by Shannon Healy | Feb 8, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
I am quite sure that I have overbooked myself for OPE. How do I know this? Last night I had a horrible nightmare where I couldn’t figure out how to use the stairs to get from the North Tower to the South Tower of the Gruenhagen Center, making me late for my next interview. Scheduling is my jellyfish this week (for those that don’t get the reference, please read #jobhunt No. 1).
Despite all the wonderful advice I received on Twitter from the professionals I’ve connected with, I overscheduled. It was partly not being sure of the whole process, part nervousness that if I didn’t schedule now I’d be behind, and partly that I was overly excited that people were actually responding to the interest letters and resumes that I’d sent out. This all added up to me accepting and scheduling 12 interviews in the course of two days.
An Emergency Kit for Placement Stress?
Pardon me while I breathe into a brown paper bag for a moment.
I did my best to schedule myself time in between all of them (usually a half hour), but there are two back-to-back interviews that are the source of my nightmares. One worry is not making it to the floor lounge on time for them to call my name. Another is not having any time to review the school and position in between interviews. Another is sounding like a robot from recalling the same situations and traits multiple times in a day. Another is forgetting my notes/coat/bag/etc somewhere and having to run back, taking more time. The list goes on and on.
What I think it boiled down to for me was just a lack of confidence in myself. In my mind, the more interviews I took the more likely it was that at least ONE of them had to turn in to a job offer. Play the odds. I have been told several times that I should be more confident in myself and my experiences, but that is something that I definitely need to work on.
I did schedule an interview with a school about an hour and a half from my hometown, and my mom was thrilled. Her basis for telling me where I should work consists of quoting MapQuest’s driving directions from the school to our front door and asking what their colors are. School colors are very important to my mom, as she has garb from every university I’ve attended or worked at. She’s a fan of green or maroon; I’m trying not to let that influence my decision too much.
Overall though, I’m still very excited about this process. I’ve been spending a lot of time looking over institution websites and specifically those of the Residence Life departments. I’ve been stalking my friend list on Facebook and my followers on Twitter to see what connections I might already have at these schools and be able to ask some questions to beforehand. Despite worries about over booking myself, I am very excited about going to OPE, talking with the search committees, and really getting a feel for the people I might be working with in the not so distant future.
Over the next three weeks I’m hoping that I calm down a little more about this whole process.
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by Shannon Healy | Feb 2, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
Shannon Healy, Guest Blogger & Job Seeker
Let’s just get this bit of nerdiness out of the way from the get go: Yes, I am using a Twitter hash tag as the title of my blog. I wouldn’t have the task of blogging about the adventure of my job hunt if it weren’t for Twitter, so it’s a bit of a nod to Sean Cook and Higher Ed Career Coach for letting me take up space on their site.
So who am I? My name is Shannon Healy and I’m in the final semester of my grad program in Student Affairs. So in the midst of writing a thesis, attending class, working an assistantship and job hunting, I’ll also be blogging to tell you all about how that last process is going. I currently work for Housing and Residence Life on a college campus as an Assistant Living Center Director. I’m a Millennial, so the idea that all these people will be logging on to read about ME does excite me a bit, I won’t lie. I’m also a worrier, so the idea that all these people will be logging on to read about me also scares me quite a bit. I also worry about what I’m getting myself into conducting my first actual job search.
Thankfully I have been able to connect with a wonderful network of Student Affairs professionals on Twitter who have been telling me tips and tricks for placement conferences, sharing encouraging quotes, and giving me their pieces of advice. Best advice I have received so far? “There’s no such thing as a dream job. Heck, even the guy who won the job of living on a tropical island ended up getting stung by a jelly fish.”
Since being asked if I was interested in writing a blog, I have started the job search process. Step one: narrowing down where I wanted to search. Fifty is a lot of different states to choose from. I knew I wanted to include the Midwest in my search. I like winter. I’m not sure if I want to leave behind the snow just yet. Then we had a few days of negative temperatures and suddenly California wasn’t looking so bad. I have the luxury of not having to worry about a significant other. This is perhaps the one time in my life I’m happy I’m single. But I’m pretty much free to choose where I want to go, which is nice. Having more freedom in where I can go means I can really find jobs that appeal to me in any state.
I chose 15 schools to contact for interviews at the Oshkosh Placement Exchange. Then I spent about three days writing custom letters of interest describing why I am interested in their jobs. I just sent those out this past Monday, which was a huge weight off my shoulders. After that it was just sitting with my fingers crossed waiting to hear back.
As of right now I’ve heard back from approximately half that they want to schedule interviews. I’m also being contacted by some schools that either read my resumé or are doing a mass mailing asking if I want to interview. These are pretty easy to say “Thanks, but no thanks” to, because they’re outside my geographical limits, or just aren’t the kind of position I’m looking for. What’s tougher though is being contacted by schools in my original search that didn’t make it to the final 15. Do I want to schedule interviews since I’m not hearing back from some that did make the cut? Do I want to hold out to hear from the ones I originally contacted? Right now I just kind of sit and stare at the emails in my inbox, unsure. As an inbox zero-ist, this also drives me nuts.
My biggest fear at this point is not interviews or campus visits or the dreaded “So tell me a little bit about yourself” question. It’s wondering what happens if I don’t find a job at the end of all this and have to write some horrible post about how I failed miserably. I’ll make sure to include pictures of my box of Kleenex and pint of ice cream should that happen.
Finally, in full disclosure: I have never written a blog or conducted a job search before. I’m hoping my first attempt at both goes well. And that I don’t get stung by any jellyfish along the way.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jan 29, 2010 | Job Search, Take 5
In my last post, I gave somewhat of an overview of major placement conferences for candidates in Student Affairs. In this post, I hope to share a few tips for all you Higher Education/Student Affairs job searchers out there who are attending a placement conference this season.
During my 15-year career in Student Affairs, I was on both sides of the interview table at placement conferences and can offer you some perspectives that will hopefully set you at ease and help you be more confident and more prepared.
Save your money now. These things can get expensive!
- Ask your employer if professional development funds can be spent to attend a placement conference. For many institutions, the answer will be “no,” and you shouldn’t be surprised or offended by this. It’s just where many employers draw the line in the sand. Institutions give PD money to help their employees learn new skills and enhance their skill sets, but it’s not realistic to expect your current employer to help you find a new or better job.
- Find a roommate (or two or three) to share lodging expenses. The nightly rates at convention hotels are usually pretty moderate. (For example, nightly rates at preferred hotels for this year’s ACPA convention range from $199/night for a single room to $259 a night for a quad.) And don’t forget about parking, which will probably be in the $35/$40 per night range, or taxis and shuttle service to and from the airport if you are not driving in.
- If you have your own transportation and can find a less expensive non-conference hotel near public transit, then drive, or take the bus, and save some money.
- Take advantage of free in-room coffee and free continental breakfasts (if your hotel has them). It’s also easier than you might think to find yourself skipping breakfasts or unwilling to fight the teeming throngs trying to get breakfast at the same time. It’s also a good idea to bring snacks to your room, in case you are pressed for time and need to eat and run.
- Bring a water bottle and refill it when you can rather than buying drinks at hotel/convention center prices.
Have all your ducks in a row before you get there.
- Make sure your resume is impeccably written, targeted toward the positions you hope to apply for, grammatically correct, well laid-out, and easy to read. Placement centers will give you a candidate number. Make sure it is on your resume and that all pages stay together. Staples are fine at a placement center. Take a stapler and use it. When an interviewer has a huge pile of resumes and interview forms and brochures and giveaways to deal with, the last thing they want to do is spend their time searching a pile of loose papers for one errant page of your resume that got separated from the rest, because your paper clip slipped off.
- Speaking of candidate numbers, many candidates these days make a personalized message to employer forms that give a brief statement of interest and leave room for the candidate to write in the employer number and the posting number on the form. If you do make your own, consider using colored paper. It stands out. As a conference interviewer, I always liked these, as long as messages were brief and concise. They also helped me find a candidate’s packet more easily.
- Make contact ahead of time with potential employers about listings posted before the conference. Ask to pre-arrange an interview for your position of interest. Many employers pre-arrange a significant number of their interviews when possible.
- Make sure all your references have been prepped about your goals for the placement exchange, any positions you are planning to apply for, and your reasons for applying for certain types of positions.
Be on Your Best Behavior. At All Times!
- It won’t matter how you are dressed or how you interview if you make an ass out of yourself in some other way. Some do’s and don’ts:
- Do:
- Come prepared for each interview
- Be friendly to the interviewers and to other candidates
- Stay positive
- Thank your interviewers for their time at the end of the interview
- Network with other candidates and encourage them in their job search
- Use the preparation table areas to organize your thoughts and your materials
- Wait a few minutes if the interviewer is running late. Since most interviews run for about 30 minutes, you should feel free to go after 10 minutes. But these are very busy days and people do get off-course. If you have back-to-back interviews, let the interviewer know.
Don’t:
- Schedule back-to-back interviews (if you can help it). You’ll need time to get from one place to another and you will periodically need a break.
- Badmouth, make fun of, or make rude comments about an interviewer, a university, another candidate, your boss, your current employer, or basically, anyone. This means in the placement center, the hotel, the lobby bar, the McDonald’s across the street…wherever. If you need to vent or talk out frustrations, go to your hotel room and talk with your conference roommates or call a friend or family member on the phone. For everyone else, act like it’s raining daisies and nothing could be finer.
- Stay in the placement center all day (especially if you are not especially busy at some given time with interviews.) This can lead you to think too much, stress out, and get down on yourself. You will need fresh air and walking-around time. Take it.
- Flirt with your interviewer or other candidates, make inappropriate jokes or off-color comments or go on and on and on about how many top scholars you know in the field. It’s boorish behavior and it will count against you in the eyes of many employers.
- Expect to leave the placement center with a job in hand. Most universities just don’t work that way. There are human resource guidelines to follow, and many student-services positions really like to involve students, colleagues in related departments, and upper administrators in their selection processes, and it’s unlikely that all of these parties will be represented on the interview team.
Learn Something!
- If the placement center is part of a longer conference with professional development sessions, go to some! They are great places to network, you might learn something new that leads you to explore additional opportunities, and you will need a break from the placement center.
- If you have the option of talking about your career or some topic of interest with more experienced professionals, do it. Sometimes, these opportunities come up in sessions. Sometimes, they come up on the sidewalk, in a restaurant or at a volunteer post.
Volunteer!
- Volunteering is a great way to get informal opportunities for networking, to learn how the conference is organized, and to be of service to other candidates.
- It’s also fun. Did I mention that you are likely to need a break from interviewing? This is one way to take a break but depending on what you volunteer for, you may end up volunteering in the placement center. Just be sure that you are doing it during an actual opening in your interview schedule!
Best of luck to everyone interviewing this season!
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jan 26, 2010 | Job Search
Are You Ready for Placement Season?
Springtime…the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and at colleges across the country, a young person’s fancy turns to thoughts of…unemployment?
In Student Affairs, this can only signal one thing…placement season is here. It’s time to brush up the resume, line up the references, check job postings, write cover letters, practice interview, really interview, and hope for the best. One part of this cycle in higher education is the placement conference, where candidates by the hundreds can answer the cattle calls of multiple employers, line up several interviews, and kick their search into a higher gear.
The three-hundred pound gorilla of placement centers these days is the Placement Exchange. A joint venture of ACUHO-I, ASCA, NACA, NASPA, NODA, AFA and HigherEdJobs.Com, this year’s exchange is being held in Chicago from March 3-7, just prior to the NASPA Annual Conference. According to the Placement Exchange’s website, 5070 interviews for 359 positions were held at last year’s conference in Seattle.
Two other larger conferences also offer placement centers: ACPA and the OshKosh Placement Exchange. ACPA hosts Career Central at their annual convention, held this year at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from March 19-23. The OshKosh Placement Exchange is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-OshKosh and is in its 31st year.
For candidates that have a more regional focus, several regional organizations also hold placement conferences, including MACUHO’s Mid-Atlantic Placement Conference in Lancaster, PA from February 26 to 26 and the Southern Placement Exchange from March 11 to 14 in Memphis, TN. There are more, but these are the ones I could find while preparing for this article. If you know of another, please send it along, and I will make note of it in a future post.
For candidates that have never taken part in a large placement conference, the prospect of competing with several hundred people for positions can be pretty daunting. ACPA offers a great Guide to Demystifying Career Central at the Convention as a downloadable .pdf.
This guide offers steps for success before, during and after the interview, sample questions to help candidates prepare, resources and tips on handling illegal questions, negotiating an offer, planning your relocation, and more. These practical resources should be an asset to anyone in the Higher Ed/Student Affairs job market. I recommend reading it through well in advance of participation in any placement conference. It will give you a great feel for the placement experience.
Best of luck to you if you are a candidate this hiring season! In my next post, I will share some tips of my own. Though I probably can’t be as comprehensive as the ACPA Guide, I have been on both sides of the interview table at placement conferences, and can offer you some perspectives that will hopefully set you at ease and be more confident, and more prepared.
I’d also like to try a Twitter experiment to help keep the conversation going this placement season. If you are a candidate with a question about placement or an experienced professional (or employer) who has advice and perspectives to offer, please hashtag your placement questions and comments with #saplacement. Users can then follow these comments using their Twitter client and those of us with employment-related blogs and websites can post links to the trending topic or incorporate a feed to help others follow the conversations and add in their questions and advice. Let’s see if we can create a huge collaborative conversation that will help our colleagues and students succeed this placement season!
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jan 20, 2010 | Job Search, Take 5
There’s a lot of talk in marketing about “branding,” but it’s also useful to look at your job search in a similar light. After all, you are selling your most important product: yourself. For your consideration, here are five articles that explore the concept of personal branding in the job search.
- Kristi Daeda, a Success Coach and Creator of the Career Adventure blog, has many good articles on her own blog, and I regularly read her articles and follow her on Twitter. She offers a great perspectives on how to get feedback from others about your personal brand in an article she wrote for another site, Brand Camp University. Personal branding: It’s not what you say.
- Brand-Yourself.com has a great 10-step Personal Branding Worksheet to help you define “your unique value proposition.”
- There’s a great article at BrazenCareerist.com by Ryan Stephens on why you should “Stay true to your personal brand” during your job search.
- The Personal Branding Blog is a top resource on the topic of personal branding. Spearheaded by Dan Schawbel, the Author of Me 2.0, it has many articles, interviews and tips to help you build you brand. It was hard picking an article to highlight because there are so many good ones, but I settled on “Brand yourself for the job you want in three years” by Katie Konrath.
- Career Rocketeer has a great article exploring the differences between making an effective presentation and effectively conveying your character before, during and after the interview.
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by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Aug 8, 2009 | Career Skills, Job Search, life purpose
I’d put safe money down on the possibility that most of us working in higher education didn’t have that dream as kids. As for me, I wanted to be Evil Kneivel , then I wanted to be Elvis.
Growing up in the ’80s, my attention soon turned to the yuppie lifestyles of the day, and I started college with dollar signs in my eyes, and dreams of a BMW. My first two years, I was a management major, but I really studied partying more than anything else. Calculus wasn’t my friend, and first semester my sophomore year, I earned the first “F” I made in anything. (But it was a high “F,” almost a “D,” and one of the hardest grades I ever earned. I was in hall council, because I liked pizza at meetings and cookouts with the women’s halls. By the end of sophomore year, I made two big decisions…changing my major from Management to Political Science, and applying to be a resident assistant.
The change of major was first a nod to the reality that calculus was a pre-req for several other classes later in the curriculum, and I just wasn’t that good at it. I chose Political Science because a.) politics always interested me, and b.) I thought is was a good background for law, and if I couldn’t be part of the big yuppie revolution through the glories of corporate management, I had heard that Political Science was a good background for law, and everyone knows that lawyers make SCADS of money. The RA thing grew out of two interests…doing cool programs and having fun, and the hope that being an RA would keep me out of trouble.
My junior year, I defined myself as an excellent programmer and jumped deeper into the whole student life realm, by becoming a peer health educator. It wasn’t where I saw myself coming in, but it was pretty good. Senior year, I kept enjoying life and the RA job, but somewhere along the way, I lost sight of the fact that I was going to need a job after college. I drank way too much, and one particularly bad evening, I overdid it and ended up getting arrested. Aimless is as aimless does, I guess.
The aftermath of this one event would stay with me, not because it destroyed my future, or caused me to be dismissed from my RA job; neither of those things happened. Instead, I learned that people were there for me, even when I made mistakes, and that some saw potential in me that I didn’t see myself. It wasn’t until this time that I started to understand that these people in Residence Life and other parts of Student Affairs weren’t just holding down jobs, they were answering a call, living out a higher purpose. In giving their time and energy to students like me, even when we faltered and arguably didn’t deserve the compassion, they were perhaps even performing a sacred duty.
Somewhere along the way, this message started to stick with me, and I started to think about going into Student Affairs. I was lucky enough to get an assistantship with Health Education, and I packed those 2 years of my M.Ed. program with activities in Housing, Health Ed, and Student Development; I came to know some great professionals and some great students, many of which I have kept track of in one way or another, as my generation passed into adulthood and another came to college.
There are days I ask myself why I wanted this, when an endless stream of issues waits at my door, or comes barging in, unannounced. It’s then I remember an aimless wanderer, and the people that pushed him back onto a path; I see myself in both, and it’s then I know I was meant to do this work.
So much for being Elvis.
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