<p>POIH, I applied for probably 150 jobs last year. I had ONE bite between September and April. I went to career services, and I worked with recruiting partners (granted it was a small out of the way LAC so career services was not that helpful). I worked through a WELL established business school’s career network via an early acceptance.</p>
<p>In the month of April, I had fifteen or twenty interviews and graduated with four offers. What changed? Not my resume. No more experience, some more grades, but nothing in subjects that would interest an employer, minor change in GPA. Not my cover letter which was basically the same throughout, obviously adapted to different companies.</p>
<p>What changed in April was that all of a sudden, I was AVAILABLE. Sure a lot of big names like Big 4 accounting, i-banking, etc have recruiting that starts in September. But the vast-vast-vast majority of companies, since I wasn’t applying for “entry level trainee” established programs, wanted someone they could hire right away. Their mindset was - we have an opening - Bobbi Jo is leaving to have a baby/get a different job/go to grad school. Well, we’ve got an opening, let’s post an ad. If we’re lucky, we can fill it in the next month or so so Bobbi Jo can train the new hire.</p>
<p>And this kind of comment is supposed to be helpful, how? How on earth do you know what has been going on in Emaheevul07’s life that he’s just now been able to start focusing on this. Given all the proactive steps he has listed and taken, I’d say he’s probably doing more than most kids looking for a job. I can think of hundreds of reasons why he has had to delay the start later than he’d like to, that have nothing to do with being irresponsible. We cannot control every aspect of our lives, and people who don’t accept that reality are going to be majorly disappointed.</p>
<p>edit: I see Emaheevul07 has justified his reasons (not that he needed to) in #116.</p>
<p>POIH, is it really necessary to dump your gratuitous criticism on a young person who is doing a diligent job search and is having great results? </p>
<p>Very unpleasant to read as another parent observer. </p>
<p>Potentially discouraging to the young person (who I hope is ignoring your comments) - do you really want to have that effect? If not, then why are you not considering the effect your comments might have?</p>
<p>Furthermore, you are dead wrong in your judgment about whether this person is having success or not (and who asked you to judge? to what end?) as well as your statement that it is too late. I posted just a bit higher on the page that my S had success much later than this.</p>
<p>If you have nothing constructive to contribute I, for one, would prefer that you keep silent.</p>
<p>My son is graduating with an EE degree. He’s sent out 50-75 resumes and has had a few nibbles, but no offers yet. We see many EE jobs, but all for people with experience. His GPA is right at 3.0, but he has worked his whole college career. He got a great internship/research project last summer that continued through this last school year. He’s trying not to get frustrated, but I can see he’s getting worried. He SO did not want to have to come home and work at Wawa again. We are not really seeing the great job market here. And, none of his friends have jobs lined up yet. Kind of scary.
So, POIH, this is a very stressful time for these kids; not sure your criticism is very helpful. JMHO</p>
<p>Just adding my vote of support and encouragement, Emaheevul07. You are doing all the RIGHT things, not all the wrong things. Sounds like you are personalizing the cover letters and putting in the key words they’ll be scanning for. Please don’t be discouraged by the few critics or cynics on this thread. You are doing great!! Keep it up!! The critical braggadocio needs to sprinkle a little Prozac in his vindaloo and cheer up.</p>
<p>And dkitty… Was sad to hear the nibble didn’t get further along than it did.</p>
<p>JYM626 - we appreciated the lead, thank you very much for giving him the opportunity to interview. If nothing else, he’s getting skilled at interviewing!
There’s something out there for him, it’ll just take a little longer to find. It’ll be easier after graduation. He’s so focused on finishing up his projects, he is probably not spending as much time as he should job hunting.
I think it was easier when I graduated. We expected to come home and spend the summer looking for a job.</p>
<p>I think that quantity can work too. My son’s career center has job postings with one-click submissions. Some companies require a cover letter and some don’t. Submitting that many resumes take a fair amount of time and effort, even without tailoring the resume.</p>
<p>Son had a recruiter call him while he was working today. He tutors in the tutoring center where they have a bunch of cubicles that can hold two people in two chairs and there’s a desk area. There are also a few tables with a bunch of chairs around them for small group discussions. He sometimes tutors up to five students at a time. As you can imagine, there’s a fair amount of chatter and noise. His manager does not like the tutors to spend much time on their mobile phones and the customers don’t like it either. I’ve only called him once or twice when he was working and I kept the calls very short.</p>
<p>He could not make out the name or company that was calling so he asked her to call back later. The person did call back later and said “I want you down here tomorrow or Thursday.” He just sent me that in an IM - I asked him for the name of the company and person but he was gone. He just received an email - it’s from a well-known consulting company in the area. I’m pretty sure that he doesn’t want to be a consultant. My son didn’t contact this company so this is unsolicited. He received an email from another company (unsolicited) that was clearly not a match for his skillset. They wanted someone out of college with a combination of disparate skills, people and technical that I’d think would be quite rare. So the beat goes on. I sometimes think that he’d be better off looking for a job after the semester is over. Doing interviews and other jobs stuff while trying to get major projects done and, soon, exams, is probably making him a little grumpy.</p>
<p>Thanks, dkitty. Happy to help. I think they are setting sights on the tippy top candidates, who have several offers to choose from. So who knows, maybe its worth his checking back in after he graduates to see if there are still any opportunities. Ya nevah know…</p>
<p>“Starting now for job is already too late.”</p>
<p>I thought that also, but I’ve started to hear about many students who are starting to get more calls, even this late. I’ve also noticed that there are a large number of internship postings on craigslist in my area, generally for smaller tech companies. It is interesting that they are putting brand new postings up, right now, unfilled this late in April…so it seems like now might be the time to really go for it and keep trying.</p>
<p>Yep, who would think, craigslist. I found 249 in my closest large city if I put in “internship”, but only 38 if I put in “internships”. And many in nearby suburbs, I guess you just have to search for it in different ways. But if they are putting a bunch of new postings in, they must be unfilled and available now, wouldn’t they?</p>
<p>I really got into a sort of job-hunting fixation the last week, that was how I managed to do so many personalized cover letters and resumes in such a short period of time-- that and I love writing resumes. I already had like six different drafts prepared for different kinds of companies, so only minor tweaking of those was necessary, and then I just had to write a fresh cover letter. So I did two hours of final exam study, then a half an hour to an hour of job hunting during which time I’d probably do 5-10 applications, then switch off back and forth. And there were a few days where I just logged a few solid hours job hunting. It’s kind of fun as long as you try to stay positive. I have fun writing the cover letters. Thanks for all your support, I appreciate it!</p>
<p>I have a good friend whose daughter, a hs senior, is interested in becoming a broadcast journalist / meteorology and will be going to Penn State’s well-regarded program for that. I have another friend who is the head of a communications department at a large state university; he and his wife were both on-the-air journalists / reporters (he as a general reporter, she as a weather person). Different things float different people’s boats.</p>
<p>One of the recruiters after our son was a journalism major - my guess is that she makes well into six figures in her firm. I’m made a mental note to discuss that with him - he’s the techy type that looks down on LA majors - I explain the value of people skills from time to time and how those with good people skills can do quite well.</p>
<p>One of my wife’s relatives and his wife came over to visit us last summer. He was neat, well-dressed and well-spoken. Both he and his wife were communications majors. My daughter has some interest in communications even though I’m steering her towards accounting and finance. He was trying to explain why communications is useful in companies to our kids (I was too). I found out later that’s he’s the CEO of a global consulting company. </p>
<p>Basically I’m a BA dad trying to convince a BSCS son about the usefulness of people skills - it can be a tough sell.</p>
<p>Another successful meteorology major. Also funny how life works out. He chose UW over Northwestern because of his planned major which he actually stuck with. If he goes to NU maybe he never gets converted to a tight end and is not signing a new contract for over $20 million for four years.</p>
Any way you can back up this statement lolk1lol? S will be a May 2011 grad and had no trouble finding work as an ME. Most of his friends with"acceptable" gpa’s are also hired prior to graduation.</p>
<p>Both D and S got their internships last summer via Craigslist - but this was in NYC and suburbs. I think there may have been more to apply too.
No nibbles yet for S who is graduating next month…</p>
<p>You are correct BCEagle – lolk1 appears to enjoy making “questionable” statements to fire up the crowd.</p>
<p>Clearly this is a tough market and no jobs are easy to get. I feel a great deal of sympathy for those still looking for work, and hope the market will improve soon. But I don’t believe MEs are disadvantaged compared to any other engineering discipline and probably less than many non-engineering fields.
I have my fingers crossed for your son. My D is a CS soon to be junior and I would like to think opportunities will be available when she graduates in two years.</p>
Was sad to hear the nibble didn’t get further along than it did.</p>