University Jobs » Dream Job

Done School? Get the Experience You Need to Land Your Dream Job

admin — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:08:32 +0000

If you have recently completed an academic program at college or university, it can be difficult to translate your academic work into the skills and experience needed to land your dream job. Many academic programs, especially those in the arts and humanities, do not traditionally include experience based training and employment skills development. This leads to the classic post-graduation dilemma. You can’t get the job you want without experience. You can’t get the experience you need without the job.

In order to get the experience and skills required to land your dream job, you need to become employment ready. The first step is to learn what experience and skills are needed to succeed in your dream job. Next, determine whether an internship or volunteer position will help you land that job. If you need additional certification or qualifications, or can’t find the right internship or volunteer position, look for an experience based educational program that will give you the experience and skills you need. It is common for college and university graduates to obtain practical, skill based education. Invest in yourself and what you offer to potential employers.

Evaluating Your Options

The best experiential learning opportunities are found outside of traditional academia. Private colleges and technical institutions offer many attractive experience based programs that promise employment readiness. The best programs often include strong practicum and industry support for students and new graduates.

Try to find a program that minimizes overlap with your previous education. Look for programs that give you concrete skills and experience. Take the time to review the potential curriculum. Make sure that you will be investing in building new employable skills, rather than rehashing old academic experiences. This is especially important if you are considering a program at a technical institute, as many students enter technical programs out of high school and require some amount of academic polish to accompany their experiential training. Research your options and ask tough questions. This will save time and money in the long run.

A final consideration is opportunity cost. Unfortunately, the old adage is true. Time is money. If you can finish a program in one year instead of two, you will be able to start building your career and collecting a pay check sooner. Look for programs that allow you to study year round. Look at the number of in-class and direct instruction hours. Ask how the program you are considering gives you the skills you need to succeed. Keep employability in mind. Try to look at potential programs from the view point of potential employers.

What Should You Look For?

What is experience and skill based education? Rhodes Wellness College, an industry leading coaching, counseling and wellness college, is a great example. It is a pioneer in experiential education. Students build critical coaching, counseling and wellness skills by applying the tools and theories they learn to themselves and others. Students become great coaches and counselors by engaging in hands-on training. Students with diverse backgrounds coach and counsel each other, helping other students while other students help them. This unique process builds skills, experience and confidence. It also leads to tremendous personal growth. Students learn how to succeed personally and professionally.

Rhodes Wellness College also maintains relationships with employers and continually updates curriculum and teaching methods so that graduates are employment ready from day one. All of their diploma programs include an applied practicum, utilizing a strong network of employers within the coaching, counseling and wellness fields. All of this translates into post-graduation employment rates consistently higher than 80%, and at times greater than 95%.

Best of Both Worlds

The great news is that students and new graduates that have a traditional academic education, as well as industry specific skills and experience, are highly valued by employers. They offer the best of both worlds. By consciously investing and building your own skill set and experience, you will land the job of your dreams and succeed!

By: Neil Mangan

Job Searching Online – Best Way To Grab Your Dream Job

admin — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 14:24:35 +0000

Scouring the local papers for best job choices is something your older siblings may have done while visiting the consultancy went out with your parent’s outdated music sense, so welcome the new-age online job hunting facilities for your self – and grab the best of the Internet’s endless range and reach! Who knows – your dream job may be in virtual space itself – just a click away, so why not begin today?

We bring you tips and hints on landing the perfect job of your choice and how to do it safely, conveniently and in the comfort of your home: all you need is basic qualifications to hunt for a particular job, a PC and internet connectivity and of course, the time and patience to search these online. There is really no dearth of job portals and websites advertising thousands of jobs online from various local business chapters (in your town or city) to national and even international job postings, so you have endless variety at your disposal and no dearth of choices when it comes to deciding on a field of work – all thanks to the internet and how its brought the world closer!

No more scanning and circling the classified ads section in your local paper and building up paper trash in the home or having someone cut out a recipe or comic strip out of the section you’d marked out to apply: now with a click of the mouse and entering the top keyword phrases in the fast search engines on the net, you can get instant access to the best job portals in your country and even international job openings! Isn’t that a great advantage of technology and changing job hunting environments? No scouring newspapers, visiting consultancies, walking around job fairs at exhibition grounds simply to gain access to the hottest, best-paying and advanced job opportunities – all you need to do is register online (free and paid sites exist, so choose the kind that suits you) with some personal particulars, like academic qualifications, interest areas, personality traits or perhaps an online query form for some jobs –and voila! You’re there!

From working within your state to going out of the country for a special assignment (ideal for those that love traveling and visiting new places, cultures and picking up new skills on the job), you can choose jobs offering different scope of growth and roles when hunting online, so get there and start clicking!

You may initially feel hesitant about parting with personal information like your name, age, address and contact number or even social security number that job site forms ask you for, but verify the authenticity of the job portal and fill these in for their records, which are confidential and used to contact you and for company records (of those looking to hire) besides your educational background and any employment highlights that may impress potential employers – and you can rest assured of receiving good job offers every week or month from the job websites.

By: Abhishek Agarwal

Dreams Come True – Especially A Dream Job

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:19:17 +0000

There are a lot of people out there who dream, but only a few are willing to work on their dreams and make them come true. If you want to land your dream job then you may have to make short-term sacrifices. And boy, will it be worth it!

What To Dream

For example, maybe you are a janitor and you dream of becoming the president of the bank. It’s going to be a step-by-step process, moving towards your goal. So,if you want to land your dream job then you must use your money wisely and get the education and training you will need to achieve this prestigious goal.

You work to save the money that you earn from being a janitor and invest it in your business education – you are on the first step of your dream – so, celebrate, many people don’t even start!

Be In The Right Place

Whilst you are getting that business education, you can apply for a lesser position in the company where your dream job exists. When you are in that lesser position in the right company doing a great job will then provide you with opportunities to make your moves over time.

And at some point in time, you will become the vice president of the company and then eventually you will become the president. What you just did is land your dream job. This is your dream and you wanted it to happen and you planned your course of action and you worked on it. Focused action towards a real and possible goal.

You have to make sure that you will put in the necessary effort to make things happen in a deliberate and focused way with all your attention and effort. Then, anything is possible, because everyone started at the bottom once.

Dreams Come True – Only If You Work At Them!

You can not simply sit and expect to land your dream job out of nowhere. If you want your dream to happen then you have to work hard at it. You have to make sure that you are covering all the necessary requirements to make your dream a reality.

If you are a teaching assistant in the university, who wants more, then you must seek a level higher education that helps you on your way to becoming the Dean. You also have to deliver the teaching hours requirement if you want to go up the university ladder.

Studying hard, putting the hours in all along a planned path will get you there. Many people don’t do this and fall by the wayside with complaints of unfairness and other excuses. Good luck and fortune often comes to those who put the effort in, so that at the end of the day, you will be able to be successful enough to land your dream job once and for all.

Put In The Dream Job Effort

It’s about working hard and making sacrifices – yet you don’t have to kill yourself. Work smart too. By focusing your actions and leveraging your time and resourcefulness, you can take shortcuts.

A dream job is accessible to everyone. A job where you love getting up each morning to face the great challenges of your working day. A day where you will feel fulfilled and you will truly be a round peg in a round hole and not the other way round.

The time is yours, the time is now. What are you waiting for?

By: Martin Haworth

Graduate Career Advice – Preparing For the University – Job Transition

admin — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 06:36:05 +0000

Even if you’re still engaged in studies and haven’t thought much about searching for a job after university, it’s never too soon to seek out graduate career advice. It can provide a wealth of information about potential employment opportunities and help you steer your final year of school in the right direction, and give your education a real world focus that it may not have had up until now.

Why Do I Need Graduate Career Advice?

Graduate career advice helps you formulate a clear, objective assessment of your career options and provides assistance and direction so you can reach your goals. Most graduate career advice centres offer a range of options to help you develop and achieve your professional goals. If you seek graduate career advice while you’re still in university, you will learn how to make the most of your degree, and you’ll have time to acquire the additional knowledge and skills that will help you land that dream job.

While graduate career advice services may differ in their specific offerings, below are some of the key services usually offered under graduate career advice.

Personality/Aptitude Tests

Graduate career advisors often provide free and confidential psychometric tests to assess candidates’ aptitudes and interests. These tests typically identify your strengths and help you focus on making appropriate career choices. Personality tests can reveal your preferred communication style and key motivators, which in turn can provide pointers toward the career that suits you best.

Career Guidance

Graduate career advice is often centred on helping you explore a range of fields and job types so you can better understand your options. Not only do you get graduate career advice about specific industries, but you’ll also get typical job profiles and practical information on what it’s like to work in a particular field. Some services will also provide you with contact information for experts in the field you are interested in so those experts can give you graduate career advice from a real world perspective.

Application Assistance

Graduate career advice services can help you when preparing applications for part-time jobs and, internships, as well as full-time job placements. Most graduate career advice centres can provide direction on how to identify job listings that are right for you and help you follow up with applications. More specifically, a graduate career advice service can help you interpret the finer points of a job advertisement or description, answer questions on application forms, and ensure that your application package is complete and professional.

Interviewing Tips

A key benefit of getting graduate career advice is that it prepares you to face tough interview situations. Working with experts at a graduate career advice centre before that all-important interview means you’ll be ready to impress the recruiter / potential employer with your skills, knowledge, and presentation abilities. Graduate career The advice will helps you focus on your core strengths in a positive, professional manner and can also include coaching on how to handle potentially stressful telephone interviews.

How to Write a CV

Graduate career advice sometimes includes CV writing assistance to ensure your CV is in line with your career objectives. Most graduate career advice careers services recommend that those who are job searching maintain a dynamic, online CV like an iProfile, which enables you to easily tailor your CV template to a specific job and gets you noticed by thousands of recruiters and employers throughout the UK. It’s a good idea to have ask your graduate career advice service them to review your CV before you distribute it, which could give you an edge over other candidates.

In summary, graduate career advice can make the difference between a lengthy and unproductive job search and securing a coveted position in the field of your choice. Besides providing a wealth of information on the career planning process, graduate career advisors can introduce you to experts and professionals in your area of interest.

Growing Debts Affect University Students

admin — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 22:59:45 +0000

It’s well known that people who choose to go to university will likely have accepted that they’re going to come out the other end of the four years studying with a debt thanks to student loans covering housing, tuition fees, books and the occasional crazy night out on the town.

Chances are anyone who you talk to who’s been to university will be still paying off their student debts to this day, and these people are well into their thirties too!

This is the price they pay in order to hopefully get a higher paying job once it has all finished. Many students will go on to getting a high flying job and may even be able to pay the majority of their loan off within a few years but with the recent credit crunch many would be students are not going to be able to afford the expense of university, or at least their parents won’t be.

The Association of Investment Companies (AIC) has recently conducted a survey amongst parents and a massive 78 percent believe the credit crunch is going to seriously affect the ability to fund their children’s education. The same survey predicts that in the future many students will leave university with debts of up to £20,000 tied round their necks.

These students are now thinking more along the lines of getting a high paying job rather than their dream job in order to pay back the debts they have to student loan companies and banks. Nearly a quarter of graduating students believe they’ll be saddled with their debt problems for fifteen years which may start discouraging some young adults from investing in their future with a university degree.

Whilst state issued student loans (from the SLC Student Loans Company) do not require repayments to commence until after the graduate starts earning over £15,000 in the UK there are still other types of debt that may have been racked up such as credit card debts since many banks used to have a habit of preying upon the penniless student to take out new credit cards.

Whilst it can put people off there are so much more good reasons to go to university and luckily these days there are plenty of debt solutions available as well as attractive rates on student loans which understand that the student may struggle with repayments.

By: Andy Adams