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Jobs and Liberal Arts Majors
March 20, 1998
You followed everyone's advice and majored in liberal arts. Now, how
do you find a job?
Rice
University lists job fields to look at, provides salary information,
and suggests several steps necessary for a successful liberal arts job
search.
First, identify your job goal. What are you interested in? What kind
of work do you want to do? If you're undecided, try an internship. Or,
take a career inventory tests like the Strong
Interest Inventory or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.
Most colleges have career planning centers that offer the tests at no or
minimal cost to registered students. Career counselors can also help
you find appropriate tests to help define your interests.
Once you know what you'd like to do, figure out where you want to do
it. Look for companies in that area which might be likely prospects.
Ask friends and families for leads. Go to the library and look at
different organizational directories. Find several companies that
appeal to you.
Next, do some research. Find out about the organization. Look at
Ward's Business Directory of U.S. Private and Public Companies or Dun's
Directory of Service Companies. Read local papers.
Create a functional
resume that highlights your skills, aptitudes, and accomplishments.
Focus on what you can do for your prospective employers.
Contact your targeted organizations. Arrange for an informational
interview.
Most companies look for basic skills,
higher-order thinking skills, and affective skills and traits. Make
sure you know what yours are. Then, make sure you let your prospects
know, too.
Skew Yourself -- Then Look for Work
March 19, 1998
Ok. This may be a bit far-fetched, but bear with us. If you're tired of the same-old same-old, why not look at things in a new way?
You could chuck it all and make T-shirts. Well, maybe not full-time, but as a side-line business, who knows? Or you could look at a far-fetched idea and view it from a slightly skewed perspective.
Hanes T-ShirtMaker Expansion Pack, is a nifty little kit for that allows you to embellish T-shirts with graphics, images, and lots of fonts. You design the stuff, print it out, then iron it onto a T-shirt.
Look at it this way. You'll never need to go buy a gift; you can give T-shirts. If you really get into it you can then make and sell team shirts and fundraising items. Voila. You're in business.
Yes, we know. This is a somewhat absurd idea for those of you looking for employment security. But, what happens if you skew your perspective a bit?
Times are changing. Very little is secure and you need to be creative to survive.
It doesn't matter if you don't want to be a T-shirt designer or vendor. The Hanes site still has a bit to offer.
Take a look at their T-Shirt Design 101 page. Be creative in your interpretation of what they say.
For instance, try substituting the word "resume" whenever you read "design". It works like this:
It doesn't work the whole way through--but it does hold for the first few paragraphs of the page.
The idea of all this is to not be limited by traditional roles or traditional views. Figure out what it is that you want. Then, explore alternative ways of achieving it.
How Will You Be Compensated?
March 18, 1998
Just a few years ago, if you were a new employee, you probably met with someone in the personnel department and learned about your compensation package. They'd give you a salary figure and tell you about your benefits. The package was usually based on varying sets of knowledge skills. This is changing.
A recent study by Towers Perrin suggests that companies are starting to look not so much at what an employee does, but how he or she does it.
Although many compensation packages today look as they did a few years ago, many organizations are developing or reassessing their compensation strategies. They want to create a better link between compensation and current business strategy.
In fact, according to Towers, a number of companies are expected to
Do you know what your competencies are and how they'll mesh with a business's particular strategy?
If not, take a look at a table summarizing the early 1990's SCANS report which clearly explains what competencies businesses look for.
World Class Job Hunt
March 16, 1998
Want a really big change in your life? Want a new life?
The job boards on the ‘net can take getting used to and sometimes finding the right job in the right place, especially if you're not a computer whiz, can be tedious.
That's where AJR News Links can help.
This is a mega site of more than 3,600 newspapers worldwide.
The developers of the site have even made it reasonably easy to find whatever newspaper you want. If you know the name of the one you're looking for, there's a search engine you can use. If you don't know the name, but you which state you're interested in, you can browse the newspapers in that state.
Or, if you're adventurous, you can look abroad. For instance, if you explore the papers of African continent, you'll find 20 countries and 52 newspapers listed. Most are even in English, although this certainly isn't true of most non-US based papers.
While not all of the newspapers included are subscription-free, many are.
Most also have a classified or help wanted section.
Don't tie yourself to a job you don't care for in a place you don't like. Look at the world.
"propose use of competency-based pay plans ... , with more than two-thirds of respondents saying that they plan to use such plans in the future. Even more striking are the 27% who plan to eliminate base pay changes and manage to total compensation targets."
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