by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Mar 11, 2010 | Book Reviews, Career Skills
For the most part, pending and recent graduates do not know how to search for a job.
There’s a strong need for quick, easy-to-digest information about entry-level job searching.
So @heatherhuhman wrote ‘#ENTRYLEVELtweet’ to fulfill that need.
I wish I could say I was creative enough to have come up with the comments above, all of which are under 140 characters. But I am not.
Heather Huhman, however, is. And she’s created a simple, effective book, chock full of job search advice for the Twitter generation, all delivered in snippets of 140 characters or less.
Readers will easily digest the practical wisdom doled out in the book, on subjects including identifying your “unique you,” developing career tools, networking, applying for internships and entry-level jobs, accepting and rejecting offers, and succeeding on the job.
Huhman, Founder and President of Come Recommended, is an expert on helping students and recent college graduates pursue their dream careers. Besides her website, she has nearly 9,000 followers on Twitter, is a career expert for the CAREEREALISM Twitter Advice Project, the job search expert for Campus Calm, a contributor to One Day, One Job, One Day, One Internship, Intern Advocate and Personal Branding Blog and author of the e-books Relocating for an Entry-Level Job: Why You Probably Have to & How to Do It (2010) and Gen Y Meets the Workforce: Launching Your Career During Economic Uncertainty (2008).
My favorite tweet: Individuals in your life love you dearly and give you advice with the best intentions. But they’re probably wrong.
#EntryLevelTweet is powerful in its simplicity, and makes for an easy read. It would also make a great gift for upcoming graduates and entry level job seekers you know.
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Jan 1, 2010 | Career Skills
I love to write, especially about life and career issues that people face in college, or when they work in Student Affairs.
Besides my two blogs, HigherEdCareerCoach and HigherEdLifeCoach, I am an occasional contributor to the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, I have a Vimeo Channel, an upcoming YouTube Channel and I can share presentations on Prezi.
I feel great about the progress I have made over the last year or so in leveraging social media, and with learning to network and to market myself while still being authentic. I’m convinced I have a lot to offer today’s student affairs practitioners and candidates, and that if I just keep putting out who I am, what I believe in, and what I know, that I can help people discover their specific calling or purpose in life, rather than just doing what conventional wisdom says.
I thought that one way to give you a good overview of my passions, interests and areas of expertise might be to share some articles, presentations and videos I wrote, delivered or produced over the last year or so for other venues.
For part one, here are favorite posts I’ve written for the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog, the forum that reinvigorated my interest in writing and gave me the opportunity to join a network of professionals who are shaping conversations about the directions of the Student Affairs profession.
Visit theSABloggers.org for great posts on Student Affairs
- “15 Years in Indiana as a Cocktail Waitress”-My first post on this forum, which contained musings on career, purpose and motivation. Titled after the great song by Jack Logan.
- “Fire-ing the Canon?: Are the foundations of our profession being assaulted, or are we the barbarians at the gate?” A thought piece on the culture war that the group FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) is bringing to campuses around the country. This started a long back-and-forth with some reps and supporters of FIRE and got me some interesting and unsettling e-mails. FIRE became one of my followers on Twitter! I followed up later with “FIRE takes aim at the University of Delaware-Again” The vitriolic commentary that followed both posts reaffirmed that people were reading the blog.
- “Resumistakes! 10 Ways Your Resume, Cover Letter and Application can Sink Your Chances.” Based on real observations from both sides of the interview table, this brief article just tells it like it is, and that’s probably enough to say for now.”
- “Standing at the Crossroads, and sinking down?” explores the reality that higher education will need to accept that changes in media and communication represent a huge paradigm shift in how people interact, and not just the “latest technology.”
- “April is the Cruelest Month” provides some brief perspectives on what seems to be the longest month of interviewing at many campuses, after the equally busy months of February and March, when many of the national and regional placement conferences take place. Included links to general interview etiquette and dining etiquette advice.
- “Juggling without dropping the ball on your foot:How to evaluate, accept or decline a job offer.” Offers perspectives on how to handle the decision-making process, and avoid critical etiquette blunders so you can keep your options open, should other opportunities arise at an institution later.
- “You’re the best thing since sliced bread, and that generally meets expectations” offers some thoughts on how to approach the dreaded annual task of giving your employees feedback during performance reviews.
- “Over the Hedge” advises student affairs professionals to explore other professions and interest areas for ideas and perspectives that might change their approaches to work and life.
- “The ones that got away” explored what lessons you could glean from situations where students couldn’t stay in school, or passed away.
- In “What I learned from September 11,” I shared my personal story about how we responded at Penn State on September 11, and some perspectives I gained from that day.
- “They’re just not that into you,” gives some advice on handling rejection in your job search.
- “They wouldn’t listen to the fact that I was a genius,” offered 20 ways to blow your job interview, for those of us committed to failing in our careers.
- “Time to make the donuts!” celebrated the opening of the school year by comparing institutional efforts during arrival to the Sisyphean tasks of Dunkin’ Donuts tireless donut maker Fred the Baker.
I hope you will find these posts interesting, informative and entertaining, and that you will continue visiting HigherEdCareerCoach.com in the new year, as I work to build a site that is valued by readers for good content, delivered authentically, that provides insight and provokes conversation about pursuing careers in higher education. Thanks for visiting!
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Dec 11, 2009 | Take 5
Today’s Higher Ed professionals often feel like dinosaurs, in comparison to their students, who are connected 24-7-365 to each other and just about everyone else via various social media tools and websites. Here are five resources on the web to help you get up to speed on social media.
Social Media Can both Connect and Confuse!
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Sep 25, 2009 | Book Reviews
Career Renegade by Jonathan Fields
In Career Renegade former lawyer and self-proclaimed “serial lifestyle entrepreneur” Johnathan Fields take us through his personal journey from being a high-powered Manhattan attorney to owning his own yoga studio to becoming a speaker, writer and business coach.
I stumbled upon this book during a recent trip to our local Barnes and Noble, where I had gone with my almost 4-year-old son, Brendan, to play with the train table and buy a book for bedtime reading. After B inflicted some serious train-crashing on poor Thomas the Tank Engine and friends, he chose Dr. Seuss’s The Cat in the Hat, and we headed up front to see if I could find a book that would help me in developing a business plan for my coaching practice
The title screamed out at me, and the subtitle, “How to Make a Great Living Doing What You Love,” hooked me in. I skimmed the table of contents. Fields divides the book into four parts
- What Makes You Come Alive? explores the connection between personal passion and finding a career you will love.
- What Kind of Renegade Will You Be? introduces Career Renegade paths, and provides a lot of interesting ideas for finding and filling needs for information and stuff, teaching what you know and planning and protecting your vision.
- How to Master Your Passion and Build a Worldwide Following helps readers explore their personal readiness to build a reputation and a following, and provides some great ideas on ways to market ideas and use social media tools to build a community around your vision.
- Let the Revolution Begin engages readers in determining how ready they are to build a “Career Renegade” mindset and build support among family and friends.
As someone currently engaged in redefining my life and career, and seeking to help others do the same, I found Career Renegade to be a very enjoyable and engaging read, and it really helped me solidify my own commitment to this big change I’m planning that will take me away from the security of my current position working for a university. Fields’ practical information and the steps he takes the reader through to imagine their journey are powerful. I especially like his advice about weighing the security of a job against the costs of inaction. This helped me to not only explore my motivations, but to confront my fears about taking such a huge step.
If you are exploring ways to take control of your career, and need some inspiration to overcome your fears, as well as some practical advice to get you up and running, Career Renegade is the book you are looking for. Now that you know this, feel free to spend more time at the train table. Just take it easy on Thomas and his friends. They get enough of the rough stuff from the kids.
