Category Archives: Career resources

Are you fishing in the right career pool?

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Are you fishing in the right career pool?

One day, after you graduate from college, you’re going to take your fishing pole, add some bait (skills, experience, knowledge) to your hook (resume), and cast it out (searching) into one of the job pools.  Catching a fish (job) is going to be dependent on a lot of things including the quality of your bait and hook, the number of lines you cast and what career pool you decide to try your luck out on.  And as one great fisherman once told me “it’s best to go fishing where all the fish are,” or basically you could have the most amazing bait, the state of the line hook and cast it out a million times and catch nothing in a pool with no fish in it.

For the next 10 years that career pool of STEM, or what is commonly referred to as science, technology, engineering and mathematics related industries is projected to show the strongest growth rates among all other career opportunities.  The period between 2000 and 2010 showed a tripling of job opportunities in STEM related industries compared to non-STEM jobs and will grow to 1.2 million new openings by 2018.  By 2020, that will be a 17% growth in STEM related career opportunities compared to only 14% for non-STEM related jobs.  And best of all (for students in those majors), the US department of labor is estimating a large shortage of newly graduating university students who will be qualified to take up most of those new job posts.  That’s probably not great for the US, but that will represent a great opportunity for new job hunters.  As the current recession is showing, it’s always better to be among the group with scarce resources.  Currently we have too few jobs and too many employees, though that percentage will decrease as we get out of recession, it has and never will hit 0%.   A study by Change the Equation, a non profit that is mobilizing the business community to improve the quality of science, technology, engineering and mathematics learning in the US, showed that in the last three years, unemployed people out numbered regular job postings 3.6 to one.  During this same time however, STEM related job postings outnumber unemployed 1.9 to one.  That means, during the roughest years of our recent recession, there were still more job postings than there were qualified yet unemployed candidates looking for jobs in the tech, engineering or science/math related fields.

Another reason to look towards the S.T.E.M. career pool; better pay of course.  A recent study by the US bureau of labor showed that 4 of the top 5 paying careers for bachelor’s degree holders are in those related areas.  As always I don’t suggest you only follow the money, but it won’t hurt if you could find your passions in a future career that statistically rewards you with tons more cash than other industries.  By starting a career in a field that continues to add new jobs, you also ensure the chance to continue to climb the ladder of success.  Contrast that with the current market where more and more employees are being let go because of a dwindling need for their specific skills.  They then have to compete against a larger pool of employment seekers that basically creates ceilings for most where they have to either accept lower positions (with lower salaries) or start over in a new career path.

One important factor that should go into the decision of what to major in during university has to be with what industries will have more opportunities in a few years from now. In fact, the US should be doing everything it can to try and get more students to major in any of the stem-related industries because a shortage in these important areas will continue to weaken the nation’s ability to drive innovation and competitiveness, strengths needed to stay the global leader.
I recommend always following your passion, but if you could combine that with a field that will have more opportunities than qualified candidates, that will probably guarantee a great paying job waiting for you after graduation.  Your preparing your self to become a great fisherman one day, make sure you are building up the right kind of bait and casting into the right career pool so you can hook that really killer fish.

 

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Start your career by going all in

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Start your career by going all in.

If I had a penny for every time someone told me I couldn’t do something I’d be rich. Well, maybe not rich, I’d have a whole lot of pennies. But if I listened to those people I wouldn’t be as successful as I am.
In life everything worth striving for is impossible, it’s those who overcome the impossible who are the real successes. Everyone else accepts life as it comes to them. They give in to their environment rather than do something about it.

I start with this because I advise students and I’ve had many come to me and explain that they want a job in so and so industry but after looking for a while, they feel it’s impossible. The current job market looks pretty bleak, but this is not the first recession nor the last one we’ll be in.  Even in this terrible economy, some people are still getting jobs; how did they land them?  Relationships, money, better qualifications, outstanding resume, pure luck? Yes, it’s probably a combination of a few or all of those things.  They went all in, and you can do the same to jump start your career.

What you call luck, they call exposure. They sent their resume to hundreds, even thousands of recruiters, hr managers, friends, family, teachers, and any other people they could get their hands on. They gave themselves the opportunity to get lucky by being in front of as many eyes as they could be. What you call qualifications, they call standing out.  They understand that they are competing with thousands of other prospects, and for their resume to stand out, they really had to put in the time to make them outstanding.
Their resumes were better because they researched to find out what they needed to include to make them relevant and they adapted their resume to make sure they would shine.  They may not have had years of experience and qualifications but they took the time to express the abilities that they did have in a way that “rang a bell” with the hiring manager.
These successful job hunters didn’t fill their resumes with generic words like great at communications, adept computer skills, team player, abilities that the hr manager’s going to see in every other CV she reads. How many people do you think have the same skills? Who cares. Instead they included 3 to 4 major bullet points of skills with real examples showing how they successfully used them.  And they made sure that these abilities were relevant to the job they were applying for and not a cookie cutter version that the other 99% of the candidates were going to be using. Their resume exudes their hunger, their passion to become a change maker and future leader.

What you call relationships, they call persistence.  In order to start their career they knew they had to go to every person they knew and found a way to build relationships with people that could help them with their job hunt.
They used social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter to stay up to date with companies that they wanted to work for and looked out for potential needs and opportunities. If they found out that a company bought another smaller company, they looked for job opportunities there that might turn into jobs in the new parent company (that they ultimately wanted to work for).

Getting a good job is difficult; the job you dream about, almost impossible. The world’s economy is going to shits, there are less jobs and more people who need them. You have to look at this as an opportunity, you need to come up with a service (that’s you) that the companies need and differentiate yourself from the rest of the masses.  You have to use technology to get yourself in front of prospective HR people.  It’s going to take blood, sweat and tears. It’s going to take creativity, time, and persistence. It’s up to you to start your career on the right path. Go all in or go home.

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What career is right for me?

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What career is right for me?

It’s the million dollar question…..Literally, choosing the right career could lead to a successful path towards job happiness and great financial life time returns. Stepping into the wrong industry on the other hand, could lead to an unsatisfying and reward-less future.  With a little planning, you could be learning about the different industries and finding a right match before you graduate from school.

So, what career is right for me?
I work with hundreds of university students and recent graduates who ask this all the time.  And I’d say it’s probably one of the most important questions that they should be tackling while they are still in school.  We all know that once we graduate, it’s off to work we go, and we’re going to be spending a huge chunk of our time working, all to get that cheddar. With so many things to consider including financial factors, the thousands of different types of areas, family and peer pressure, it usually ends up becoming that huge burden that we avoid until the last moment.

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