<p>I will be graduating this year with a degree in a soft science (think psychology, anthropology, sociology) from a top liberal arts college and am coming to terms with the possibility that I will be unemployed after graduation. I applied to a slew of jobs in the fall in human resources/training jobs/Teach for America but didn't get into any of them. I managed to get 3 interviews, 1 at a law firm as an assistant, 1 as a consultant at a tech company, and got to the final stage in TFA but ultimately got rejected. A bunch of people in TFA said while my presentation was well-done and effective and I seem highly personable, kids would probably eat me alive. I can be tough but I look really young, like 15 I'm not kidding, and I think that holds me back.</p>
<p>I even tried banking/management jobs that recruited on campus just to see if I would qualify but had no luck (didn't even get an interview slot at any of them). I had my resumes and cover letters critiqued. I signed up for mock interviewing with alumni to see if my interview skills were up to par. They said interviewing is not my problem but rather lack of relevant experience. I was really discouraged for a few months and gave up searching but now I'm back on the hunt. I've been researching tips on how to market a liberal arts degree, write a memorable cover letter, etc. If you have any tips, I would really appreciate it. Like would it be useful for me to show up in person at some of these places and personally deliver my resume and cover letter?</p>
<p>I actually got into professional school at Harvard, but I'm not sure I should shoulder $100k+ of debt especially if the returns might not be worth it. To be honest, I'm not made for corporate culture anywhere (nor might I be able to get corporate jobs in the first place) and that could be a problem if I will need those types of jobs to pay back my loans. There's a lot of pressure on me right now since I come from a poor family and really need to start making money.</p>
<p>Which type of professional school? If you name the subject, perhaps others who have experience in that type of professional school can indicate what kind of job and career prospects you could get afterward (which would help you evaluate whether the additional debt would make sense).</p>
<p>Look at colleges for employment. Believe it or not, admissions and financial aid have a fair number of entry level positions. Look in the Chronicle of Higher Education for ads.</p>
<p>It is a tough job market out there right now for every one, but unlike the rest of us you have a career office on your campus that exists for the sole purpose of helping students find work. Keep trying to get interviews, and when you get them, do the interview and ask the career center for feedback. Don’t go to grad school now, and certainly not to the tune of $100k+ in debt! Even living at home and working at Starbucks would be better than that!</p>
<p>I agree with MD Mom. In this process of looking for a private LAC, almost everyone I have met in Admissions is a recent graduate of that school :)</p>
<p>We all KNOW (wink, wink) that private LAC have $$$$$$, since we are seing tuition costs first hand!</p>
<p>I would prefer to be as discreet as possible about my plans so I won’t disclose which professional school, but it’s not medicine :)</p>
<p>I’ve actually looked at my own college’s employment page before but there’s nothing I seem to be qualified for. The admissions office tends to hire people who already worked there as undergrads so those people have an advantage over me, but I can certainly try. I’ve actually looked through the Chronicle of Higher Education job posts before as well, but most jobs there require 3+ years of work experience. Have people in the past been successful in bypassing eligibility requirements? I’m trying to figure out if it’s even worth sending an application to some of these places…</p>
<p>I’m actually willing to work UNPAID just to gain some work experience and then try to get those coveted paid jobs later on once I do have enough experience.</p>
<p>This is where your alumni network becomes important. You need to start doing informational interviews with alums who have jobs in the fields you are interested in. You interview them, in person preferably, to learn more about what they like and don’t like about their jobs, how they got there, what advice they have for you given your background, and most important, who do they know that might be able to give you more information about the career(s) you are considering. You don’t ask them for a job (that would be a violation of the implied contact that goes with agreeing to informational interviews), but you do ask for suggested next steps. If they ask, you can certainly tell them about your lack of success in finding a position thus far - they too had to find a first job and will sympathize, especially if they don’t feel like you are expecting them to offer you a position. (And some day, when you are the alum being contacted by the recent grad, pay it forward.)</p>
<p>The other thing you should do is contact area nonprofits that could use your skills on a volunteer basis (even if it’s not in your field) and get your foot in the door. The idea is to use the skills you want to be paid for (writing, data analysis, organizing) even if the industry isn’t the one you want to be in long term. These skills are transferable, so at least you are generating future references for the switch.</p>
How do you even know what that is since you have no experience anywhere?</p>
<p>I guess your circumstance shows the value of internships and part time jobs. Did you ever have a part time job? Sometimes that can be leveraged on a resume and in an interview.</p>
<p>For what it’s worth watsonfan, as a recent top LAC grad, probably 60% of my group of friends was unemployed as of this time of year my senior year. Most who were employed were employed with major “programs” (like TFA or large corporation’s recruiting trainee type programs) or going to grad school. As someone who had had 3 meaningful internships, a high GPA, and a prestigious deferred grad school acceptance in hand, I was convinced I was doing something wrong. But I wasn’t! While I only got a few “bites” on my resume between Sep. and April, between April and the end of May I got calls for roughly half the resumes I sent out - pretty good odds!</p>
<p>Many, many MANY smaller companies don’t have explicit recruiting programs that seek out college grads in March for hires in June or July. Lots of companies will say “Oh, we need to fill XYZ position - well, let’s interview some people over the next three weeks or so and fill it!” Most people I know had the most luck closer to the end of the school year. It’s okay to still be in limbo at this point!</p>
<p>I understand about your college career services center - it is my opinion, and the opinion of friends that are recent grads at my LAC and a bunch of other similar top East Coast LACs, that the extraordinarily poor career and post-grad support is a MAJOR problem for small liberal arts colleges. Part of it is situational (lot of LACs in out of the way locations, not necessarily near a major metropolitan area, LACs obviously have smaller - though sometimes more helpful! - alumni bases), part of it is monetary (obviously a small LAC will have a smaller endowment which in turn leads to less money to invest in career services) but a lot of it is a fundamental lack of importance placed on career service networks. I found my career services office decidedly unhelpful and staffed mostly by women whose husbands worked at the college or in the area and needed something to do with their time, and certainly not people who were bringing a network of contacts with them, proactively reaching out to employers, seeking out prestigious alumni to discuss career opportunities at their organization, or doing much more than organizing the logistics IF an employer decided they wanted to come to campus and offering short resume reviews. It was the student that needed to do most of this legwork, in mine and just about every LAC grad I know’s experience. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it may not be the story career services is selling you when you apply to the school.</p>
<p>I don’t know any liberal arts grad, actually, who got a job through using career services, though I’m sure they must be out there. When I compare that experience to the experience of friends at larger universities with equivalent prestige, the difference is astounding.</p>
<p>What have you done the past 2 years - summer jobs? Internships? Anything there that could be a possible starting point even just for 6 months to a year? Getting the first job is often the hardest step. Have you networked among family and friends? Does everyone you know, and I mean everyone, know you are looking for a job?</p>
<p>When it comes to employers visiting career centers, some factors come into play:</p>
<p>a. Local location. An employer will be more likely to visit a school nearby than a similar one that they will have to travel by airplane or make a more than one day trip to get to. A “Silicon Valley” employer will find San Jose State more convenient to recruit at than any out of area university.</p>
<p>b. Prestige. An employer will favor higher prestige schools in the field that they are seeking to hire out of, especially when traveling to recruit. An employer flying to Boston probably has MIT and/or Harvard higher on the list than BC, BU, etc…</p>
<p>c. Size. An employer may find a large school to give more resumes per visit than a small school that is otherwise similar, increasing the chance of finding candidate(s) that they want to hire. An employer flying to southern California may go for UCLA and USC over Caltech and Harvey Mudd for this reason.</p>
<p>UCB alumnus, I absolutely agree. Location is a huge part of it - who wants to trek out to rural locations just to offer jobs? I don’t want to give too much away but part of my current role is to attract and hire trainees. </p>
<p>I’ve found that not only are larger schools career services’ offices substantially more proactive - if I send an email inquiring about posting a job, they will contact me within two business days, the job will likely be posted the day I connect with the career services person, etc, other schools career services offices that see we have an entry trainee program reach out to me, they offer to search student resumes to find a good fit, the resumes themselves often follow a school format, small LACs I will typically email or call, get put on hold, go through lengthy and ridiculous verification procedures, someone is out of the office on vacation and has designated no one to follow up, and I am not asked or invited to campus, certainly nothing like at some bigger schools, where I’ve gotten a lot of “Oh I have the perfect student(s) in mind! I’ll forward their resumes on, they’re a good fit and I’ll let them know to follow up with you” – the kinds of things you’d EXPECT an LAC to do, because they’re so much smaller and <em>shouldn’t</em> they know their students better? </p>
<p>And it’s really too bad, because I’ve been quite impressed by all the LAC grads we <em>have</em> brought in to interview, but I’ve got a lot on my plate and little time to go chasing down career services offices – big schools make it much simpler, as a whole, to recruit there. While it’s fairly simple and on-par with the big schools to post ads to things like many-school online recruiting consortia, it is NOT so simple to post ads at individual schools, even if we’d like to hire from those specific schools! I wish this wasn’t the case, but it is in my granted small sample of about 20-30 New England schools with similar levels of prestige.</p>
<p>Looking for a job starts with you. What do you want to do? Employers can’t offer you anything if you aren’t clear about what particular field interests you (law? research? teaching? banking?). There are really three questions that need answering before any interview, otherwise you’re wasting their time.</p>
<p>1) can you do the job?
2) do you want the job?
3) is this a good fit?</p>
<p>There really are plenty of jobs and now is a very good time to put your resume out there. So where do you find these jobs? Everywhere. Tell everyone you know, at school, professors, friends, parents, friends of parents, etc. that you’re looking for a job. Start small. Maybe volunteer or take a part time to build something on your resume.</p>
<p>It also has to do with where you live. Even though there aren’t any particular jobs in your area, consider looking in different parts of the country. Use the internet for job leads, pick a few small cities that interest you or where you have friends/family, then make appts for a few of them and go there.</p>
<p>It also takes building up that resume. What have done during the summer? Have you had any internships? Any part time job? Volunteer? Work study? It seems you’ve done all the right steps so far, but it takes a huge effort to find that first “real” job.</p>
<p>This may sound counterintuitive, but maybe you should focus your job search in places other than your college’s career center.</p>
<p>You see, everyone who applies for a job through your career center is graduating from a top school – yours. So your soon-to-be-completed degree from a top college is no advantage. If you’re applying for a business job, the people at your college with better-suited majors (economics?) are more likely to get interviewed than you are.</p>
<p>Instead, you may want to answer some ads in newspapers or on job boards. There, you may be competing with applicants from far lower on the academic food chain, and the name of your school will count in your favor.</p>
<p>Also, and this is just a thought, have you considered working for a nonprofit organization? It sounds as though that might appeal to you.</p>
<p>I do have some part-time work to leverage in my interviews and have been trying to brainstorm ways I can market the skills I gained there effectively.</p>
<p>The truth is I’ve been quiet about my job hunt because my first priority was getting into grad school. Getting a job (or more accurately, trying to get a job) was my second choice. However, after getting in, it finally hit me that I will be $100k+ in debt once I sign on the dotted line. I’m suddenly more reluctant, hence the 180-degree shift in my priorities. I can certainly try to use my college friends’ connections but to be honest, I don’t know how much they can really do for me. My friends’ parents who are executives in banks/financial firms will probably expect a background in economics at least, and I would feel bad asking them for job leads without that. My family and friends back home are mostly in retail jobs and likely won’t have much influence on hiring managers.</p>
<p>I will try to go on job boards and such but I heard those places get the most applicants because they’re open to the general public. Many employers posting there might not be aware of LACs or even hold grudges against highly selective colleges.</p>
<p>“I don’t know any liberal arts grad, actually, who got a job through using career services, though I’m sure they must be out there. When I compare that experience to the experience of friends at larger universities with equivalent prestige, the difference is astounding.”</p>
<p>I know lots of Smithies who got a job using their career services, but that is likely because of their very dedicated alumni network. As a graduate of #1 LAC, I have never had a single employer - whether in the east coast, the middle of the country, or the west - who has ever heard of it. </p>
<p>My younger d’s career services (at American U.) has been superb, and her biggest difficulty has been in turning down jobs.</p>
<p>“My friends’ parents who are executives in banks/financial firms will probably expect a background in economics at least, and I would feel bad asking them for job leads without that.”
“I applied to a slew of jobs in the fall in human resources/training jobs/”</p>
<p>Even executives in banks/financial firms have HR and training departments.</p>