For those of you in college and approaching the end of it, it might be a good idea to think strategically about your courses not just in terms of completing your degree and in terms of your college GPA. Every course you take during and even after college (you can sign up to take a course at a local college, even after you have a degree) has the potential to enhance your skill set and your resume.

Think about which courses to take in terms of how you might benefit among these four lines:

1) Finding out where your interests lie- For example, you might be a business major and notice that a lot of business majors go into the hotel industry and want to see if that's a good thing to do with your degree, so you take a tourism management course with your elective.

2) Finding out where your skills lie- For example, you might want to use your English degree to work for a newspaper, but aren't sure whether you can cut it in that environment, so you enroll in a newspaper course that challenges you before you risk going out there and failing in an actual real-world setting.

3) Providing additional coursework to be able to put on your CV (curriculum vitae)- I graduated with a degree in geography, for example, and I knew that my GIS coursework was not comparable to many people with geography degrees in my field, so I used an elective on a GIS-specific course

4) Insuring a safeguard against your major not working well for you in the job market-If you picked a major like history and discovered as graduation was approaching that it might not be the most practical major in terms of being successful in the job market, for example, using whatever electives you might have to enhance your other skills. For instance, if you've studied a lot of Latin American history and have studied abroad in Latin America, one could take their electives and pick up a couple extra higher- level Spanish courses since that's a very workable skill.

These four goals tend to overlap with each other as well: Any course you take has the potential to make your resume look better, get you closer to finding your career path, spread out your skill set, and help you solidify your talents.

QUANTIFY YOUR SKILL SETS ON YOUR RESUME

by Sheeba Riyas

Before you send out a resume, take a good look at it and ask two questions:

1)      Does it reflect who you are or is it a distorted version?

2)      Does it have the ability to impress potential employers?

Although if your skill sets fails to match the job profile, you would not qualify for an interview, this doesn't mean that you should provide false information in order to qualify for a position. Instead, focus on displaying the appropriate skills sets in a strategic fashion on your resume so that it would get the employer's attention.

If you have participated in certain competitions or extra curricular activities which require skills that match the job profile, during your academic years; including them in your resume would be highly recommended. Similarly, do not mention skills which are not related to the job profile. It is unlikely that a software company would be interested in the pizza eating competition you won in college! In regards to your working experience, ensure that you specify the responsibilities you had when you were with the previous company, along with accomplishments and appraisals must also be mentioned.

Your resume must contain concise and specific information. It should not take more than a minute for someone to go through the entire resume for most employers would not have the time to read pages of curriculum vitae and would prefer to gather sufficient details about the applicant at just a glance.

If you must mention your personal interests or hobbies, believing that they would add value to your personality and potentials; do so in a very brief manner.

At times, an employer would be looking for additional skills in a candidate but may not mention it in the advertisement. A graphics designer who can also handle some basic programming has a better chance of fitting into the job profile than someone who has no additional skills. So, if you have acquired some additional skills that relate to the job profile, it is wise to mention them in your resume, as it would be an added advantage.

Before you begin to create or update your resume, analyze your potentials and skills and create a list. Match the skill sets with the job profile and then include them in your resume appropriately. A resume should reflect you. The resulting image should have clarity, compatibility and facts, as that reaches your interviewer's desk first.

Joining uboast (which hopefully you already have done) or a similar website where you might post a profile that might attract employers iIs a good idea, because it could save you the trouble of having to individually seek out each individual employer. Let's admit the often-overlooked fact that the part of the job search that involves seeking out all those employers and applying to each of them can be incredibly time-consuming.

At the same time, let's cautiously admit that the odds of someone seeking us out before we seek them out is often unlikely. Do not make the mistake of thinking that employers will contact you if you put up a profile up that you're not excused from actively seeking out jobs if you want a job.

Still, here are some strategies for making a profile most visible to employees:

1. Remember that this is a totally different ballgame than sending a resume to a single employer. You're not going to modify your resume to tailor to a single employer. You're trying to attract anyone and everyone who might give you a job. Therefore, it's definitely ok, if this thing runs longer than a page......

2. Emphasize as many skill sets as you can on your resume and if the jobsite (like uboast) has a place where you list your skill sets, list as many as you can there. If you get contacted with a job opportunity you do not like, you could always reject it, but you definitely want them to contact you first. It's important to be in the driver's seat. At the same time....

3. Don't come off as too obvious that you're trying to stretch yourself. Job search websites are aware that candidates always want to try to come off as broad as possible so they can attract the most clients and it's not in the interst of employers using the site to have to wade through every person's resume who has a grasp of microsoft office when they're looking for a hard-care computer expert. For this reason, job search websites, might limit you to 3 or 5 skill sets. If you try to pass yourself off as someone skilled to work in the field of IT simply because you've used excel, it won't look good. 

4. Ideally you want to show that you've followed a career trajectory and have honed your talent over time through a variety of different experiences. If you want to be a teacher, mention that you've worked in summer camps too as a teenager, even if you might not put that on some resumes. This way people can see you've had a number of years or experince in the field. If you want to work in the energy sector and you didn't have a degree in it (not many colleges offer a degree in it), but you took a class or two on it in college, mention that in as well.

5. Drop specifics. If you worked for someone that might be well-known around the industry mention that as well. I once had a job in Americorps, for example. In Americorps, I was contracted out to the Fairfax County Department of Community and Recreation Services and the Northern Viriginia Technology Council singed my paychecks, so I had 3 bosses. It's always difficult to include all of the organizations I was affiliated with in one line of a resume, but it's beneficial to drop all three organizations in case each of those intrigues someone.

-Orrin Konheim (who now has a loose profile on uboast if someone should wish to contact him)

If you're a new graduate with no idea of what type of job you want, don't worry. You're not alone. For some new grads, making a decision about the job you want can be as hard as actually getting the job.

Here are some tips to getting ideas about where to start your career:

-Conduct a quick job search using your degree as a keyword in your search. For example, search for the keyword journalism in job postings. From this search, you'll be able to get an idea of the job types and titles that are out there. Remember to consider all aspects of a job: the hours, the location, the experience required, the pay, and the company or organization. There are probably many jobs you might not have known about that relate to your field as well. An alumni board for your collegiate academic department is a great place to consult.

-When conducting a job search, I also recommend checking out companies that are close to where you live. Sometimes, walking or driving through neighboring towns can help you identify what companies are around you. Visiting the careers sections of these companies' websites can reveal jobs that might not be listed on job websites. The easiest jobs to land are the ones that aren't heavily advertised so you have less competition. These are hidden gems.

-Remember to be realistic in what jobs you would consider. Don't list jobs that require five to 10 years of experience. Instead, focus on jobs that you can actually land in the meantime. Do not expend too many resources aiming too high.

-Think long and hard about what interests you. Conventional wisdom, obviously, is that you had a major and that's what interests you, but get more specific. Which classes within the major did you like the best? Which classes outside the major did you like the best. Take out your old textbooks and read through some of them to get a feel if these are topics that you'd like spending your days being reimmersed in. Out of whatever experience you had in a classroom, job, or extracurricular activity, what did you like the best about it. Did you like writing papers? Interacting with people? Doing research about topics that interested you?

-Think who you might want to work with? The term "networking" is thrown around a lot, and by that, we mean that personal contacts do help land jobs far easier than if you're just dealing directly with human resources, but networking is also about finding who you like working with. To some degree, just as we chose certain groups of people in college, high school, and summer camp to associate with, that tends to happen in work places. I know people who get into journalism because they like the adrenaline of the newsroom, for example. In a newsroom, operations center, or think tank people are working in synergy with each other. At the same time, there is are high-pressure environments that some people like to thrive on, such as sales departments, where people are in competition with each other. In addition, just as a prospective college student must decide between  whether they like the atmosphere of a more personal small school or a large school that might have more resources to offer, the same choice is made with what kind of office environment you might want.

OK, got all that? Now here's what comes next: Matching what you want to do with what you have the skills to do.

This will come in the next post.

By Michael J. Smith

Someone once told me that when you're conducting an active job search you should be sending out three to five resumes per day. While that number may seem a little high, you should certainly be applying for at least one job per day.

Depending on the length of your job search, that could be a lot of resumes. If memory serves me correctly, I believe I sent out more than 30 resumes as my college graduation approached.

Considering the importance of finding a job, I strongly recommend keeping track of all of the cover letters and resumes you send, as well as all correspondence you send and receive. Being organized can keep you from making a huge blunder during the interview process.

Create a folder on your computer that will hold all of your job search documents. I call mine Job Hunting. Granted, mine will probably be a little different than yours, the concepts should be the same.

For me, inside this Job Hunting folder, I have several subfolders, to even further keep track of things. My subfolders include: Cover Letters, Resumes, Reference List, Salary History, and Thank You Letters.

By Michael J. Smith

Most new graduates should put a lot of time, effort and thought into their resumes. For those who do, and do it correctly, it's obvious for employers. And, in some cases, that can be the difference between your resume being read or thrown out.

And, as you know, you can't be considered for a position if your resume is not read.

To ensure that your resume is read, make sure that you present yourself professionally. I should be able to glance at your resume and tell, by the formatting, if it is something I want to read. Formatting and presentation can be as important as the information on the resume.

With the visual presentation of your resume influencing my first impression, it should be as professional as possible, which means no typos and no strange formatting.