<p>Jessica: I work part time for a very large non-profit in California with a number of sociology graduates on my team. They work hard long hours and for low pay. We get stacks of resumes, on our fax machine on a daily basis, maybe 50 to 75 per day- minimum when we are NOT advertising for positions. So your sociology degree is in a mixed bag with psych graduates and health education grads. </p>
<p>The minute a position does open, they give it to a person who maybe didn’t get the position the last time but who the committee remembered and all liked. One thing I’ve learned, from my observation, is that they don’t hire the grads who can’t mix well with our patient populations unless the grad has been recommended by several people. They also tend to hire people who are bilingual in any language: Spanish, Tagalog, Vietnamese, Mandarin, Russian, American Sign Language, etc. because the populations are multilingual and being bilingual is a major plus.</p>
<p>Here’s what I’ve gathered from your posts here: you are angry that your Cornell education has not opened any doors and that no relatives or friends can help you to gain employment. You picked a major that is known to be low-paying with thousands of other sociology graduates looking for work. You don’t have an MSW and even the MSW’s can’t find work. </p>
<p>As for your interviews, the problem is that once you get into the interview, you seem to expect respect and people jumping through hoops for you, unaware that people interviewing you are under a lot of stress. You may not be thinking that the person interviewing you has deadlines, timelines and is stretched thin and maybe that’s why he/she is late to the interview or just had a stressful meeting, or whatever. So you have to make time in your schedule for an interview, in your line of work aren’t you supposed to be accommodating? Sociology does not pay, nor does it have the same conditions that, say, engineering has. The industry is begging for engineers. You happened to pick an industry that has a glut of graduates: sociology.</p>
<p>And please stop thinking that being a Cornell grad entitles you to a job and makes you better than everyone else on this planet. That attitude stinks and it probably comes across in your interviews and paperwork. The minute you go into an interview, you are no longer a “Cornell” person, you are an applicant who needs a job. Think about that for a minute.</p>
<p>With our agency, it doesn’t matter where you went to school. No one cares, and if you bring that arrogant attitude with you to our agency, you wont get any call backs. They are too busy trying to find the people that they really want to hire. </p>
<p>My suggestion to you when you are in an interview is to take the bull by the horns and say: “Would you like me to show you how I dealt with this problem, that was completely unfamiliar to me?” For goodness sakes, be positive and proactive and be NICE!</p>