1.6 Chapter Review and Exercises

This book will give you the tools necessary to execute any kind of job search you need at any point in your life. A successful job search begins with understanding your current life situation. Knowing your goals and how each job can help you reach those goals is critical to your confidence and emotional level during a job search. Your current life situation and the reason for your job search represent the variables in your search. The six-step job search process that is covered in the subsequent chapters represents the constant, or the framework, from which you launch your search.

Whether you are a student interested in a summer internship or your first full-time job or an experienced professional returning from a leave or changing careers, this book gives you a job search methodology to get that next job.

There is much to consider when making a change of any kind in your life and career. Timing is important, such as campus recruiting deadlines or a specific moving date. Timing is a factor in another sense for individuals with gaps of employment on their résumé. Access to resources varies over time because you may be a student with great career services support or out of the professional workplace on a leave and feeling more isolated. Emotions vary because some job searches are more stressful than others: the regimented campus recruiting programs of banking and consulting firms; the career changer looking to fit in; the unemployed worker under a cash crunch.

Remember that your job search changes depending on your specific life situation. Knowing that your life influences your job search, adapt your strategy accordingly. Maximize your inherent advantages. Minimize any constraints.

Chapter Takeaways

  • You can find yourself conducting a job search at multiple times in your college career. In your freshman, sophomore, and junior years, you will be searching for internships. The internship of your junior year can lead to a full-time job offer.
  • While in college, you should know about and adhere to a recruiting schedule because it can facilitate getting internships and full-time jobs more easily.
  • Liberal arts majors, by nature of a wide curriculum, may have a more difficult time deciding what career will be best for them. A liberal arts education affords many strengths that can be used in a job search, when positioned properly.
  • Summer internships can be structured or unstructured. The most structured internships include an orientation and performance reviews, with multiple performance measurements.
  • Gaps in your employment history can affect your hiring potential, but that risk is mitigated when you explain them strategically.
  • Career changes are possible when you bridge the gap with skills you have developed in your current job with those same skills needed in your desired job.
  • Long-distance job searches can be complex and you need to budget time and effort to execute them successfully. International job searches are even more complex because you need to take into account different time zones and different employment laws.

Chapter Review

  1. Why do your life situation and needs dictate your job search and not the reverse?
  2. What is the most important internship of your college career? Does it occur in your freshman, sophomore, or junior year?
  3. What should you do if your summer internship in your junior year does not convert to a full-time job offer?
  4. What should you do if you aren’t sure what you can do in terms of a career?
  5. If you’ve left the workforce to care for a parent or family member, what is the best way to explain the gap in your employment history?
  6. Why is becoming a career insider the best way to change careers?
  7. How would you go about changing industries? For example, how could you move from the communications industry to the financial services industry?
  8. How can you execute a long-distance job search successfully?
  9. What are some key factors to keep in mind if you want to conduct an international search?