The Ten-Minute Job Search
By Lisa Correu, Principal/Job Search Advocate AfterSchool Career Workshops
Looking for a job doesn’t always have to be an all-day, um, job. There are things you can do in just a few minutes that will take the edge off the anxiety when you might not have time for a deeper commitment. Here are five things to choose from that you can do in ten minutes to keep your momentum going.
Photo Courtesy of Jon Jordan
Do Your Online Homework!
We are proud to debut a new blog series, "How I Stopped Worrying and Got the Job", guest posts from past workshop attendees, new acquaintances and other clever job seekers who used their noggins and landed their first job.
Jacklyn Cremer attended one of our first AfterSchool Career Workshops sessions and graduated from KU with a Bachelors in Marketing and now has a full-time job in account services at ER Marketing. More about her job search can be found at JacklynCremer.com. This is how she used the Internet to search more than job boards.
“You don’t stand a tinker’s chance of producing successful advertising unless you start by doing your homework. I have always found this extremely tedious, but there is no substitute for it. First study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a big idea for selling it.” – David Ogilvy, Ogilvy on Advertising.
As a marketer searching for a job, I was the product.
The hunt is about finding a job that really fits with what you want to do and will help you to reach your career goals. If you do your homework, then you will find a company, a job description, and a location that fits your interests and skills. When you know everything there is to know about the company and the position, it’s easy to let the company know that you are the right choice for the job!
What If You Don’t Want a Job? (…Or Can’t Find a Job?) Consider Making Your Own.
By Kathryn Lorenzen, Principal/Career Development Coach
Not everyone is cut out to be an employee. Some people would rather gnaw off their own foot than sign on to someone else’s rules, mission, 
and payroll. They’d just feel too trapped or like they’d sold out.
And not everyone who wants a job upon graduation will be able to find one quickly. The unemployment rate for young adults age 20 to 24 is uncomfortably high (15.4%, by a recent government estimate, compared to 8.9% for the general population).
So, what’s the alternative? Since minimum-wage jobs will generally not allow you to be self-supporting, some new graduates make the decision to become entrepreneurs, providing a basic service to individuals or businesses. And some do quite well, thank you, as either a freelancer or a dedicated business.
What are the qualities that help you succeed if this is the road you choose, or that chooses you?
What Can You Build with Job Boards? Not Exactly What You’d Think
By Kathryn Lorenzen, Principal/Career Development Coach, AfterSchool Career Workshops
Here's something you might be interested in, especially if you're soon-to-graduate and spending lots of time on job boards. Did you know there are over 55,000 job boards online? And here's the kicker: the two largest, monster and careerbuilder, represent only 1.5% of the employers in the U.S. (Let that sink in for a minute.)
So... what are job boards good for? Probably two important things:
1. They're a very good source to research job titles and job descriptions so you can pinpoint the kind of job you're targeting, fully understand the basic accountabilities, and make sure your resume highlights the qualifications you have that are relevant.
2. They're also great for survey information on what categories of business or organizations are hiring, so that you can flesh out your own list of people and enterprises to target for connecting.
Here's an efficient method for getting what you need from job boards: Set it and forget it. Find on online aggregator tool that you like, such as www.indeed.com, or at www.mylandajob.com. Set it up to search for you. Then use your discretionary time to do personal contact work, which has a much higher likelihood of yielding a job opportunity for you.