Amitai Givertz’s Recruitomatic Blog

If I was a student today – like you are perhaps – I would be pretty ticked off with the quality of online services and resources being provided by my college’s career center. Of course, there are always exceptions and I’m sure that somewhere out there is an unbelievably terrific resource that provides everything that would give me a competitive edge in my job search, but I haven’t seen it yet. What I have seen ranges from what I can only describe as mediocre, a typical offering of generic and conventional blah. Admittedly, my sampling for this missive was random and limited to the relatively few colleges who at least understand that students google. But you know what – this is a rant about shortchanging students working stuff out online and not an article about best practices. If career counselors or recruiters want to argue the toss – and I wish you would – hey, leave a comment.

Here are my top three peeves and some practical suggestions for you to consider:

1. Resumes matter: No they don’t! The advice given on most sites I looked at is unforgivable nonsense. For example, if it takes a whole guide to describe what to include on your resume, how can you be expected to accomplish all that on a single side of a single sheet of foolscap? Promoting the notion that somehow your resume is a passport to the hiring process simply perpetuates the disadvantaging of new job seekers.

Reality check number one: A halfway decent recruiter is not going to bother with indistinguishable resumes. No one will. Rather, he or she will be scrutinizing your blog and getting to know you – the “real” you, that is. The rest of them – and that would be the majority – will glance at your resume, filter it through a series of 20-second subjective tests, and either flip it over, file it or forget it.

Reality check number two: If you feel compelled to have a “resume,” build a profile on LinkedIn and get some solid endorsements. If need a hard copy, print it out from there. Build all your profiles online and use the job board templates you’ll find there. If a recruiter insists you forward your resume – and invariably they will – ask them what they intend to do with it. Get them to agree they will return your paperwork if it’s of no use. If they say they need to file it, send an additional copy and get them to agree to return the original. If they won’t reciprocate, move on. You’re probably going to get screwed anyway.

Reality check number three: If at all possible, don’t lie. It might save you from getting fired one day. Also, if you have been busted with pipe-bombs and bongs under your bed, or for underage binge-drinking maybe, consider what you can do when you are exposed as a likely undesirable hire. If you have reformed, consider a lawful pseudonym – Tommy instead of Thomas; L. Margie Humphrey instead of Lucy M. Humphrey, whatever. If you have skeletons in the closet and a name like Arijit Kumar Chowdhury, get ready to part with fifty bucks or so to get a whole new First, Middle and Last. Remember, full-body tattoos and lip-plates are less forgiving than past personas and persistent identities.

2. Online tests can help you find your true self and, therefore, your career path. To be sure, there is a lot of information available but, if the majority of us do end up in work totally unrelated to whatever it was we majored in – even those of us who graduate from the school of hard knocks – you have to wonder, just how easy is to engineer the future? I didn’t see many opportunities to explore alternatives to the stock-in-trade, rather unimaginative, O*NET, the Occupational Information Network and Occupational Outlook Handbook. Most would be better served finding some other way of awakening the giant within than looking to the Department of Labor, as everyone else does.

Reality check number four: Before you start investing a lot of time trying to figure out where you want to go in life, do some real-life online testing. Log on and “apply” for some jobs in your chosen or preferred field and the honestly reflect on what you need to do – and whether you are prepared to do it – to get to the next step on your career path. For example, if you thought you might like to be a rocket scientist you might visit an appropriate job description and really understand what it’s going to take to shoot for the stars. Work your way backwards – start with the beginning in mind, if you will.

Reality check number five: You are investing in your future. Looking at which industry or potential employers you want to work for should be treated no different from any other type of investment, so why not use the same tools as investors use? Hoovers and similar sites give a better real-world view than the Occupational Outlook Handbook. These online services profile companies (often linking directly to their employment sites), industries, competitive environments, economic forecasts and so on. If your career center doesn’t provide subscribers’ access to Hoovers, for example, insist that they do. What are they thinking?

Reality check number six: When making your career choices don’t forget to consider how long you’re going to have to work to pay off student loans and so on. Increasingly, employers are looking at loan forgiveness as a means to attract talent in short supply. If your blogging indiscretions don’t get you, the credit check might

3. Online job search, strategy and resources. In a word: pathetic. Now, I’m assuming that the job hunt is given such a low billing on the majority of sites because it is fair to assume that internet savvy students don’t need a lot help working out what’s what. After all, you’re reading this right? Perhaps college career sites are modeling themselves after employers? Who knows? I find it amazing that so few sites I visited had links to any or many these basic job hunting tools: CollegeRecruiter.com; CollegeGrad.com; AfterCollege.com; MonsterCampus; Indeed.com/RecentGraduates; SimplyHired.com/CollegeGrad and other helpful resources like OneStopCoach; The Riley Guide; and JobHunt.org. Well, of course, the list could go on and on, couldn’t it? I almost forgot the trendiest site of all: Jobster! And therein lays the problem, I guess.

Reality check number seven: Forget job boards! That’s right, forget ‘em. What you need is a strategy and some trusted referrals. After all, if you go down the job board route invariably someone is going to ask you for your resume so they can put it on file, remember? Networking in the real world will get you farther than hopping from board to board, posting to posting, but if you must, visit employers’ sites and get a real sense of what you’re looking/applying for.

Reality check number eight: You are competing with your whole graduating year for the best available job, so why would you do the same things they are doing? Come up with creative alternatives to tired and conventional job searching. You might try blogging for a job. Using your new identity of course, blog about your thesis, blog about your ambitions, blog about your targeted employer. Make your blog your resume! Send invitations out to whoever it is that you want to attract and get them to visit your blog, visit you!

Admittedly, blogging isn’t for everyone in which case you can a) come up with something else that separates you from the competition, or b) revisit your career center and read up on cover letters, resume styles and what have you.

Reality check number nine: If you want the best possible career counseling and coaching, you may just have to look for it off campus. If what is provided for students online is anything to go by, you might just need it.

In closing, if your campus does provide exceptional online career center resources, please leave a comment so we can all check out what the others might be missing. Good luck!