First Step: Self-assessment
Self-assessment, the difficult process of examining your strengths and weaknesses, your interests and objectives, is the first step in job hunting. The most innovative career books on the market are really not career books in the traditional sense of explaining a field, how to get into it and what to expect. Instead, they concentrate on helping you to make decisions about yourself, your values and goals. The assumption is that once you do, you will be able to pursue a job that suits and satisfies you. Factors to think about include:
- which skills you are best at and most enjoy using,
- your values and to what extent your work must reflect them,
- what kind of work atmosphere you want,
- how important is the size of the salary,
- how important are possibilities of advancement,
- how much free time you like to have and what hours you like to work,
- where you want to live,
- how successful you want to be,
- how much supervision you like.
Career-guidance experts recommend that you decide what kind of a job you want before beginning your search. A potential employer is unlikely to hire someone who only "thinks, sort of, that the job would be interesting." Employers want enthusiasm; they need to be convinced that you want the job. Furthermore, unless you really know what job you want, you run the risk-in a fit of job-hunter's frustration-of settling for any job and regretting your decision later.
Informational Interviewing
To help decide whether a field is right for you, it is a good idea to set up informational interviews. The purpose of an II is to meet people working in the field and to question them about it. The cardinal rule of (LIS) is not to ask the people you meet for a job. Remember that you have asked them to tell you about their field, not to find you a job, and you must keep your word. If you make a good impression on them, they might tell you about openings when they hear of them.
A good way to find people to interview is to go through your college or graduate-school alumni or career office. Many colleges make histories and work addresses of alumni available to other alumni. Many alumni are delighted to help "one of the fold" or to meet the younger generation. Talk with people in a variety of jobs and at different levels, if possible. It may be difficult to find senior-level people to talk to you, but junior personnel may be just as helpful because they know the current job market.
LIS are important in developing a network of people in your field. Networking has become a hot 80s topic, but in truth the art of making contacts has been around for a long time. Use the network of people who are in the same field (or even the same company) to keep you informed of job openings and to keep abreast of developments in the field.
If you do not have contacts, try calling up an organization cold. Explain your burning interest in it and ask to come meet the people who are doing the jobs in which you are interested. Be prepared to tell them why it is in their interest to meet you, for example, what can you bring to the organization, but stress that you are most interested in learning about the field and not necessarily applying for a job.
If you call a company cold, avoid ending up in the personnel department. You need to speak directly to the people who have jobs comparable with those in which you are interested. This is particularly important in larger organizations, where the personnel or recruiting departments may be out of touch with other offices. You should also find out all you can about the organization before you go for an interview.
A key question to ask in any II, after you have thoroughly exhausted your questions about the field, is, "Do you know anyone else to whom I should talk?" People, often eager to offer you something, will give you names of colleagues or other alumni. By making these calls you could eventually run into someone who has a job to offer or who knows of one.
Writing and Wielding a Resume
Once the (LIS)have helped you decide on your field and you have established a few contacts, you are ready to apply for a job. Your first step is to write a resume (or a curriculum vitae, which is generally longer, more detailed and for people with more experience). Resumes are a necessary evil: employers use them to narrow the field of candidates for a job. The purpose of the resume is to get you an interview; it is pure advertisement. Your resume should make someone want to meet you and ask you more about yourself, your experience, your qualifications and, importantly, what you can do for the company.
Some experts feel this kind of resume reduces your chances of changing careers because the reader can only see what you have done, not your qualities or strengths. Functional resumes concentrate on qualifications, skills and accomplishments and deemphasize dates, positions and specific responsibilities. They are harder to write-and read-because there is less to latch onto. ("Effective organizer who grasps concepts well" is much less concrete than "copyreader" or "editorial assistant.") The combination resume joins the two styles, stressing skills and competencies as well as providing names and dates. People tend to write functional resumes to mask their work inexperience; people write chronological resumes when they have a lot to communicate. Chronological resumes are the most common. Functional and combination resumes take longer to read but may be read more carefully. In general, you must play up your strengths and minimize your weaknesses.
