The Online Reflector

The Office of Career Services held a Job Search Boot Camp on Dec. 5 geared toward juniors and seniors.

“I came to this [Job Search Boot Camp] because I want to have a backup plan, just in case graduate school doesn’t work out,” said senior exercise science major Emily Didelot.

The discussion covered an outline of career planning that ranged from networking, résumé writing and interview tips.

“It’s like a late-night cram session for career and job search planning,” said Director of Career Services Paul Gabonay.  “We hope to get them [the seniors] pumped up, to brace for the next big thing.  It’s never too late to do what you need to do to move forward in your career. The sooner you get started, the sooner something will happen.”

In the packet of information handed out by the Office of Career Services  was “Recruiting Trends 2011-2012,” by Dr. Phil Gardner, which listed trends from November 2011.

According to this list, marketing, advertising and public relations are some of the majors with the strongest growth in opportunities.

The list of trends also says that other majors seeing more opportunities in 2011-2012 are nursing, clinical laboratory scientists, human resources, chemistry, statistics and mathematics.

Gardner’s advice to students is to be focused, directed and connected.

The System of Integrated Guidance and Information (Sigi3) is a resource available to students via the Career Services channel on MyUIndy.

This tool allows students to do self-assessments and look up all of the occupations related to their academic career while maintaining an ongoing record of work.

Gabonay encourages students to take advantage of every opportunity they can.

“Even the least glamorous places can lead you [to] build great résumés,” said Assistant Director of Career Services Libby Davis.

Davis also encourages students to be prepared with résumés wherever they are. She said to make résumés unique, stay away from using résumé wizards and templates, since these tend to cause problems with formatting when sent digitally to potential employers.

“If you format your résumé yourself, you can mess around with margins and font sizes a lot easier.  Use the most professional language possible [in a résumé] that is honest,” Davis said.  “Your experiences and skills really need to stand out.”

She encourages students who have not been employed before to build a résumé.

“A lot of students think they don’t have any special skills, Davis said. “But what they don’t realize is that they’ve started to develop skills even before they came to college.”

Davis advises students to use a Word document and try their best to fit their résumé on one page.

Davis also stressed the importance of thank-you notes.  Whether a person gets one interview or eight, she says people stand out more if they send a thank-you note to each of their interviewers.

“People who demonstrate good and higher attitudes stand out more than others,” Davis said.

Karen J. Childers, technology and recruitment manager of Career Services, said that students who do job searching online should create new email accounts so potential employers have a definite way to contact them.

She said that UIndy email accounts get deleted fairly quickly after graduation.

Job sites such as Job Hound Connect, LinkedIn, Careerbuilder.com and Monster are beneficial sites to use as long as they are updated regularly.

Childers and Davis agree that while Facebook is another good way to network and find jobs people should monitor not only the content they personally post, but their friends lists as well.

Associate Director of Career Services Lela Mixon said that talking to people is the most effective way to conduct a successful job search.

Mixon said the average job search last six months, but that is just an average.  She also said that the most common thing she hears from students when it comes to job interviews is that they do not have any weaknesses.

“Try to put a positive spin on a weakness.  Results should always be positive, even if you end with ‘What I learned from that is…’” Mixon said.

The boot camp discussion wrapped up with Paul Washington-Lacey, senior associate of Career Services, talking about his experience with job searching.

Washington-Lacey landed his first after-college, part-time job simply because of the way he handled himself in his interview.

“Times may seem tough right now, but you have a lot of assistance and opportunities,” Washington-Lacey said.  “Just be yourself in an interview, be sincere and honest.“

Washington-Lacey said he encourages students to apply for a job whenever an opportunity arises because people do not know what a company really has to offer until they are actually inside the door.