Learning More about Possible Work Settings
After reading some job descriptions, you may choose to edit and revise your list of job titles once again, discarding those you feel are not suitable and keeping those that continue to hold your interest. Or you may wish to keep your list intact and see where these jobs may be located. For example, if you are interested in public relations and you appear to have those skills and the requisite education, you'll want to know what organizations do public relations. How can you find that out? How much income does someone in public relations make a year and what is the employment potential for the field of public relations?
To answer these and many other good questions about your list of job titles, we will direct you to any of the following resources: Careers Encyclopedia, Career Information Center, College to Career: The Guide to Job Opportunities, and the Occupational Outlook Handbook. Each of these books, in a different way, will help to put the job titles you have selected into an employer context. VGM's Handbook of Business and Management Careers shows detailed career descriptions for over fifty fields. Entries include complete information on duties and responsibilities for individual careers and detailed entry-level requirements. There is information on working conditions and promotional opportunities as well. Salary ranges and career outlook projections are also provided. Perhaps the most extensive discussion is found in the Occupational Outlook Handbook which gives a thorough presentation of the nature of the work, the working conditions, employment statistics, training, other qualifications, and advancement possibilities as well as job outlook and earnings. Related occupations are also detailed, and a select bibliography is provided to help you find additional information.
Continuing with our public relations example, your search through these reference materials would teach you that the public relations jobs you find attractive are available in larger hospitals, financial institutions, most corporations (both consumer goods and industrial goods), media organizations, and colleges and universities.
Get the Complete Story
You now have not only a list of job titles but also, for each of these job titles, a description of the work involved and a general list of possible employment settings in which to work. You'll want to do some reading and keep talking to friends, colleagues, teachers, and others about the possibilities. Don't neglect to ask if the career office at your college maintains some kind of alumni network. Often such alumni networks will connect you with another graduate from the college who is working in the job title or industry you are seeking information about. These career net workers offer what assistance they can. For some, it is a full day "shadowing" the alumnus as he or she goes about the job. Others offer partial day visits, tours, informational interviews, resume reviews, job postings, or, if distance prevents a visit, telephone interviews. As fellow graduates, they'll be frank and informative about their own jobs and prospects in their field.
Take them up on their offer and continue to learn all you can about your own personal list of job titles, descriptions, and employment settings. You'll probably continue to edit and refine this list as you learn more about the realities of the job, the possible salary, advancement opportunities, and supply and demand statistics.
In the next section, we'll describe how to find the specific organizations that represent these industries and employers, so that you can begin to make contact.
Where Are These Jobs, Anyway?
Having a list of job titles that you've designed around your own career interests and skills is an excellent beginning. It means you've really thought about who you are and what you are presenting to the employment market. It has caused you to think seriously about the most appealing environments to work in, and you have identified some employer types that represent these environments.
The research and the thinking that you've done this far will be used again and again. It will be helpful in writing your resume and cover letters, in talking about yourself on the telephone to prospective employers, and in answering interview questions.
Now is a good time to begin to narrow the field of job titles and employment sites down to some specific employers to initiate the employment contact.
Finding Out Which Employers Hire People Like You
This section will provide tips, techniques, and specific resources for developing an actual list of specific employers that can be used to make contacts. Librarians, employers, career counselors, friends, friends of friends, business contacts, and book store staff will all have helpful information on geographically specific and new resources to aid you in locating employers who'll hire you.
