Shopping for a Job

Recently, I have had an insatiable urge to go shopping. I shop online during my boring classes (this only happened once, I promise!) and I made my friends go to the mall with me last weekend even though we all had better things to do. Why? A part of it is that I am beginning to think about my life next year and what type of job I want to have. Career searching is like shopping - I have a list of items I need to purchase, and at the end of the day I want to come home satisfied and feeling pretty damn hot. Now, as I wander down the huge, poorly decorated mall of career searching, I begin by consulting my shopping list.




1. The resume: If we are in a shopping mall of job searching, then the resume is your wallet. You have spent the last few years building up your credit (ie, getting that internship, or campus job that shows your leadership abilities, or working on that GPA, or excelling in debate team...) Now it is time to organize and show case your talents. The wallet should be organized, you know, rows of cards, a tightly-controlled change purse, neatly folded dollar bills. A few check points:

- It is a good idea to develop resumes for specific jobs positions. Ie, I
will have a more business oriented resume, a policy oriented resume, and a
general summary resume.

- In terms of formatting, find a few sample resumes at good job searching
websites and model your format after those. Remember to use strong action
verbs, concise language and an organized, easy to read format. The first
place to look for sample resumes is your campus's career resource website.
Wesleyan has an excellent site at www.wesleyan.edu/crc (accessible by
anyone) with helpful advice, lists of good verbs to use, and many sample
resumes. You can also look at collegegrad.com

- Have your resume proofread by someone who knows what they are doing.
Preferably this would be someone at the career resource center at your
school, but at the very least get a professional to look it over. One
tiny error in your resume can cost you a job (this has actually happened
to me).

2. Preparedness/The 'Do these jeans make me look fat?' stage: You should thoroughly research the companies you are interested in. Think of this as a first step interview - only here you are interviewing the company to find out if they are right for you. See my previous blog for idea of what to research. This part of the preparedness is also really important for interviewing.

3. The Interview.

I just went to a mandatory interview workshop run by the Career Resource Network at Wesleyan. I have a few take-home pointers for you all.

- Prepare, prepare, prepare. Research and rehearse possible interview
questions. At the very least, you should have thought about answers to
basic questions such as, "why do you want to do this?", "what are your
strengths and weaknesses", and "tell me about a time that you were
confronted with a problem and forced to problem solve." Interviewers
want to hear how your think - and it is much better to prepare answers
to these types of questions than to make them up on the spot. If
at all possible, do some mock interviews before the real thing - often
a career resource center will be able to video you during a mock
interview and help you see yourself from the interviewer's perspective.

- Dress to impress. This part is actually difficult for me - but the CRC
strongly recommends that you wear a suit to any interview. One of the
classic places to buy a suit is Ann Taylor (see ad below taken from
their website).



But if "suiting" (dear lord, who knew that it was a verb?) is not an "art"
for you - try outlet shopping. I mean, I don't intend to spend $500 on a
suit that I am only (hopefully) going to wear a few times in my life. But
that's just me. There's also salvation army, Target, and ebay. I suggest
you all make the internet your friend.