It’s great that you have a summer internship! Perhaps alittle spending money, something to put on your resume in the fall, a reason to avoid working around the house… but here are 6 things you should KNOW about your experience to gain the biggest advantage for yourself and your future:

     KNOW:

1.      Why your employer is (or is not) successful; what plans,goals, obstacles, challenges and opportunities lie in the near future and whether you agree or disagree with their forecast. 

2.      The roles and responsibilities of at least 5 other permanent employees of the organization. These could range from a department leader to the person who serves food in the cafeteria. Determine how their rolecontributes to the overall success of the business or mission.

3.      How each of these people feel about their role: Do they feelthat their efforts are appreciated, their ideas are considered, their contribution is of value and vital to the overall success of the mission orgoals?

KNOW:

4.      How your assignments will be evaluated by the employer- Will your projects have an impact on the overall success or is this just a reallylong job interview?  Are they letting you know how you are doing or just entertaining you (and themselves) sothat you will tell a good story when you go back to campus?

5.      Before you leave, know how this particular experience has confirmed or altered your perception of your “ideal first job” upon graduation.  Are you comfortable in the environment? Do you subscribe to the culture and values? You have a chance to “look under the hood” to see what others cannot by looking at the website or talking to a recruiter- take advantage of the opportunity to dig deep to find out what you like and what you don’t.

KNOW:

6.      You are substantially more qualified to determine your initial career path at the end of the summer than you were 3 months ago. You have had achance to see the insider’s perspective of an organization without having to sign-on to a permanent job.

Do not rush yourself into accepting an offer for a permanent position (if offered).  Take some time to reflect on your experience, evaluate your priorities and assess your options and opportunities.You are not a statistic to be crossed-off on some employer’s hiring offer sheet.  Do yourself a favor-

Enjoy the rest of your summer.

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A lot of college students go through school not knowing what companies are looking for in a prospective candidate (that's you!). Given this, students make key mistakes and don't pursue things that would be appealing to recruiters for college internships (involvement that would be personally fulfilling at the same time!). Opportunities are missed, and in the long run, students end up wondering why they don't get any attention from companies even though they may have done well in their academics. This can be a key missed step in how to find a job. 

I want to use this article to teach you the basics of what companies look for so that you can more strategically select the opportunities that will hopefully maximize return for you in the long run. 

I look at it this way: In college, you can get involved in just about anything you want, and most people do. If you're going to be actively a part of something, why not take a few extra steps and make it a useful addition to your resume and have it pay its dividends in your salary too? 

I am a recruiter for the company I work for, mainly recruiting Mechanical Engineers at the University of Michigan. The following is some insider information as to what we look for! There are three key things we are looking for in a candidate: 

1) Scholastics (GPA) 
2) Leadership 
3) Technical abilities (Job Experience) 

Scholastics should be important to everyone if you're at college. Otherwise, why are you there? We look for a minimum of a 2.7 GPA (on a 4.0 scale), although a lot of companies will look for a 3.0, 3.2, even a 3.5. The bottom line is that you absolutely need to keep your GPA up as high as possible. 

I helped myself out by doing a history minor, which was a breeze for me. My lowest history grade was an A-. This approach can help pad your GPA and make up for tough engineering classes that are hard to get an A in. 

Ultimately, there is nothing that can replace good old fashioned studying and learning. Everyone is different in how they learn, all I can really suggest here is to understand how you best learn, and to do it quickly and efficiently. 

If you have a bad grade in the middle of a semester, seek resources to improve it. Here are a few ideas that aren't rocket science (even though I was at one point a rocket scientist while I worked at NASA): -Go to your professor or Grad student during office hours, -Study with a friend -Get a Tutor -Go to the departmental learning center -Read the textbook -Go to class 

Listing classes on your resume can be helpful, but is not always necessary. In general, we look at your bottom line results: the Grade Point Average. At the end of the day, thats really what counts. So, as simple as it may sound, keep it as high as you can! 

Let's move on to Leadership. Any organization is going to have some type of leadership structure, managing board, etc. Get involved with this. That's the very best thing I can tell you to do. Get involved, elected, appointed, whatever. Once you do that, the rest will follow: hairy situations, confrontations, tough decisions, etc. How you respond to deal with these situations is what gives you your examples to share with recruiters and to put on your resume. 

As a recruiter, we look for people who have demonstrated that they are capable of handling the responsibility of leading an organization (generally the size is not important) to get quality results. The most basic way to show this is in the title of the office you hold. Being the president, vice president, treasurer, etc almost automatically shows a significant time commitment that you have put forth to help guide the organization. 

To me, Leadership and Initiative are hand in hand, and I don't think you can do one without the other. Having the initiative to get involved usually puts you in the position where you are a leader (or where can be if you want to). Leading almost always requires initiative. This dovetails into... how do you get yourself elected a leader if/when you just joined the organization and don't know the first thing about leadership? 

Initiative is the answer! You may not know the first thing about the organization and what the president of it does, but you darn well can start asking questions to find out. You can take the initiative to go to most of the events, to join committees, to be a fully active member, and to help out beyond what everyone else does. From my experience in Triangle Fraternity, if the current leadership is good, they will identify people who have high initiative, and will actively develop and groom them to lead the organization in the future. 

If the leadership is not really aware of this, you might need to take a little more initiative on your part by going to them to ask the President/VP/whatever: "I want your job. How can I get there?" Hopefully they will point you in the right direction. 

Expect it to take some time to get there too. You will need to learn the organization inside and out, and continually demonstrate your commitment to it. You will need to earn it. If it is that easy to attain, chances are the rewards won't be that great either. 

In sum, if you're going to be part of an organization for fun, why not add some value to your resume at the same time? Adding this extra effort will pay you dividends well worth the extra time spent with your friends doing activities you love with the organization you are proud to be a member of. 

Finally, we have Technical Abilities and Job Experience. 

The most significant thing we look for as a recruiter is the impact you have had in your job; impact to your immediate work-environment, impact to your customers, impact to your company, etc. The larger the impact, the better. We look for bottom line results: Dollars saved, revenue generated, processes improved by X%, happy customers, etc. Keep track of these!!! We also look at your technical abilities: Are you able to solve complex problems? How do you handle the responsibility of a larger project? 

That being the case, while you are working, you should be again applying the initiative card. Look for things that you can do within your role to expand your influence on a project... Can your results be leveraged to other areas of the company? Do you see an opportunity to help a customer? 

A lot of this is somewhat subjective to the opportunities you are given as an intern or co-op. Sometimes a company will sit you down and tell you that they have only one thing for you to do all summer. Some companies will put it on you to be proactive to find work within a department, as was the case for me working at NASA. 

Either way, I strongly recommend you have a chat with your supervisor and let him or her know that you expect them to challenge you, and that you plan on delivering quality results. It may take a few smaller projects to generate that trust to get assigned a larger more meaningful one, but having the conversation with them that you want to be given good opportunities will at the very least set the stage for you and potentially open doors that may not have been open before. 

Technical experience also comes from doing group project work in your classes, especially senior design projects. Keep these in mind and keep track of your contributions to these as well. If you are a leading force in solving a complicated technical issue in a project team (and trust me, there will always be a complex problem available for you), be sure to make note of it to help in your resume or an interview. 


Copyright (c) 2008 Robert Halgren

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Hiring and starting salaries overall are both up for the Class of 2008, according to a recent survey. It's a candidate's market, experts say, but the prospects are less optimistic for students aiming for jobs in the financial sector. 

By Marlene Prost

Despite a sagging economy, members of the Class of 2008 are being heavily recruited by U.S. companies getting ready to replace retiring baby boomers over the next 10years.

Job prospects for this year's college graduates are up 8 percent over last year,according to the JobOutlook 2008 Spring Update, released this week by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which monitors the college job market.

Technical fields, especially computer science and engineering, are the most promising professions for this year's grads. On the other hand, business and finance job opportunities have been knocked flat by the negative economy: Hiring is down 7percent in the financial sector, which includes banking, insurance and real estate.

No surprises here -- the economy was expected to affect new hiring, says EdwinKoc, NACE's director of strategic and foundation research. "Overall, theimpact [of the economic uncertainty] has been relatively small. ... It's a verygood time to be a college graduate. Demographics are very strongly in their favor."

The college-hiring picture looked even better last September, when employers told NACE they expected to hire 16 percent more college graduates this year. Many companies, in fact, did their college hiring last fall, and fewer than 1percent plan to rescind those job offers now.

This is the best college hiring market since the dot.com boom ended in 2001, says Mark Mehler of Career CrossXroads, a staffing strategy and consulting firm inKendall Park, N.J. "It's very good to be a college graduate this year. ...With the population shift, the baby boomers are starting to retire, and skilled workers are not as plentiful as in the past, so companies are ramping up college hiring. They're looking to their long term needs."

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of workers ages 55 and older is expected to increase by 50 percent in the next 10 years.

Companies are aggressively recruiting college-educated, Generation Y workers before the much-anticipated mass retirements of baby boomers. "Employers don't want to replace [them] with completely inexperienced workers. They want to build experience in the pipeline," Koc says.

"It's more of a candidate market than 2003-2004," concurs Lynne Sebille-White,senior assistant director of employer relations with The Career Center of theUniversity of Michigan. "Students have more options. [Top] students can bein demand; there is some competition between organizations that want to be the employer of choice."

Starting salaries for college grads reflect the high demand. The average starting salary for a 2008 graduate with a bachelor's degree went up 4 percent over the pastyear, according to NACE's winter Salary Survey.

Industries most interested in college graduates are engineering services, accounting firms, consultants, financial services, retail and petroleum productscompanies, according to NACE.

Not surprisingly, the highest salaries and biggest increases are commanded by grads with technical degrees.

The average job offer for computer science majors jumped 7.9 percent, from $52,738 to $56,336. Engineering majors in general had a 5.7 percent increase, for anaverage offer of $56,336; the biggest increase was for chemical engineers,whose job offers went up 6.2 percent, to $63,749.

Business administration and management majors have not fared as well: Their starting salaries rose less than 1 percent, to $43,823. The average job offer for accounting and finance majors went up only 1.9 percent, to $47,413 and $48,795 respectively.

Marketing majors, on the other hand, enjoyed an increase of 5.2 percent, with an average salary offer to $43,459. The average starting salary for liberal arts graduates in general was up 9 percent, to an average of $33,258.

"In general, the hiring outlook remains positive, and many seniors have already received job offers," says Marilyn Mackes, NACE's executive director.

For grads "just entering the job market, [they] will likely find fewer opportunities than originally anticipated," she says, noting that"graduates who were focused on particular industries, such as finance, may need to adjust their target industries."

The JobOutlook 2008 Spring Update is the last in a series of three surveys conducted in 2007-2008 byNACE, based in Bethlehem, Pa. A total of 214 employers participated in this survey: 47 percent in the service sector, 45 percent in manufacturing, and 9percent in government and nonprofits (the percentages do not add to 100 due to rounding). 


For more articles on the job market go to www.hreonline.com

March 25,2008

Copyright 2008© LRPPublications

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