Framing youth and inexperience as an advantage

Photo credit: meetadrianacasanova.com

Last week, I wrote a piece on Chelsea Krost’s blog about ways that millennials could gain professional experience for their first full-time job. This piece by Brian Hart, president of the PR firm Flackable, discusses how millennials could actually use their age and lack of experience to their advantage when they’re searching for jobs:

3 Ways Millennials Can Frame Youth And Inexperience As A Professional Advantage (chelseakrost.com)

One advantage that millennials have over older generations is their knowledge of technology and social media.

How to gain experience for your first job

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As a job seeker, I was often frustrated by the catch-22 that you need experience to get a job, but you need a job to get experience. But then I realized that you don’t necessarily need a job to get experience.

So I wrote a guest post on Chelsea Krost’s blog about alternative ways that young job seekers could get the experience they need for their first full-time job:

Top 6 Ways To Gain Experience Before Your First Job (chelseakrost.com)

Special thanks to Chelsea Krost for publishing this post. And I hope that if you’re searching for your first job, this post will help you become a more competitive candidate.

Job seekers: Be proactive!

Photo credit: jonesaudiology.com

I recently came across a video series on NYC Media about finding jobs. While I’m sure that each of the videos contains great information about the job hunt, I wanted to focus on the video that’s most relevant to me and other young professionals out there: Gen Y School to Career

This video features the executive director of NYU’s career center and a senior career advisor at Baruch College, as well as millennial workplace expert Lindsay Pollack: people who certainly know what they’re talking about when it comes to young adults and finding jobs.  

A creative way to get hired

Photo credit: cornonthejob.com

Two weeks ago, I wrote a post about a lawyer who quit her job through a creative departure memo. While there are creative ways to leave your job, there are also creative ways to land a job: take Braden Young, who used a social media campaign in 2010 to snag his dream job as a Sales and Marketing Manager at Krispy Kreme.

Young opened “Hire Me Krispy Kreme” Facebook and Twitter pages. He also created a cover letter with a standout design and links to his social media accounts. It only took Krispy Kreme four hours to contact him; three days later, Krispy Kreme interviewed him, and he ended up getting the job.

20something profile: Marissa

This post was written by Marissa, who is working on building a product distribution business in rural Haiti:

At 18 years old, if you asked me about my life plan, I’d straighten my back, I’d grow the already present smile, and I’d inform you, “I’m going to save the world as an international lawyer working at the international criminal court…or something like that.”

After a somewhat dramatic epiphany that law school was not for me, I set to finding a new way to honor the root of my desires: solving problems on an international scale.  It wasn’t pretty, and each step hasn’t flowed perfectly to the next, but my career thus far is a patchwork of some very cool experiences.

Gradberry teaches recent grads career skills

Photo credit: Gradberry

Do you feel that your college education hasn’t adequately prepared you for today’s job market? Then you might want to check out Gradberry, an online startup with a mission to train recent graduates in a variety of career skills, thereby making them more appealing to employers who are hiring:

Gradberry Aims To Bridge The College Grad Skills Gap (techcrunch.com)

Gradberry offers courses to recent graduates who need to learn a new skill for the jobs that they’re applying to. And Gradberry also assists recent graduates who’ve already been hired, as their employers can sponsor them to take courses through Gradberry if they need a new skill for their job:

Don’t badmouth your co-workers

Freddie Prinze Jr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Freddie Prinze, Jr., who you may know from She’s All That and Scooby Doo, has recently been in the press for badmouthing his former 24 co-star Kiefer Sutherland. Prinze called Sutherland “the most unprofessional dude in the world” and said that working with him almost made him quit Hollywood.

Prinze’s comments certainly didn’t help Sutherland’s reputation, but they also may have hurt Prinze by making him seem spiteful and opportunistic. This article discusses why that Prinze was wrong to complain about Sutherland and how job seekers could learn from this story when discussing their previous jobs:

Freddie Prinze, Jr. learns why you don’t say bad things about co-workers (cbsnews.com)

How to clean up your social media

Photo credit: Social Sweepster

Social media can be a great tool in your job search, but it can also damage your career if not used responsibly. In an earlier post, I discussed how a reporter got fired for writing a blog post that mocked her job. But even something as simple as a picture or a comment could cost you your job or prevent you from getting a job.

Even if you’re careful about what you place on social media, it’s possible that your friends could post photos that make you appear irresponsible or unprofessional. It’s also possible that you might’ve posted some vulgar or offensive comment a while ago that you forgot about but is still lingering somewhere on your page.

20something profile: Jef

This post was written by Jef, who is on the path to career success and taking others with him:

The year of your college graduation and what you studied

I am a young, ambitious and entrepreneurial 24-year-old from Sydney, Australia; yes, I do probably have a funny accent :). I graduated college, or university as we call it here down under, in 2011 with a degree in Bachelor of Business and Commerce. I majored in Human Resources and Organisational Development, sub majored in Accounting, and also a sub in Advanced Business Leadership (sounds fancy, right?).

This was from the University of Western Sydney; while it wasn’t the highest ranked university in Aus, I met some awesome people and enjoyed my time at the school.

20something profile: Laura

This post was written by Laura, who has a career in fashion:

Before I started my degree, I did not expect to have a career in fashion after my 4 years of study. Graduating in 2012, I studied English and Spanish in a university in Devon with the general idea of perhaps going into teaching or translating after the course. However, as more and more lectures wore on, the concept of carrying on these subjects post university started to seem undesirable.

Suddenly, I was faced with a rather large stretch of future with no clue how to fill it. Don’t get me wrong, I loved studying my subjects, but the slightly limited careers relating to them didn’t exactly set me alight. It didn’t occur to me at the time that my part time work in retail would ultimately be my foot in the door to a rather tricky industry.