Having some rambly fun with color pens.

Graduates of the Class of 2009, which includes myself, enter the job market at a rough time.  Positions are few, and competition is fierce.  Though there are blips of hope that the  economy may be turning around, I think maybe the Class of 2010 will likely be in the same boat.  Everybody needs as much help as they can get, and if you’re like me, you are scouring the internet for as many tips to get that edge.  So I thought I’d share my strategy for landing a job.  I’ve not reinvented the wheel here, just customized it for my needs.  It may or may not work for you; some of my techniques may even backfire horribly for another person, I have no idea.  This was my first real job search after college.  That said, I found a job less than two months after beginning to look for one – use my tips as they suit you.

1. Try to ride out the bad season, if you can. Getting a job was actually not my original plan.  I was going to live abroad with my sister for a while and come back into a hopefully more new graduate-friendly job market.  That plan blew up in my face due to some differences between us, and I was put in the position of having to find a job.  You may find that staying in school and going for a Masters or even straight to your PhD may suit you.
2. Choose your city. Or at least a range of cities/regions.  If you find a job in a place that you hate, then what’s the point?  Money?  We’re much too young to settle like that.  In my case, the majority of my classmates chose NYC, Boston, Chicago, DC, etc., as their post-graduate homes.  After spending 4 years in the northeast US, I couldn’t wait to get out of there.  I know I could have found a fabulous laboratory job there, including even my alma mater, but my quality of life would not be up to snuff.  Remember, work is not all that life is about.
3. Move in with your parents. As new graduates, many of our parents are glad to have us back home for a while, after only seeing us on holidays and breaks for 4+ years.  Use that!  Being able to live at home for free alleviates the stress of finding a place to stay/crash while looking for work.  You can now put most of your focus on finding a job.  Of course, living with parents will slowly drive you out of your mind, which brings me to my next point:
4. Have some savings. After a while, I could not take living with my parents, as much as I love them, so I had to move.  I wasn’t even looking for jobs in the city where they live, and after some time, I realized that not being in the city where I was looking for work was a hindrance, so I moved.  I had enough in the bank for about three months of being on my own.  I consider that a minimum to have.  I know it is hard to save money while in college, but it is not impossible, and the vast majority of college students can save, even if it is a little bit.
5. Keep yourself occupied during the search. I got a dog.  You can also work on losing some of those college pounds, if they are a bother to you.  The point is to have something going on in your life so that the eventual rejections won’t hurt so much.
6. Apply for jobs that fit your skills. Or in other words, Be Qualified.  I’ve heard it said that you should apply for any job even tangentially related to your skills, but I believe that in this economy, that is a waste of time.  Hiring managers will throw out your application if you don’t meet the minimum qualifications, and sometimes even if you do.
7. Update your resume/CV. This should go without saying, but maybe not.  Make sure your resume or CV is clear, and describes your skills and accomplishments accurately.  As a new graduate, it may not be very long, so make every word count.  There are tons of resources online that will help you to create a great resume, so I won’t go into much detail, but the one thing I kept in mind when making my resume was to use action words.  For example, instead of saying you were responsible for your club’s website, say you created/designed the website for your club, which now boasts 1 million hits per day.
8. Customize your cover letters. This may also go without saying, but maybe not.  When applying for many jobs, it’s very easy to use one template letter and send it to everyone.  Do not do this!  Every job you apply to is different, so take the time in your cover letter to show why you are the best choice for that particular job.  These reasons are most likely a little different for each place.
9. Apply for jobs as if it is your job. Every day Monday through Friday, I had a specific number of jobs to apply to.  I usually ‘went to work’ in the early afternoon, but you may choose to do it early in the morning.  I had to apply to that many jobs, even if it took the rest of the day.  Chance has a definite part to play when finding a job, but it will not happen if you are not doing your part.  I personally believe that it takes a lot of work to be lucky, and I haven’t been proven wrong yet.
10. Keep track of your job search. I used excel to list what jobs I applied for, where, when, etc.  With this kind of list, you can avoid applying to a job more than once.  You can also keep track of when and to whom you send follow up notes.
11. Send follow up notes. After applying for a job, wait a week or so, then email the company to confirm that they got your application.  After interviewing, the very next day, send a note to every person you interviewed with thanking them for their time.  Each of these is a chance to assert why you are the best choice for the position, because you are, right?
12. Try to find rapport with your interviewers. I’m not saying to try to find out if they could become your best friends, but if you cannot find rapport on some level, then it’s likely that the work environment wouldn’t be the best for you.  Remember, you are interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you.
13. Finally, don’t give up! This was the hardest part for me.  After about two weeks, I was beginning to get a little down about the process (what can I say, I’m impatient!).  But I persevered, and landed the perfect job.  I’m now a lab tech, and while it doesn’t pay the big bucks, it’s in the field that I intend to pursue when I finally decide to go on to graduate school.  The perfect stepping stone, so to speak.

That’s it.  That’s how I found my job.  It basically boils down to this: Work hard, follow your intuition, and you will eventually find the job that is just right for you.

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As it is the next to last day of 2009, I thought I’d do a little review of the past year.  Then I realized that it’s actually the end of the decade!  So this is my attempt at a mini-memoir of the past ten years.  To be quite honest, I tend to keep the past in the past and just move on.  As a result, much of the decade has been lost in my memories.  The important stuff, however, remained.  Here are the highlights:

(In my mind, middle/high school is measured in school years, so sorry if it’s a bit confusing)

2000: Remember the Y2K scare?  Well something similar is coming up in 2012.  Be prepared!  Actually 8th grade wasn’t very special.  Middle school was just a long streak of indistinguishable trauma.

9th grade: Sept. 11, 2001 was at the beginning of that school year.  Nothing and no one was ever the same.  This was also the year I decided on my career.  Surprisingly, it hasn’t changed.  Though my proposed path has definitely become more windy and twisty, it stays the same.

10th grade: I joined debate and tennis.  This was huge for me.  I only did it because I needed extracurriculars for college apps, but I ended up really enjoying myself.

Summer ‘04: I got my first job this summer at a local pharmacy.  For the first time I had my own money!  I can’t describe the freedom I felt.  Even then I didn’t go crazy with the spending.  I mostly bought food and the occasional outfit.  It’s not that I’m a natural saver or naturally thrifty, but it’s an ingrained trait in me not to spend money that I don’t have.  I will go without until I have money.  Then spend most of the money I do have, after all bills are paid, of course.  It’s not a destructive habit, but perhaps a bit dysfunctional.  I am nothing if not a work in progress. 

I also began to volunteer at the local animal shelter.  I.Loved.It.There.  It was the best time of high school for me.  I wish I had done more volunteering in college, but the shelter was inconvenient to get to in the college town without a car. 

12th grade: Sometime during senior year I bought myself a car.  It was a little red thing that was a bit finnicky but I loved it dearly.   I had to sell it when I left for college, though.  It wouldn’t have made the trip cross-country.

Of course, I got accepted to my top choice college, early decision, no less.  I don’t think I’ve said what college I went to.  I don’t think I’m going to.  Pseudo-anonymity, and all that.

2006: The second half of my freshman year was amazing!  So many small, good things happened.  I don’t actually remember most of them, but it has left me with a warm fuzzy.

I did get an on-campus job.  Once again, I had money, though not much, since they put caps on the allowed number of hours worked.

Also that year, I totally fell in love with music.  I had of course liked music before, but it was always whatever my parents listened to, or the top 40 stuff on the radio.  A friend of mine introduced me to an app that let users download music from others’ ITunes libraries (don’t judge, you know you did it too!).  It began with AIR, then Massive Attack, then Basement Jaxx, and when I actually listened to Daft Punk’s Discovery, it was over.  Here is music that is more than catchy noise.  This is music that tells my story.

2007: I went to Peru.

2008: During this year, I was mostly trying to pull myself together.  I found the most amazing and supportive mentor and lab to work in, and found a focus for my studies and future career.

2009: Well, you know that story.  If not, read the blog.  In brief, I graduated, moved back home, moved out, got a job.

A mini-memoir of the past decade.  These are the things that I believe have made the most impact on me.  Of course, some things may have been left out, but you get the idea.

What are your memories of the past ten years?

P.S. This is my 100th post! Looking forward to the next 100!

Ah, roomies.  I have amused myself mightily reading and listening to stories of people and their roommates.  Sometimes they go well, and everyone is friends, other times, they turn to heck, and I wonder about humanity.  I thought it would be amusing to tell my roommate story. 

I’ve only had one roommate (at my college, everyone lives in suites, so here I’m defining a roommate as someone that shares your actual room).  We were pretty much randomly assigned to each other before freshman year, and at first, I thought we would get along wonderfully, but soon we did little more than tolerate each other. 

My roomie, I’ll call her Mia, and I were very different.  I am taller than the average American woman, a bit sarcastic, not prone to be overly emotional (a post about that coming soon).  Mia is quite short, was a cheerleader in high school, and very into looking the part.  I realized soon that we didn’t have much in common, but tried to stay friendly.  I had made friends during a pre-orientation program that I attended and really had little interest in her.  There were nine girls in that suite, so she had plenty of friends to choose from. 

So the year goes on, and soon enough there’s some drama.  About chores, and about decorating the suite.  First, I wasn’t going to contribute toward brand name furnishings that I was not going to use with people that I already knew I wasn’t going to room with after that year.  I just didn’t have money like that to spare.  About chores, I couldn’t bring myself to clean the upstairs bathroom when I lived downstairs.  It was a matter of principle.  I don’t clean bathrooms that I don’t use unless I’m being paid.  I thought these things were minor, and we had moved past them, but it turns out that Ms. Mia had been talking about me behind my back. 

That was cool, we didn’t have to be friends, and anyway, she quickly got a boyfriend and began spending every night at his place.  Said boyfriend was always a jerk to me, so I can only imagine the things she said to him. 

I don’t want to imply that I was the perfect roomie, because I wasn’t.  I am a homebody  more than anything else, so I was in the room a lot.  Looking back, she probably felt crowded out of our small room, but if she wanted privacy, she could have just asked.  Also, I pretty much ignored her when she was in the room.  That’s just because I don’t talk much unless I have something to say, though I could see how that may make someone like her feel uncomfortable. 

Anyway, through some of the things she said to me and to some friends of mine (who know her through a very different social circle), I came to realize that Mia was totally selfish and spoiled.  I mean, she didn’t even realize that not everyone had swimming pools in her home state of California! (Totally serious there.)  My final straw was when she left the window open with a loose screen, and an open candy bar on her desk.  I woke early the next morning to a squirrel in the room and had to call animal control to get it out.  It seems a silly thing, but you never know, right?  Thankfully, that was only about two months before the end of the school year. 

I haven’t spoken to her since, though I saw her around campus once or twice.  To be honest, I probably wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her walking down the sidewalk tomorrow. 

The next year, I moved into a suite with the most amazing people ever (though I had my own room)!  We stayed together until I moved off campus during senior year.