Posts Tagged ‘Internships’

Wow. The career bloggers seem to have found their lightening rod in a post written by Toby Dayton on his blog Diggings. The post talks about how, according to the US Department of Labor, the average unemployed American spends 18 minutes per day looking for a job.

After reading the responses from G.L. Hoffman and Louise Fletcher, I thought it would be worthwhile dropping my two cents into the fray.

Just to play devil’s advocate, here are the legitimate circumstances where 18 minutes of daily job hunting is appropriate:

1. If you are independently wealthy and only looking for a job because you are bored.
2. Your parents have great connections and you are waiting for one to come through.
3. You are ignorant of what it takes to find a job (I’m agreeing with G.L. whole-heartedly on this one).

Time a short anecdote. When I graduated from school a few years back, I was averaging 8-hours per day on the job hunt. This was 2-3 hours of looking for open jobs, and 5-6 hours of writing customized resumes and cover letters for the positions I thought were a good fit. I was applying to 10+ jobs per day. At this rate, it still took 3 weeks before I started getting callbacks for interviews. (Note: The economy was much better back then).

If I looked for only 18 minutes each day, I would have been searching for months before I landed that job. This is far too little time to be spending on the job search.

While part of me hopes this statistic isn’t accurate, the other part hopes that it is, just because it means that there will be less competition for those who are truly worthy of work in this environment.

Agree? Disagree? Leave a comment below!

Careersthatdontsuck has a great article posted called 7 Reasons You Should Work For Free. I love this piece as I’m a big fan of taking internships or volunteer work as a way to gain experience and/or a foot in the door.

So I guess the answer is yes. If you can’t find work that pays, I would recommend trying to “work for free”, so to speak.

Anyway, among some of the best tips in the list (of reasons you should work for free):

Contacts – Even if you don’t land a job at the firm at which you intern/extern, you will gain contacts and referrals for jobs at other firms.

and…

Stay Sharp, Current – Being out of the job market for even a short time allows your skills to stale; interning or externing keeps your skills and contacts current.

It’s a great list. I encourage you to check it out.

In my recent post How To Handle A Layoff In Style, I wrote about Don Dodge. Don was a long time Microsoft employee who was recently given a layoff notice.

And what did Don do after being let go? Far from lashing out at Microsoft, Don had only glowing things to say on his blog about his former employer and colleagues. In my eyes, it was the perfect way to handle the sudden loss of your job. No angry outbursts, no burned bridges, just a simple farewell.

So when I recently read Google scoops up ex-Microsoftie Don Dodge, I was thrilled. It just goes to show that you can quickly land on your feet after a layoff, so long as you don’t burn your bridges (especially in public).

Now Don can look forward to a new career at Google.

Congrats Don! Well done!

Happy February Everyone!

It’s time for the monthly roundup where I provide a look back at some of the best posts that January 2009 had to offer:

1. How to sabotage your job search
2. Why network?
3. Resumes vs Cover Letters
4. Best. Job. Ever.
5. Job Hunting 2.0
6. Obama and your job search
7. Confessions from HR
8. You need to read this (because I made this mistake)
9. Best Companies for New Grads to Work for (2009 Edition)

Enjoy!