by Shannon Healy | Feb 23, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
Shannon is rocking her new suit. These are just rocks.
I am writing this while wearing my new suit, and let me just tell you: I am rocking it. And that is an especially good feeling considering the adventure that went into getting it. I am horrible at being a girl. I don’t like dressing up that much and have no idea what colors complement nicely or how to accessorize. So a week ago I went to the mall with my brave face on, ready to wander around in the career section trying to figure out how to buy a suit without the help of my mom.
I think this is a sign that I’m a true Millennial. Even at age 24 I wished my mom was there to be in the store telling me to turn around and making me stand with my arms out and pushing down the tops of my shoes and asked if they pinched my toes. So I found the most mom-like worker I could and asked her for help.
I think I made this woman’s dream come true.
She had a wonderful time dragging me around the store, grabbing ruffled tops and silk shells and all sorts of coats and things that would have taken me six hours to find by myself. She shoved me in a dressing room with two armloads full of hangers and said “Ooohh, I just can’t wait to see them on you!” About ten minutes later she came back with some more pieces, one being a single strap, bright red, sequined monstrosity that I would not wear in a million years.
After two hours spent in the dressing room spinning around for her I finally gave in to four different pieces she had picked out, knowing I would be returning them the next time I had a spare Saturday. I just can’t have someone else tell me to wear this and this and this. I’ve really got to feel comfortable in it.
This past weekend I went back to the mall and returned the crazily expensive items that had been picked out for me last week. $50 for a cream-colored t-shirt? No, thank you. I then spent a good couple hours walking around a completely different store, trying things on together, and dancing in the mirror. I think the true sign that you really feel good about a piece of clothing is if you’re able to dance like a goof in it. Everything I got is pretty basic (no stripes or patterns or oversize ruffles), but I think it all goes together nicely. And I made sure my blacks match, thanks to advice from my grandma.
Now I’m feeling even more confident about doing interviews. Things are really coming together. I guess they have to be – OPE is only four days away!
by Shannon Healy | Feb 15, 2010 | Job Search, The Placement Experience
Deciding which interviews to accept? It's a balancing act.
Why can’t it just be that you are assigned 10 schools to interview with, you go do those, and then choose from any offers that result?
Have you ever watched a movie where the main character is like “Oh, my life is so hard, two people are in love with me!” And their funny sidekick friend is like “That must be such a horrible problem for you to have.” Whenever I’ve seen a movie like that I’ve instantly disliked the main character. Really? You’re going to complain about having more than one person that likes you? That must be just a terrible problem for you. I would instantly side with the friend, who usually got stuck petting a dog at the end as everyone else paired off. This was perhaps because I never had two attractive suitors chasing after me at the same time.
This is not meant to sound overly confident, but it is really hard when all the schools you sent interest letters to sent letters back saying “Let’s set up an interview!” Because then, in all the excitement of feeling wanted by these institutions, you set up interviews with ALL of them. Like when the main character decides to date both people at the same time. It’s stressful, it’s tiring, there’s wacky hijinks. And I’ve never felt bad for that main character until now. It actually is a horrible problem to have.
So that’s where I’m at this week. Currently trying to do a balancing act. I’m thankful to many of my amazing mentors who have been help me process it all on twitter, over email, and in their office as I came crashing in with a bag of Dove chocolates and the look of a crazy person. I’m hoping today to contact a couple schools and apologize for the change, but decline the interview. It would be nice to not stretch out the stress to next week.
Maybe I could also stop imagining myself as a character in a movie.
According to my countdown calendar there are 75 days left until graduation. Job hunting has been sucking up the majority of my time lately. I never thought that working on my thesis would be a nice, relaxing change of pace. I spent the majority of my weekend on that, other homework and just getting away from the whole job search process for a while. And the Olympics. No matter how hard a job search is, at least I’m not required to hurl my body down a mountain of snow with me feet strapped to a board.
Next time: Practice interview questions!
by sean@higheredcareercoach.com | Feb 12, 2010 | Career Skills
Yesterday’s #sachat(s) on the student affairs job search and placement were very informative and it was great to see so many people eager to help all the job seekers out there. I was especially excited, because, well…this is one of my “things.” I like helping people with their job searches. It really gives me a sense of satisfaction to talk with people, or to help them with their resumes, cover letters and graduate school apps/statements of purpose. In the same spirit, this edition of Take 5 features 5 great resources on the web to assist job seekers with their searches.
- First, #sachat and the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog. This is a great community as well as being a source of information on Student Affairs, Higher Education and Collaborative Learning. #sachats happen each Thursdayt at 1 pm EST and 7 pm EST, and anyone with a Twitter account can join in by hash-tagging their tweets with #sachat. You can use Twitter Search, TweetGrid, or any popular Twitter client that supports hashtag searches.
- One of my favorite career sites is Career Adventure by Kristi Daeda. She always has great advice and resources, like the section of the site on Resumes and Porfolios. There are several good articles in there about CVs vs. Resumes, including When a Resume Just Won’t Do: Writing Your CV
- The Author in Residence Articles on HigherEdJobs.Com is a great new series that everyone should check out.
- BusinessCard 2.0 is a pretty sweet site that lets you create a business card with some interactive features. You can put in a bio, share your social networking sites and links and more, including embedding it on your blog or web page. Visitors can interact with the widget, flip through the mini-pages, send you a message, or download your vCard, all without leaving your web site. You can view my BusinessCard 2.0 here. I will be embedding in my sites soon.
- And lastly, a plug for something I am offering a Free Group for Student Affairs Job Seekers. This will be limited to 10 or so people and the group will meet each week via teleconference call to share questions, advice and support as they move through their job searches. To register, go to the event registration form here. The small size of the group should allow for good conversation and sharing. I am offering it for free so I can get some practice with coaching groups, and yes, I am offering it for free. In the interest of full diclosure, I will share information about my individual coaching services wiht participants, but I have promised also to not “hard sell” anyone, because a) I hate that crap, and b) if I am helpful as a coach, that pretty much speaks for itself, and will hopefully lead to referrals and eventually, to paid clients. This whole business thing is new to me, so please bear with me as I figure out how to do all this business stuff the right way.
Thanks for reading. Please come back soon for more articles and resources, including the periodic contributions of guest bloggers Bryan Koval (on his doctoral program experience) and Shannon Healy, on her search for her first full-time position in Student Affairs.
If you are interested in guest blogging about a subject related to Higher Ed/Student Affairs careers, please contact me at sean@higheredcareercoach.com or via tweet to hiedcareercoach.
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.
by Bryan Koval | Feb 5, 2010 | Doctoral Study
During the fall of 2008, while I was finishing my masters degree in Higher Education at Penn State, I decided that rather than taking a break from school I would try to move directly into a doctoral program. I was motivated by a number of factors. First and foremost, I had a pretty strong internal commitment to completing a doctoral program before turning 35 year old. This was a fairly arbitrary commitment, but I knew that it was something important to me and I wanted to be able to leverage my doctoral degree for a significant part of my career. Combining this intrinsic motivation with some restlessness in my current professional position was a recipe for getting serious about doctoral programs.
As I began to talk to people (family, colleagues, professors, etc.) about my doctoral aspirations, reactions fell into three basic categories. Here they are, and how I talked myself through the feedback:
1.) “You should work more before you get into a doctoral program. You’re too inexperienced for that.”
This is probably the feedback that held me back the most. I am indeed a fairly new professional (less than 5-years in the student affairs field), and I questioned my timing for two reasons. First, what might it mean to be finished with my doctorate at 32-ish years of age and have a work history limited to entry- and mid-level positions? Is it really possible to be “over qualified”? I came to grips with this by saying to myself, “My work and my education are only two of the many parts that make up who I am. There’s more to me than what you see on a resume.” I decided not to worry about this.
My second concern was how I would look to admissions committees. Clearly I would be at a disadvantage when compared to more seasoned applicants with much more professional experience. In the end, I decided that applying to grad school was not something that is limited to one chance. If I was not ready to take this next step, one of the gatekeeping mechanisms would let me know. Being turned away at this point would not deter me from pursuing a doctoral program later.
2.) “Why do you want to go right into another grad program? Take a break and recharge your batteries.”
This was tempting. Making a major life decision while you are in the midst of completing a masters thesis is probably a bad idea. That being said, I was really excited about the prospect of staying in school for my doctorate. I had enthusiasm for it, and I figured that if I stuck while the iron was hot I would have (basically) good scholastic habits and be in the right frame of mind for academic work. From a personal perspective, I want to make some serious progress towards this degree before my wife and I have kids. What good am I to a toddler if I’m preoccupied with transcribing qualitative research data? It will be a relief to get the degree and put the process behind me.
3.) “A doctoral degree isn’t going to necessarily be worth the investment for what you want to do. Do you even know for sure what you want to do?”
Well, to be honest I am still working through this one. I know I want to work in higher education. Having my doctorate will open some doors (or it won’t), but I’m fairly sure few doors will be shut in my face because of it. We’ll see about the fiscal sense that investing in a doctorate made further down the road . . . I’m not going to stress out about it today. That $4 latte at Starbucks wasn’t necessarily my wisest financial decision either, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get something out of the experience.
For my next post, I will be writing about the application process, the dreaded GRE, and how I decided where to apply.
