an entire class to the company.
• Coordinate with family members or college staff to set-up one or two job shadowing experiences over the course of your freshman year.  A job shadow is a great way to get some insight into a company.  This is not an internship; you will not get paid.  This is simply an opportunity for you to spend a half a day or a full day with a company that is related to your field of interest.  The beauty of these types of experiences are multiple but the most important benefit is that you can get a very clear picture about it would be like to work in that company without actually working there.
• Write a resume.  I sound like a broken record but work with your career center to write your resume.  It may not be long but at least you have one. If it is short or sparse it might motivate you to fill it up with internships, job shadows, accomplishments, and jobs.
• If possible consider getting a summer internship after your freshman year.  Even if it is unpaid try and get some real experience within your field of study.  Work for a company that is willing to make your internship a learning experience.  The benefits of an internship are many but an internship might be the only way you could ever know if you actually want to be an accountant if you are studying accounting. It is also the only way to know if you don’t want to be an accountant.  Real life work experience matters more than textbooks.
• Create a list of companies in your local area that hire people like you.  If you are studying to be a JAVA programmer.  Work with your career center and professors to learn about as many of the companies in your area who hire JAVA programmers.  The more you know about an industry, a company, and a job, the more opportunities you will have when looking for your first job.  Knowledge truly is power when it comes to career development.

This is a list of suggested career development items you might want to consider for your freshman year.  There may be more but there may be less.  The focus of all these activities is ensuring you as a student spend as much time out of the classroom and in the real world as possible.  I love the classroom environment and love learning but I am a true believer in learning through experience.  It can be very eye opening when it comes to career development.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s edition for the Sophomore Career Development Plan.

Graduation is near for many of the nation’s college students.  In order to prepare for this many students will be looking for jobs in all the wrong places.  Many of the large internet sites will make the list of frequent surfing.  In light of this increased amount of job searching among college students or recent college grads I ask you to consider this stat.

Last week I was the bi-annual meeting for the Career Services Advisory board of the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh.  At this meeting a recruiter from Enterprise Rent-A-Car was sitting next to me.  During the meeting he made the point that they hire nearly 50% of their people from employee referrals.  Did you catch that?

The largest employer of new college grads, 8,000 a year, said that they hire nearly half of all their new hires from employee referrals.  So I will ask again; why are you spending the majority of your time surfing Monster, CareerBuilder, and HotJobs, when you should be spending at least half of your time trying to network with current employees at the company you want to work at.  The numbers have been in for a long time, network beats every other job search strategy around.

Jobinar.com launches it’s first teleseminar.

How to Get a Job In Medical Sales Without Any Experience!

Take a look at this new resource for job seekers. I don’t think you will be disapointed. This is the first of many teleseminars for this new service.

I will be interviewing Peggy McKee from Medical Sales Recruiter blog. She has many years of experience in the medical sales recruiting field so I am sure you will love the content from this teleseminar.

Click here for all the details over at Jobinar.com

When I planned on coming to Santa Fe I did not plan on dealing with SNOW!  I am from Pittsburgh so I thought by traveling to the southwest for a conference I could avoid the typical Pittsburgh weather, but I was so wrong as you can see below.

Attention employers!!

If you are interested in hiring quality talent from the pool of mostly unqualified people you might want to consider a few cosmetic changes when it comes to your office and hiring practices.

If candidates walk into an office environment and are greeted by an unenthusiastic receptionist or no receptionist at all what image does that portray of the company to the candidate?

If a candidate walks in to hear the CEO yelling at a roomful of employees about God knows what; how does that enable the candidate to have a strong desire to work at your company? Are they going to be subjected to this type of treatment?

If a candidate is interviewed in a room that consists of lingering cigarette smoke and ash what type of image does that portray of the company? Will it encourage the candidate to want to work there? What is their office going to smell like? How long has that donut been laying on the counter?

I hear so many companies telling job seekers what they must do to get noticed by employers but I hear very little talk around what companies must do to get noticed by job seekers. As the baby boomers begin to retire in greater numbers many futurists state that the labor shortage will continue to grow at a rapid pace. If companies aren’t planning for their labor challenge now it may be too late when the market is really tight.

If your company is in a growth mode and are hiring a large number of people you might want to consider putting a plan in place to ensure that your company looks attractive to perspective candidates. Let’s face it; the talented and qualified job seekers will work at companies who emanate greatness. If the candidate is great they aren’t going to settle for a sub-par company that is just getting by. They want to work for a company that has their act together so their career can flourish and at the same time they can help an exciting company grow.

It is easy to give good advice but it is even harder to follow it when it is your own.

The other day I had a chance to speak on a panel discussion with eight other employers to some student athletes about career choices.

The discussion really centered on resumes and resume writing, but after listening, and participating, in this discussion I walked away with a few thoughts.

1. All employers have different views about what should or should not be on your resume.
2. Internships and experience is very important when looking for a job
3. Your resume will get you in the door but the employer won’t hire you based on your resume alone; they will hire you based on who you are.
4. The job interview process is getting longer and longer because companies cannot afford to hire the wrong person
5. The real world and college differ drastically; the only way to fully understand how life works in the real world is to experience it.

I have been speaking a lot lately.

Last week I spoke at Carnegie Mellon University for the American Institute of Chemical Engineers student banquet. That was very enjoyable. I want to thank Jim Miller for brining me into speak to this great group of chemical engineers.

Then the following night I spoke at Chatham College for a very creative Alumni event where I shared the “7 Things” from The 7 Things I Wish I Knew Before I Graduated. Monica Ritter did a great job at organizing this event. It brought an author and seven alumni to campus for one event. Everyone involved was very happy!

Today, I spoke at the Community College of Allegheny County here in Pittsburgh. My good friend Dave Young brought me into to speak about my new book. The students who attended were great. They were very engaged in the conversation and gave me some great insight into what they are thinking when it comes to their career.

One of the students shared that he feels like there isn’t a job on this planet that would interest him. He does not feel like he can find a job that will give him any type of satisfaction. He said that he would work because he has to in order to make money but not because he enjoys it. To him work is that four-letter word that no one likes to think about.

This statement made me really think. If work is just something we do to get by in life then it will make retirement feel like a long way off. In my book I talk about this very attitude, and I make the case that work does not have to be so terrible if you are working for a company and in a job that you love. If you find your passion in life then it is not work but just who you are. This poor student did not believe me but I hope over time he will see that if he finds his passion in life work might not be so dreadful.

As you can see from my calendar March is a busy month and I just booked an engagement for April so let the good times roll.