Career – Page 8 – Penn & Beyond

Facing the Lion’s Den: Addressing tough questions during the holidays

By Claire Klieger

Anxious about going home for the holidays because you know your parents or relatives are going to ask the dreaded question, “So, what are you doing after graduation?”, “Do you have a job yet?” or my personal least favorite, “What are you going to do with that English major anyway?” (as an English major, this was one I got a lot). Holidays can often be an anxious time anyway, but most of us dread talking about future plans, especially when we’re not sure what they may entail. Here are some tips to help you get through any awkward questions (for career parallels and lessons on how to survive the holiday in general, check out last year’s post, No “Gobble”digook – Hidden Career Lessons in Thanksgiving Dinner):

lionden — Please, please don't ask me about my future!

1) Don’t show fear. Family, like lions, dogs, bears or other predators, can sense fear in the air like they can smell when the turkey is almost done. So, the best way to combat annoying or unwanted questions is with a calm and self-assured response (more on that in a minute). If you seem confident about your options and choices, you’re more likely to inspire that confidence in others.

2) The best offense is a good defense. There’s a lot to be said for that old Boy Scout adage, “always be prepared.” By familiarizing yourself with information and statistics about everything from hiring timelines to salaries (which is actually much easier and faster than it sounds), you can take the wind right out of their sails of doubt and worry. Remember that there is a wealth of information available to you on the Career Services Website. We collect senior and summer surveys annually and produce reports which show what Penn students are doing in summer and full time positions. There is data broken down by industry, job type and major. In that way, you can say, “Well, Mom, since most students don’t get their internship offers until March or April, it’s actually still very early in the process” or “Dad, I know you’re worried that I didn’t get an offer from OCR, but on average, less than 20% of college seniors each year receive their offers that way but almost everyone eventually gets a job so there are still plenty of options for me.”

3) Show them what steps you are taking. Sometimes, all parents (or grandparents and aunts and uncles, or guys we call uncle even though they aren’t technically family) want to know is that you are making progress on something. So, if they seem concerned about your job or internship search, just let them know about the things you are doing (or, ahem, will start doing) to better position yourself for opportunities. You can network with Penn Alumni through PACNet to learn about different possible careers or get advice about the best places to look for openings or what kinds of skills you should stress in an application. You can research employers or industries of interest through a variety of our online resources (see A map to (career research) treasures!), update your resume, or do online interview practice through InterviewStream (one of the new additions to our online subscriptions this fall—it’s fantastic). Or, best of all, tell them you’re planning to come speak to an advisor in Career Services!

4) Embrace your strengths. Each of you brings a variety of talents and skills to any employer. In fact, your Penn education alone has honed many of these attributes and it’s important to get comfortable discussing what we like to call “transferable skills”. These are things that you use on a daily basis at Penn, probably without thinking about them, which would also make you successful in just about any job: strong writing and analytical skills, the ability to research and synthesize information, etc. There are probably even more specific skills that your course of study has enhanced, which you can include in your arsenal of positive traits that make you the kind of candiate that employers want to hire.

So, chin up, and if you like, just say, “Gee, I think that makes for really boring meal-time conversation. Can you please pass the mashed potatoes?” Or, if you want to really throw them for a loop…“You want to hear something really bizarre? My career advisor’s mother packed a 20lb frozen turkey, a package of celery and two bags of frozen cranberries in her suit case to take to Zimbabwe for Thanksgiving!” (yes, that was my mother and amazingly, apparently it all survived the 25 plus hours of travel fine and still frozen).

A Day in the Life: Urban Public School Reformer

Read Janel Forde’s archived tweet feeds here: Day 1 and Day 2

In the next two weeks, we welcome alumna Janel Forde who will post about another career path in education – urban public school administration. Follow @PennCareerDay on Twitter on November 8th, and then again the week of November 15th. Don’t miss out on what Janel’s days are like!

Janel works for Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in America with over 400,000 students, almost 700 schools and a $6bn operating budget. For the past year, Janel has worked in the CEO’s Office as the Director of Stimulus Programs. In that role she served as the district’s single point of contact for all stimulus related initiatives and helped to develop the state’s Race to the Top application ($400M) as well as the district’s Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) grant which was the district’s largest competitive grant award to date, $34M. She has also led several strategic projects for the office. Prior to joining the district, Janel was a consultant in the Boston Consulting Group’s Chicago office. She specialized in the financial services sector and functionally in process management and strategy development.

Originally, from the east coast, Janel has worked in marketing and business development at American Express and in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, all in New York. Janel earned her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her undergraduate degree from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

The HORROR of Not Having a Job Yet

By Claire Klieger

Remember getting caught up that build up to prom night fervor of “I must have a date!” because you’re pretty sure that your social future as you know it depends upon not looking like the loser that no one wanted to take to Prom? Perhaps (though probably not) even now you have the occasional Carrie-esque nightmares?

CARRIE, courtesy of MGM Studios — Left: Hooray! I'll be gainfully employed. Right: My life if I don't have a job offer by Thanksgiving.

For many seniors I’ve recently spoken with, it seems like the job search, especially during the OCR season, produces similar levels of anxiety. It may feel as though every person you know is telling you that you need to have a job and in a tough economy, pickings may be slim. You may have noticed frenzied-looking individuals resembling Penn students except for their oddly formal dress darting all over campus (sometimes the sea of stressed dark suits reminds of me zombies who instead of mumbling “brains, brains, brains” chant “jobs , jobs, jobs”) or you might be in the midst of that tidal wave, yourself.

The on-campus recruiting process is very intense and it moves quite quickly –you go through all of these rounds at lightning speed and before you know it you (hopefully) have an offer and you think, wow, how did I get here? And, it’s wonderful (and safe) to feel like you have an offer and don’t have to worry about your future after graduation.

But I’m here to tell you NOT to play it safe. That doesn’t mean if you get a job offer through OCR that you’re thrilled with that you should say no because there might be something better that comes along. By all means, if getting that phone call causes you to literally jump for joy and the idea of seeing their business cards with your name on them makes you salivate, accept and congratulations to you. However, if your reaction to an offer is more along the lines of well, it’s nice that somebody wants me; at least I’ll have a job (á la, at least I’ll be going to prom), think long and hard about whether or not you should say yes.

Again, let’s think back to those painful high school years. Were you so worried about having a prom date that you said yes to the first person who asked you even though you weren’t so excited about the offer? So, secretly you hoped that someone else better would come along and ask you. And, maybe someone did and you ended up having to crush the heart (and ego) of the person who had originally asked you. In the end, while not as drastic or ridiculous as in the film 1970s classic Stephen King horror film Carrie, there was probably lots of drama. In the job search, the stakes are actually higher. There are real and potentially severe consequences to reneging on a job offer later.

So, if you get an offer that you’re not sure you’re excited about, do not say yes just to have “something” for when you graduate. In the long run, you and your potential employer will be far better off waiting for the right proverbial prom date offer.

A Day in the Life: International Health Recruiter

Read Kate Theirs’s archived tweet feed here: Day 1 and Day 2

There are many opportunities for those of you interested in international and/or health-related careers. If you find the right organization, you can apply a broad range of your talents and have a career that serves your passion for international relations and/or healthcare. Our next alumni on @PennCareerDay will highlight one of these career paths on Tuesday, October 19th and Tuesday, October 26th. These two days on @PennCareerDay are alongside a line-up of programs and events geared toward international opportunities. For more information on these events, click here if you’re an undergraduate or here if you are a graduate student. Read more below on Kate Thiers who will be posting for @PennCareerDay during these weeks, and don’t forget to follow to see what her day is like!

Kate Thiers (W ’00) is the Operations Manager for Africa Health Placements (www.ahp.org.za), a Johannesburg-based non-profit company that places foreign and local health workers in rural public hospitals in southern Africa. Since inception in 2005, AHP has placed over 1,750 doctors in southern Africa, over 900 of whom are foreign nationals. Kate’s team manages all finance, IT, HR, marketing, PR, website and orientation activities for all AHP offices, which include Johannesburg, Durban, Swaziland, Lesotho, the UK and the US.
Prior to moving to South Africa in November 2009, Kate was a Project Manager with Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics in London. There, she was a project administrator for a European-wide corporate merger project for one year and subsequently managed a new partnership initiative with National Health Service (NHS) hospitals for a second year. In the US, Kate worked as a project manager for a Johnson & Johnson pharmaceutical company and managed large-scale application and infrastructure initiatives. She also worked as a business consultant for two years with Andersen Business Consulting.

Kate has an MBA from the Said Business School at Oxford University in the UK and a Bachelor of Science in Economics (BSE) from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.