Barbara Hewitt – Page 12

Another Chance for an OCR Interview

Barbara Hewitt

On-campus recruiting for full-time opportunities is in full swing and the newly renovated OCR suite is humming with activity. Hopefully many Penn students planning to graduate this year have been invited to interview with employers of interest to them. However, I’m confident there are also many students who have been disappointed by not receiving as many interview invitations as they had hoped. After devoting time and effort to networking with employers and submitting applications on PennLink, this can be a frustrating experience.

Penn is fortunate to attract many students who excel academically, in campus leadership positions, and in the broader community. Most employers who recruit at Penn (especially the larger, well-known ones) receive applications from many more students than they could possibly interview. We also all know that reviewing resumes is an imperfect tool for selecting which candidates might make the best “fit” for a particular organization. For these reasons, we strongly encourage students to take advantage of the recruiter add-on interview process, which allows students to be added to an interview schedule in the event that the interviewer has late cancellations on his or her schedule. (While employers tend not to have very many openings during the first few days of recruiting, it is much more common as the recruiting season progresses and students begin to accept offers with other employers.) If you are reasonably well-qualified for a position (based on the position description) it makes sense to try to get an “add-on” interview. You may really impress the recruiter in person and be offered the perfect job! I have had many conversations with students over the years who have landed jobs through this process, and just last May a recruiter from an investment bank told us she hired three Penn students who had been late additions to her schedule through the add-on process.

Some of you may feel like it is not worth your time and effort to apply for add-on interviews if you weren’t selected for an interview initially. After all, who wants to be rejected twice? I urge you to reconsider this attitude. You might have been the next person they would have picked if they had more slots available. You never know what could happen… When I was searching for my first job out of graduate school, I treated myself to a two week trip to Africa right after graduation (and also while I was job searching). When I arrived home on a Saturday I was thrilled to have a call for an interview and promptly returned it at 9:05 am on Monday. Unfortunately, in my absence the employer indicated that he had been forced to make a decision on another candidate who had a competing offer, so they no longer would be interviewing me. I was disappointed and assumed I must not have been what they had been seeking in a candidate after all since they hadn’t waited for me to return. Lo and behold, a few days later, they called to tell me that the candidate had turned down the offer and re-invited me to interview. Two weeks later I started my new job with them. Moral of the story….there are many good candidates and you should take advantage of every opportunity to get in front of an employer to make your case about why you should be the one they hire.

Hopefully I’ve convinced you to apply for add-on interviews…so here’s how you do it. First, fill out a “Recruiter Add-On Interview Request Form” (available from the main OCR web page) for each position that interests you, attach it to your resume, and deposit it in the “Recruiter Add-On Interview Request Box” outside of Career Services, Suite 20, McNeil Building. Collection hours are 9:15 am – 2:00 pm one working day before the interview date. Your add-on request(s) will be given to the recruiter(s) when they check in to OCR the following morning. The recruiter(s) will review the resumes at their convenience and will inform the OCR receptionist should they wish to interview you. However, we request that you not call to check on the status of your add-on request. The OCR receptionist will contact students whose requests have been accepted. Students whose requests are not accepted will not be contacted.

Good luck with it!

Where in the World…

By Barbara Hewitt

Money Magazine recently released their annual list of the “Best Places to Live” in the US. The list ranks 746 cities with populations between 50,000 and 300,000 based on criteria such as salaries, unemployment rates, housing accessibility, and the quality of the school system. You can see the list at http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2010/top100. (Who knew that Eden Prairie, MN, ranked number one, was such a gem?)

Of course, there are many factors that go into deciding where to locate when you graduate from college. Being near family and friends, living in a place in which you are familiar and comfortable, or enjoying a particular climate are all valid reasons to focus your search in a particular region. However, I often think that new graduates (who typically could be very flexible when deciding where to settle down) limit their career choices unnecessarily by placing too much emphasis on the “where” and not the “what” of their first jobs. I have seen many students turn down amazing opportunities because the positions were not in their preferred locations.

I also speak from personal experience. When I was graduating from my Masters program back in 1991 we were in a recession, much like today. Jobs were tight as colleges and universities cut their budgets. My “ideal” job at the time involved working in the career center of a small college. I absolutely was not going to consider residential life positions, as the thought of moving back into a dorm and being on call 24 hours a day was not one I relished. However, as any new student affairs professional can tell you, residential life jobs are much more abundant than career center positions in any given year. My hope was to work on the East or West Coast… I didn’t really care where as long as I wasn’t “stuck” in the vast expanse of the Midwest. I’m not quite sure why I was so determined to avoid the Midwest, as I had no experience with the area. I grew up in upstate New York and attended undergraduate and graduate school in Pennsylvania. Outside of a brief study abroad stint in Spain, I had not lived anywhere else. Nevertheless, opportunities were scarce, and I eventually accepted a position at the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio. Not only was I living in a state that was nowhere on my desired list, but the position involved serving full-time as the Assistant Director of Career Services AND a residence hall director for a dormitory. Clearly, this position was not exactly what I had envisioned upon graduation.

So…how did it all turn out? Great! I loved working at a small school and found it very easy to get involved in the campus community right away because of the school’s size and the fact that I was able to get to know students both in a career context as well as more personally in the residence hall. While a live in position was not something that I actively sought, I realized that residential experience is extremely helpful for any student affairs professional to possess, and managing a staff of five resident assistants provided me with a wonderful supervisory experience. I really enjoyed the town of Wooster itself, (Ohio ended up being a terrific place to live), and I quickly became involved in community service working at a local women’s shelter. Granted, I did eventually tire of living with over 100 college students, but on the plus side I had free room and board for two years – a definite advantage for a new professional with college loans to repay.

The take away for me (and hopefully you!) is that it never hurts to at least be willing to consider a variety of locations during your job search. You will have many more opportunities available and may discover a new place that you never considered before but with which you could fall in love. Maybe Columbia, MD (#2 on the Money list) or Newton, MA (#3 on the list) is just the place for you!

Should You Be Doing That At Work?

By Barbara Hewitt

Our methods of communication have clearly changed over the last decade. Most of us have the ability to check work email from home, pay our personal bills at work, and text and access social networks like Facebook just about anywhere we want. In fact, the question becomes not “Can we do these things at work?”…. but “Should we?”.

For a lot of people, “work” and “personal” days have blurred and they may feel justified in using office technology and time to handle personal issues since they are probably handling at least some “office” work from home. For many organizations there is an implicit (if unstated) culture that on a limited basis this is fine. As long as employees are productive, providing them with the flexibility to determine what they need to do while at work may keep them happier and in the long run more loyal to the organization. (This is analogous to the somewhat dated notion of making personal calls at work. A few are overlooked and seen as necessary, but it is pretty easy to get annoyed with a colleague who spends three hours every day yakking on the phone while everyone else in the office is working hard on projects.)

Texting — Beware of using employer phones for personal texting.....

As a new employee, there are some things you should do to make sure you make a smooth transition into your workplace. When you start a new job, make sure you investigate if there are written policies governing how you use the organization’s resources such as computers and telephones. What are you allowed to access from the office (or outside the office, say, on a company issued phone)? If there isn’t a written policy, pay attention to the unwritten rules of the office. Many organizations outright block access to sites like Facebook, not wanting their employees to waste time on things that are clearly not related to their jobs. Other employers are much more flexible, understanding that communication technologies have changed and allowing employees to utilize these tools as long as they don’t interfere with productivity. Still others wholeheartedly embrace employees’ use of such tools – believing that their employees should keep up on the latest trends in technology. (And let’s face it, lots of people now manage social media as part of their job descriptions!)

As an employee, you should be aware that many employers have the capacity to check employee computers, emails, and texts from an office phone or pager. There is no assurance that what you might have thought was private is. (Just ask the police offer in California who was texting heavily with both his wife and mistress from an employer issued pager. The Supreme Court ruled last week that his employer, the City of Ontario, CA, did not violate his rights when they checked his text messages.)

You should also be very careful what you say about your employer in online forums. CareerBuilder.com has reported that a significant number of companies indicate that they have investigated the posting of sensitive information to a social network, ultimately resulting in disciplinary action including termination of employees. I’ve personally worked with a student who was terminated from an internship because she posted information about her company to what she considered to be a private blog. The company had a Google alert set-up and found it very quickly once it was posted. It wasn’t even that the content of the post was egregious to the employer, but rather that the intern had violated company policy by posting anything at all about the employer online.

Words to the wise. It is better to be cautious in today’s world than to find yourself in a position to regret your actions later. In today’s online world, it is almost impossible to deny your actions after the fact.

Dear Seniors….The Best Is Yet To Come…….

By Barbara Hewitt

I vividly remember when I was finishing up college that people couldn’t wait to tell me that college was “the best years of your life.” Face it, when else do people have the opportunity to learn just for the sake of it, be surrounded by thousands of individuals close in age, and not have the burden of family obligations and mortgages? I wondered at the time if it would turn out to be true. It was pretty depressing to think that at 22 years old my future had a downhill trajectory.

As it turns out, 21 years after hearing those words, I believe they couldn’t be farther from the truth. Hopefully, as seniors who have spent the last four years at Penn, you have had wonderful experiences and will look back at your time at Penn fondly. I am confident, however, that the best is yet to come for the vast majority of you. Earning a degree from Penn is a huge accomplishment. You have all (well, most of you!) worked hard and grown tremendously during the last four years. You now have the opportunity to go out and apply the things that you have learned at Penn to make real change in the world whether through teaching children, discovering a new scientific breakthrough, or helping a business bring a new product to market. You will move on to different phases of your personal and professional lives, eventually mentoring and managing younger employees, finding life partners, and perhaps raising families of your own. Yes, your lives will change, but simply to something different, not something somehow inferior. Take advantage of the unexpected opportunities that come your way and don’t be afraid to take some risks. Many of the most successful alumni I meet are those who haven’t been afraid to veer off the beaten path.

As graduation approaches, all of us in Career Services wish you a wonderful journey on whatever path you choose to take in the years ahead….

Making the Most of Your Internship

By Barbara Hewitt

Penn students will soon be leaving campus for internships all around the world. Some of you will work with large employers in very established internship programs, while others might be the first intern in a new start-up. Penn students work in for-profit, nonprofit and public sector jobs in all sorts of functional areas. While internships are a great way to explore a career of interest and gain valuable skills, the quality of internships can vary dramatically. However, there are steps you can take to ensure that the experience is as positive as possible.

Ideally, think hard about what you want to accomplish during an internship before you accept one. You may want to develop new skills, learn about a new industry, or perhaps make money to pay your fall tuition. (In fact, all three of these goals might be important to many of you!) Think about how many hours you can devote to the internship each week and how many weeks you would like to work. The more clear you are on these parameters the easier it will be to focus your search and prioritize your goals to find an internship that is a good fit. You should definitely have a discussion with your supervisor to clarify expectations regarding the types of assignments you will handle, your work schedule, and how you will be trained. Discussing these issues BEFORE you commit to the internship can help stave of problems and disappointments down the road.

When you actually report to work, realize that as an intern you are a representative of the organization. It is important that you make a good impression at all times by being professional and diligent, reporting to work on time, and following the office dress code. You should also be observant of the “unspoken rules” at work, as they are frequently more important to fitting in than the more formal written rules. For example, is it customary for people to take rigid lunch breaks at noon or is a more flexible break schedule acceptable? Do people refer to each other by their first names or are higher-ups addressed more formally? Are you able to check social media tools like Facebook when at work or is that frowned upon (or outright forbidden)?

Be sure that you know when assignments and projects are due and meet all deadlines, even if it means staying late. Don’t be afraid to ask questions – it will increase your knowledge of the organization and demonstrate your interest in learning as much as possible. You may want to check with your supervisor early in your internship to discuss his or her preferred method of communication. Some supervisors have an open door policy and encourage interns to stop by when they have questions. Other might prefer a more formal weekly meeting or request that you send an email when something comes up.

The attitude that you display as an intern is critical. Work hard to demonstrate a positive demeanor at work, as no one likes to work with a complaining, unhappy coworker…especially an intern who will only be in the office for a few months. Make the most of menial tasks by doing them well and without complaining. Virtually all internships (and jobs, for that matter) have some mundane components. If you are unhappy with most of your assignments, take the initiative and ask your supervisor about taking on different or additional responsibilities which interest you more. Generally, supervisors will be impressed with your initiative and drive. However, be sure not to do this too early in the internship. It is important to develop relationships with your supervisor and colleagues and gain an understanding of the organization before assuming that you will be entrusted with higher level assignments.

An internship provides a great opportunity to take advantage of being on the “inside” of an organization by talking to other employees and making contacts. You may want to arrange informational interviews to learn more about other departments in the organization. Collect business cards as they often come in handy when networking for a full-time job down the road.

Hopefully the internship will be a stepping stone to additional professional opportunities. Save copies of things you create for future reference (web pages, flyers, press releases, articles, etc.). Learn as much as you can from your experience by seeking and accepting feedback about your performance, including constructive criticism. Try not to be defensive when a supervisor suggests ways to improve your performance. Request an exit interview to discuss the internship as a whole. Before leaving, ask for a letter of recommendation. Open a credentials file with Interfolio to house the letter if you haven’t already done so.

At the end of the summer, write a thank you note to your supervisor for his or her guidance. Hopefully your experience was a good one, and you have developed a relationship that will continue into the future. Keep in touch with your co-workers and supervisor after leaving the site, as they can often be very helpful as you begin a full-time job search.

Most of all ENJOY your experience. Internships provide a unique opportunity to experience a new work environment and career – take full advantage, as summers during college are limited commodity!
(Blog entry based on Career Services “Tips on Making the Most of Your Internship” website.)