Someday these job-related entries will stop. But for now, poll time.

[areyououtthere]

I'm curious about where my peers pick up what they know about job-hunting. I hear a lot of general laments about how liberal arts education leaves people ill-prepared for careers that aren't academia, unsure of what other options exist, and I've certainly spent enough time being bitter about my own relative inexperience. At the same time, though, I

Comments

[thatpicturetakr]

I learned how to write and format a resume from:

My old boss at Guild.

I learned how to write a cover letter from:

I read on the internet what a good and bad cover letter looks like, the CDO (LIZA JANE BERNARD) helped a lot, as did people at my current job. I've helped hire for next year's office staff (ironic, right?) and from reading a lot of applications, I've learned what good and bad cover letters look like.

I learned to parse a job ad (figure out if my experience is relevant, figure out what the difference is between skills that are "desirable" or "preferred," figure out when to risk applying for things I'm not entirely qualified for, etc) from:

HA. I still don't know how to do that!

I learned how to answer annoying job interview questions from:

Ugh, where did I learn this? A lot of interviews.

[thatpicturetakr]

Also, your LJ gets more comments than my LJ, so I'm going to ask this:

How does one find a job when one only knows what they *do not* want to do?

[crystalpyramid]

That's kind of vague - what, exactly, do you not want to do? And what sorts of things do you like to do?

[ethereal_winged]

I learned how to write and format a resume from

[ursule]

In my observation, small liberal-arts college grads are better at figuring out what to do with their degrees than Big State School grads who majored in the liberal arts.

Researching and identifying jobs you might be interested in seems like the hard part, though.

[stemware]

Hi,

I was just browsing through (I saw you on washingtondc). You've brought up a subject that I've actually thought about considerably over the past several months

[areyououtthere]

Hey there,

Thanks for dropping by!

Most likely, you were taught to write across disciplines and explain more effectively. Also, your degree probably required you to have a base of management, economics, psychology, or sociology that helps you understand what motivates your co-workers, customers, and competition.

Close--anthropology. It's like sociology, without the useful quantitative skills part!

I never thought of my social science background as a means of understanding co-workers or customers before, but that totally makes sense. And it's good to hear that from a stranger, since my supervisor at my last job loved to tell me how I utterly failed to read people's intentions. (That is as much as I will say about the previous job in a non-locked entry. That and the fact that it ended with my leaving. In the unlikely event that you're curious, I'd rather take it off LJ.)

May I ask what you do?

People who hire a single position don't like to take a chance on college grads unless they have a personal connection that tells them you'

[crystalpyramid]

I do think that the reputation of one's undergrad alma mater can do a lot to counteract the assumption that recent grads are all slackers. I certainly get a lot of mileage out of the brand name on my resume.

In my experience, references are the last thing people check, after the interview has gone well, and sometimes they don't even bother.

[stemware]

You can add me, but I don't post much more at all. I think it's actually been weeks if not months. I really should write more.

I'm a sales engineer for a telecom company. I design and propose data networks for the federal government.

:-)

Nice to meet you.