It’s Never Too Early To Prepare for a Career

Overwhelmed by the maze of career options your high school counselor, parents, and scout leaders have told you that you would be good doing? High school is hard enough as it is without the added pressure of choosing a career path. However, your future career starts with the choices you make today. While your counselors and parents have good intentions, sometimes you need to explore your career options on your own. Career fairs, internships, volunteer positions, and other options tailored to career-oriented teens can help you learn about what’s available while also providing you with the opportunity to discover your passions. Don’t forget to look in books like Amazon’s Now What?: The Young Person’s Guide to Choosing the Perfect Career by Nicholas Lore.

Step 1 How do you find out what is available—Career Fairs.

Your school counselor might not have thought of this, but maybe you should go to some job fairs. They happen in many larger cities regularly with opportunities you might not have considered.

Most people attend job fairs to interact with representatives of employers they are interested in. The normal idea of a job fair is not to ask for a job but to develop relationships that might lead to a job.

You are not at that stage yet, but making the contacts will help you make a decision. Job fairs often cater to a certain type of occupation. If you are not interested in being a teacher or a truck driver, you might not want to attend those fairs. On the other hand, you might learn about jobs within one of these fields that you are interested in. So don’t make any snap judgments.

At the job fairs you want to attend, get a list of the employers who will be in attendance. Look up the companies on the internet to learn what they do, what products they manufacture, their goals and needs.

Prepare some questions based on your research. These should be open-ended so you can learn more about the jobs these employers offer. For example, you might ask

• What do you look for in candidates? What key skills, education and experience are highly desirable?
• What tips for success could you give me for getting hired in this field?

When you get to the fair, get a map to help you find the companies that interest you. Expect lines in front of the employer’s tables. When it is your turn, greet the representative with a firm handshake, good eye contact and a smile. Maintain a positive attitude and ask your questions. Remember that you are looking for the kind of career you will work at for the majority of your life. Don’t talk about yourself, talk about the jobs.

Be sure you get business cards, brochures, fact sheets and anything else the representative has. Take a few minutes between visits to make a few notes about the position, the company and whether you would consider working at such a business.

After you return from each fair, write thank-you notes.  You never know who might remember you in a few years. Then organize all the material you received. These two suggestions are very important.

Step 2 Exploring career options—Tests, volunteering, and internships.

You have narrowed down what you are interested in to a few sorts of jobs, but you still don’t know specifically what career you are interested in.

Several options are available to help you decide. Sites on the internet and your school offer tests that can help you determine what sort of job you would be a fit for. This doesn’t mean that you have to do any jobs some test suggests, but this will give you a way to narrow down the field even more.

You can take short courses in a particular career in high school, which is another way to determine if this is where you want to work. You can also volunteer to work at an employer’s business. There are also internships, summer jobs and co-op programs through your school. You can receive educational credit and sometimes even a salary while working in a field related to your study. You can use this experience as a part of your resume as well as getting firsthand experience while still in school.

Step 3 Choosing the right career—getting down to brass tacks.

When you get down to the final decision, you still need to make more decisions. What kind of career would you like to spend your life doing? How much time will education or training take? Will the career be around in five years?

You have looked at many options through job fairs, you have discovered what sorts of jobs you might be interested in, and you have gone to classes or worked at various businesses.  Now it’s time for you to consider your likes and abilities. Here are some questions that you should be able to answer based on your experiences.

• Where do you want to be in five or ten years?
• What sorts of responsibilities do you want?
• What kind of job security do you want?
• What kind of work environment do you want?
• Is there work you do not want to do?
• Do you want to work for myself or someone else?
• Do you want to work with others or are you happier working on my own?

When you attended the job fairs, you learned how much education you would need to do certain jobs. If you did not find exactly what you wanted, you now have the tools to go online and look at job wanted sites and see exactly what a position you are interested in expects of a prospective employee. Even if you know you are not going to work at that business, you will be able to think about whether you have the time, money and talent for such an education.

Next, you need to determine whether the job is going to be around in the next five to ten years. While blacksmiths are still available, the need for them has greatly decreased.  Could your prospective job be done by a machine? Is this an old or a new industry? Do they have plenty of competing industries? What technology does this career use? Could it be outdated soon? When you are certain you have found a career that will go into the middle of this century, you are closer to your decision.

Other things you might consider before making that final decision are whether this is a job that takes more than 40 hours a week. Does it mean travel? Will you have to relocate far away from family? And then there is the money. What will the income be with this career? Certain careers top out at certain pay scales. Are you going to be satisfied with this cap? What are the benefits in this career? How long will it take to get promotions? Another book to help you make sense of all this is from Amazon: Career Match: Connecting Who You Are with What You’ll Love to Do by Shoya Zichy and Ann Bidou.

Now it’s time for you to look at colleges and see which ones have studies in a particular field that interests you. Do you need to attend a four-year college or can you attend a technical school and get certified in the field. Look at the class offerings and see if you are interested enough to study biology or advanced computer languages.  What will your education cost?  How long will it take?  How long will it take to find a job after graduation?

By working on this plan you will be able to decide what career is right for you, what education you need now and what higher education you will need. Career fairs, internships, volunteer positions, and other options tailored to career-oriented teens can help you learn about what’s available while also providing you with the opportunity to jump on your career path.

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Why Didn’t I Get Hired?

You have written a thorough resume. You have gone on the interview. So why haven’t you been hired?

Here are some of the reasons interviewers gave as to why you might have been passed over:

1. You lied on your resume or in the interview. You can’t get away with that. In a vast majority of cases, you will get caught and discarded. You can’t invent a past. If you have problems, you can cover them by telling the truth in a cover letter.

2. You said bad things about your current boss, business or situation. This sort of negativity is not welcome in a workplace and will lose you the job. It’s better to phrase problem areas in a positive way. Maybe you can explain that you prefer working alone to working in teams and your current position doesn’t encourage that kind of worker.

3. You have no way to prove that you were helpful to your last company. These days interviewers are looking for you to show in quantifiable ways how you helped the company-either using percentages, dollar amounts or time saved.

4. You don’t have enough experience. If you have had volunteer work experience, worked for others on weekend jobs or finished an Eagle Scout project, you have work experience. After you ask the people you helped or worked for if you can use them as references, feel free to use these kinds of things as experience.

5. It’s a good bet you won’t be hired if you haven’t checked out information on the internet or through networking about the company you are applying to work with. The interviewer will know by the kinds of questions you ask or don’t ask. The more preparation you have done, the more the interviewer will take you seriously.

6. Other things you don’t want to do at an interview include discuss salary; get too personal about hobbies, age or religion; or act like Joe Cool. A little enthusiasm goes a long way when you work with clients and customers.

You are shaken, but you don’t give up. You look on the internet for more help and find two good sites: http://www.jobsnake.com/seek/articles/index.cgi?openarticle&8727&Why_Didn%27t_I_Get_The_Job?and http://www.jobinterviewtools.com/blog/index.php/i-have-experience-but-why-didnt-i-get-the-job/.

Still wanting to make every effort to get a job now that you are getting an idea of what you did wrong you buy to bestselling books from Amazon.com: The Unspoken Rules of Getting Hired: Recession-Proof Secrets That Employers Do Not Want You To Know by Landon Long and Jesse Stretch (Paperback – Sept. 7, 2009) and Just Tell Me How to Get Hired: A Top Recruiter’s Fast, Easy Guide to Getting & Staying Employed by Jill De Sena-Shook (Paperback – Nov. 16, 2009)

So now you know what you need to think about or do before you send in that resume or go on the next interview.

What is the Elevator Speech or “Me in 30 Seconds?”

You are looking for a job and decide to join the local Chamber of Commerce to do some serious networking. The first event you attend is for new members. The room is full of people sitting around large tables. The announcements are over and suddenly you are alarmed to hear that every person in the room is going to get a very brief time to tell who they are and about their business.

One thing you notice is that:

1. Many of the people give a brief personal introduction including their career objectives or type of job they are looking for.

2. They might mention three or four specific accomplishments they have done and perhaps a few character traits or adaptive skills that set them apart from their neighbor to the right.

3. If they are looking for a job, they might end with a probing question like, “Who do you know who works in such and such a field?”

You are amazed at the amount of information these people give out in such a brief time frame. They didn’t seem to have a memorized speech, it sounded very natural. They didn’t use any technical words that others couldn’t understand. You wondered how they could get up and give a talk like that just off the cuff.

So you keep your eye on one of those people. When the meeting moves into the social gathering stage, you go up to that person and ask how she did that. She give you a big smile and says that she was giving a “Me in 30 Seconds” or “Elevator Speech”. This is a technique that most of the people in the room have learned to use in situations like the Chamber function or interviews.

You ask why it’s called an “Elevator Speech” and she tells you that most people generally only listen effectively for 30 to 60 seconds. When you tell a little about yourself that way, it piques the interest of the listener who might invite you to tell them a little more about yourself.

You take this information home and do a little computer research. You go to websites like http://www.creativekeys.net/PowerfulPresentations/article1024.html How to Craft an Effective Elevator Speech and http://www.quintcareers.com/writing_elevator_speeches.html Fantastic Formulas for Composing Elevator Speeches. You even get two books from Amazon.com, Give Your Elevator Speech a Lift! by Lorraine Howell (Paperback – June 21, 2006) and Elevating Your Elevator Speech: A Powerful Way to Answer the Question “What Do You Do?” by Dave Sherman (Paperback – June 1, 2005).

After learning all the knowledge you need, you write yourself an elevator speech and start rehearsing. You put copies of it in different places at home to remind yourself to practice and in case you forget something. You tell it to yourself out loud when you are alone in the car going to the store. You practice it on the kids. They learn it faster than you do and enjoy coaching you into getting it right.

A month has now gone by and you have an opportunity to go on a job interview. The interviewer smiles at you and asks you to tell him a little about yourself and your give him your elevator speech as naturally as if you just thought it through.

Congratulations. You are on your way to getting a new job.

Three Resume Recommendation Tips

Your resume is an advertisement about you. What should yours say? Where do you even start? Before sitting down and writing out your resume, you need to have a plan. When you have completed these steps, you are on your way to having a resume that will get you an interview.

Here are three suggestions:

1. Where do you want to go?

It is important to decide if you want to stay with the kind of job you are familiar with or if you are in a position to look for something different. As technological shift, what you were doing before may be out of date. Hopefully you were learning new skills that you could use to seek something new.

2. What are your qualifications and what have you accomplished?

You will want to include work history, education and training, certifications, accomplishments and more.

Two things are very important. The first is that you tell the truth and nothing but.

The second is that you need to be specific about what you accomplished.

It is not enough to give general details of what your job entailed. You need to explain a problem that existed, the action you took and a specific result that helped the company. How do you do this? You quantify the results by using percents, dollar amounts, or time frames. Be sure you remember Rule number one.

3. Can you summarize your qualifications?

This will go toward the very top of your resume. So it’s a good idea to think of this are the “headline” to the “advertisement” in which you are selling yourself. Briefly mention your top skills, your abilities and strengths as they relate to the type of job you are seeking.

Keep the summary concise and well written. Use strong language. Sentence fragments are appropriate for resumes so they are all right in your summary.

Just to be on the safe side you also check out some sites on the web like http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/resume;_ylt=A0Kjq7KUOSZMBkYBuwYPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTExNmlyNXFkBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDNARjb2xvA3NwMQR2dGlkAwRsA1dTMQ and http://jobsearch.about.com/od/resumetips/Resume_Tips.htm. You also buy a couple of best selling  books on resume writing from Amazon.com–Knock’em Dead 2010: The Ultimate Job Search Guide by Martin Yate (Paperback – Oct. 18, 2009) and Acing the Interview: How to Ask and Answer the Questions That Will Get You the Job by Tony Beshara (Paperback – Jan. 23, 2008).

All your research helps you when you are ready to write your advertisement. Remember that this is one of the most important parts of getting an interview.

5 Helpful Rules to Successful Job Interviewing

Getting a job these days is a job in itself. With so many people out-of-work or downsized for some reason, every job opening is a hot spot where as many as several hundred applicants may gather. A book that has been around for quite awhile and is still a big seller is What Color Is Your Parachute? 2010: A Practical Manual for Job-Hunters and Career-Changers by Richard Nelson Bolles (Paperback – Sept. 22, 2009). You can get this from Amazon.com.

How can you stand out in an interview situation like that? Here are five helpful rules to successful job interviewing:

1.  Do your homework

To be fully prepared for the job interview you will need to do your homework. These days that means all sorts of interview preparation. To start you off you might show interest in a company that is hiring by researching the company. Some job interview tips suggest you do this after you have been asked to the interview. I disagree. I think it is important to look at the company before you even send them your resume.

Why? Because you might find that your skills wouldn’t be a good fit or you might discover that several of your skills would make you an excellent candidate as you examine the company. You will know just which of your skills to showcase when you adjust your resume for that individual company.

2. Request an informational interview

The next step might be to request an informational interview with someone working at the job or area you are interested in. Decide what information you want to know that was not included on the company’s website. Choose a person you want to interview and how to contact that person. You can request an interview over the phone, in person, by letter or by a social contact in your network. Phone interviews should be no longer than 5 minutes and in-person ones from 15 to 30 minutes.

3.  Practice answering questions in mock interviews

After you have sent in your resume and you are asked to come for the actual interview, you still have much preparation to make. Most employers ask the same basic questions with very definite reasons behind them. Until you are able to leave the impression of self-assuredness, you need to practice answering the questions in mock interviews. This book might help you with this Guerrilla Marketing for Job Hunters 2.0: 1,001 Unconventional Tips, Tricks and Tactics for Landing Your Dream Job by Jay Conrad Levinson, David E. Perry, and Darren Hardy (Paperback – June 22, 2009), which you can get at Amazon.com.

4. Be prepared to ask your own questions

The person who is being interviewed is entitled to ask a question for every question he or she is asked. For example, after saying why you think your skills would be useful to the company, you can ask something like, “do you see how my skill set would benefit your company?”

5. Write a thank you note and do your follow-up via a phone call

At the end of the job interview ask if you can contact the interviewer in one week to see how the job search is going. Remember to collect business cards from everyone who might be at the interview and write thank you notes within 24 hours of the interview.

These five helpful rules to job interviewing will help you stand out from the crowd. For more information on interview questions and why the interviewer asks them, you might want to look at some resources available on the internet, such as http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/interview;_ylt=A0LEVVTVMiZM91EALioPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTExdGs4NWhxBHNlYwNzcgRwb3MDMwRjb2xvA3JlNAR2dGlkAwRsA1dTMQ– and http://www.jobinterviewquestions.org/ .