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THE JOB SEARCH PROCESS

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Getting Started: Self-Evaluation and Career Objectives

Getting a job may be a relatively simple one-step or couple of week's process or a complex, months-long operation.

Starting, nurturing and developing a career or even a series of careers is a lifelong process.



What we'll be talking about in the five chapters that together form our Job Search Process are those basic steps to take, assumptions to make, things to think about if you want a job especially a first job in some area of the travel and hospitality industries. But when these steps this process are applied and expanded over a lifetime, most if not all of them are the same procedures, carried out over and over again, that are necessary to develop a successful, lifelong, professional career.

What does all this have to do with putting together a resume, writing a cover letter, heading off for interviews and the other traditional steps necessary to get a job? Whether your college graduation is just around the corner or a far distant memory, you will continuously need to focus, evaluate and re-evaluate your response to the ever changing challenge of your future. Just what do you want to do with the rest of your life? Whether you like it or not, you're all looking for that entry-level opportunity.

You're already one or two steps ahead of the competition you're sure you want to pursue a career in some area of the travel business. By hearing the advice of the many professionals who have written chapters for this Career Directory by utilizing the extensive entry level job, organization, and career resource listings we've included you're well on your way to fulfilling that dream. But there are some key decisions and time consuming preparations to make if you want to.

The actual process of finding the right company, right career path and, most importantly, the right first job, begins long before you start mailing out resumes to potential employers. The choices and decisions you make now are not irrevocable, but this first job will have a definite impact on the career options you leave yourself. To help you make some of the right decisions and choices along the way and avoid some of the most notable traps and pitfalls, this will lead you through a series of organized steps. If the entire job search process we are recommending here is properly executed, it will undoubtedly help you land exactly the job you want.

If you're currently in high school and hope, after college, to land a job with a hotel, convention and visitor bureau, tourist board, travel agency, cruise line, airline, etc., then attending the right college, choosing the right major, and getting the summer work experience many such companies look for are all important steps. Read the Career Directory that covers the particular field and/or job specialty in which you're interested many of the contributors have recommended colleges or graduate programs they favor.

If you're hoping to jump right into any of these fields without a college degree or other professional training, our best and only advice is don't do it. As you'll soon see in the detailed information included in the Job Opportunities Databank, there are not that many job openings for students without a college degree. Those that do exist are generally clerical and will only rarely lead to promising careers.

The Concept of Job Search Process

As we've explained, a job search is not a series of random events. Rather, it is a series of connected events that together form the job search process. It is important to know the eight steps that go into that process:

1. By evaluating yourself

Know thyself. What skills and abilities can you offer a prospective employer? What do you enjoy doing? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What do you want to do?

2. Establishing your career objectives

Where do you want to be next year, three years and five years from now? What do you ultimately want to accomplish in your career and your life?

3. Creating a company target list

How to prepare a Hit List of potential employers-researching them, matching their needs with your skills and starting your job search assault Preparing company information sheets and evaluating your chances.

4. Networking for success

Learning how to utilize every contact, every friend, every relative, and anyone else you can think of to break down the barriers facing any would-be travel professional, how to organize your home, office to keep track of your communications and stay on top of your job campaign.

5. Preparing your resume

How to encapsulate years of school and little actual work experience into a professional, selling resume? Learning when and how to use it?

6. Preparing cover letters

The many ordinary and the all-too-few extraordinary cover letters, the kind that land interviews and jobs.

7. Interviewing

How to make the interview process work for you from the first hello to the first day on the job?

8. Following up.

Often overlooked, it's perhaps the most important part of the job search process.

We won't try to kid you it is a lot of work. To do it right, you have to get started early, probably quite a bit earlier than you'd planned. Frankly, we recommend beginning this process one full year prior to the day you plan to start work.

So if you're in college, the end of your junior year is the right time to begin your research and preparations. That should give you enough time during summer vacation to set up your files and begin your library research.

Whether you're in college or graduate school, one item may need to be planned even earlier allowing enough free time in your schedule of classes for interview preparations and appointments. Waiting until your senior year to make some time is already too late. Searching for a full-time job is itself a full-time job! Though you're naturally restricted by your schedule, it's not difficult to plan ahead and prepare for your upcoming job search. Try to leave at least a couple of free mornings or afternoons a week. A day or even two without classes is even better.

The Self-Evaluation Process

Learning about who you are, what you want to be, what you can be, are critical first steps in the job search process and, unfortunately, the ones most often ignored by job seekers everywhere, especially students eager to leave the ivy behind and plunge into the real world. But avoiding this crucial self-evaluation can hinder your progress and even damage some decent prospects.

Why? Because in order to land a job with a company at which you'll actually be happy, you need to be able to identify those firms and/or job descriptions that best match your own skills, likes and strengths. The more you know about yourself, the more you'll bring to this process and the more accurate the match-ups. You'll be able to structure your presentation (resume, cover letter, interviews, and follow up) to stress your most marketable skills and talents (and, dare we say it, conveniently avoid your weaknesses?). Later, you'll be able to evaluate potential employers and job offers on the basis of your own needs and desires. This spells the difference between waking up in the morning ready to enthusiastically tackle a new day of challenges and shutting off the alarm in the hopes the day (and your job) will just disappear.

Creating Your Self-Evaluation Form

If your self-evaluation is to have any meaning, you must first be honest with yourself. This self-evaluation form should help you achieve that goal by providing a structured environment to answer these tough questions.

Take a sheet of lined notebook paper. Set up eight columns across the top- Strengths, Weaknesses, Skills, Hobbies, Courses, Experience, likes, Dislikes.

Now, fill in each of these columns according to these guidelines:

Strengths: Describe personality traits you consider your strengths (and try to look at them as an employer would) e.g., persistence, organization, ambition, intelligence, logic, assertiveness, aggression, leadership, etc.

Weaknesses: The traits you consider glaring weaknesses e.g., impatience, conceit, etc. Remember: Look at these as a potential employer would. Don't assume that the personal traits you consider weaknesses will necessarily be considered negatives in the business world. You may be easily bored, a trait that led to lousy grades early on because teachers couldn't keep you interested in the subjects they were teaching. Well, many entrepreneurs need ever-changing challenges. Is this strength or weakness?

Skills: Any skill you have, whether you think it's marketable or not Everything from basic business skills-like typing, word processing, and stenography to computer, or teaching experience and foreign language literacy. Don't forget possibly obscure but marketable skills like good telephone voice.

Hobbies: The things you enjoy doing that, more than likely, have no overt connection to career objective. These should be distinct from the skills listed above, and may include activities such as reading, games, travel, sports and the like. While these may not be marketable in any general sense, they may well be useful in specific circumstances.

Courses: All the general subject areas (history, literature, etc.) and/or specific courses you've taken which may be marketable (computer, business, marketing, hotel management, etc.), you really enjoyed, or both.

Experience: Just the specific functions you performed at any part-time (school year) or full-time (summer) jobs.

Likes: List all your likes, those important considerations that you haven't listed anywhere else yet These might include the types of people you like to be with, the kind of environment you prefer (city, country, large places, small places, quiet, loud, fast-paced, slow-paced) and anything else which hasn't shown up somewhere on this form. Try to think of likes that you have that are related to the job you are applying for. For example, if you're applying for a job at a bank, mention that you enjoy reading the Wall St Journal. However, try not to include entries which refer to specific jobs or companies. We'll list those on another form.

Dislikes: All the people, places and things you can easily live without

Now assess the marketability of each item you've listed. In other words, are some of your likes, skills or courses easier to match to a financial job description, or do they have little to do with a specific job or company? Mark highly marketable skills with an "H." Use "M" to characterize those skills which may be marketable in a particular set of circumstances, "L" for those with minimal potential application to any job.

Referring back to the same list, decide if you'd enjoy using your marketable skills or talents as part of your everyday job 'Y' for yes, "N" for no. You may type 80 words a minute but truly despise typing or worry that stressing it too much will land you on the permanent clerical staff. If so, mark typing with an "N." Keep one thing in mind just because you dislike typing shouldn't mean you absolutely won't accept a job that requires it almost every professional job today-especially those involving stocks and bonds-requires computer-based work that make typing a plus.

Now, go over the entire form carefully and look for inconsistencies.

To help you with your own form, consult the sample form on the next page that a job-hunter might complete.

High Value of a Second Opinion

There is a familiar misconception about the self-evaluation process that gets in the way of many new job applicants-the belief that it is a process which must be accomplished in isolation. Nothing could be further from the truth. Just because the family doctor tells you that you need an operation doesn't mean you run right off to the hospital. Prudence dictates that you check out the opinion with another physician. Getting such a second opinion, someone else's, not just your own-is a valuable practice throughout the job search process, as well.

So after you've completed the various exercises in this chapter, review them with a friend, relative, or parent just be sure it's someone who knows you well and cares about you. These second opinions may reveal some aspects of your self-description on which you and the rest of the world differ. If so, discuss them, learn from them and, if necessary, change some conclusions. Should everyone concur with your self-evaluation, you will be reassured that your choices are on target
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