In College? Visit you Career Center

August 19, 2011 under Articles
NEW YORK - JUNE 24: A job seeker works the ph...

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Though it’s easy to get distracted from this amongst all the frivolity, the primary goal of college is to prepare students for their careers, i.e. move out of their parents’ house, which is the only reason parents pay for their kids to go to college in the first place (I kid). That’s why it’s surprising, but common, that the career services office is typically an underutilized service on college campuses. They provide basic services — or extensive if you wish — career guidance and placement services for students, services that are only available to current students and will be immensely helpful upon leaving school.

Counselors at your college career center can help you choose a first job and career path that’s right for you. They use self assessment tests to determine your personality, interests, motivations and abilities and help you decide on an major of study designed to meet your career goals. It’s a good idea to see combine and coordinate the advice of both your academic and career counselors, if they’re not the same person.

The college career center will also help you research various occupations for when you get your degree. Counselors will provide resources to find information and organizational contacts. Career services centers have libraries full of career and job-related information. They will also maintain connections with staff and alumni who are willing to discuss their career paths and experiences with students.

They will also help you with the job hunt; advising you on your resume and cover letter, suggest internships during summers that will pay-off later, and even, in some cases, provide job placement services. The dividends are endless.

College career centers are a valuable asset to college students, and they are helpful at every academic stage. Explore your college career center at the first opportunity and take advantage of the powerful resources available you as a college student.

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Job Outlook Better for College Grads

June 17, 2011 under Articles
Servicemembers participate in the first colleg...

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It’s always reassuring to hear good news about the job market. The Great Recession has been tough to pull through, and we are still in the final stages of making our way out. Cities like Detroit might never fully recover from the fall of the auto industry, and high unemployment rates have affected people all over the country.

But things are looking better. Unemployment rates are falling, companies are starting to hire again, and we are almost at the point where we are not dreading a pink slip or closed doors every time we go in to work.

College graduates can begin feeling a little better about spending the last four years and thousands of dollars in school. A recent article by the New York Times reported that employers are hiring 19% more college graduates than last year.

Graduating from college is tough. Not just because it requires hours of cramming for tests, late nights, early hours and lots of stress. But also because once college is over, you are now forced into the real world, where bills need to be paid and food needs to be put on the table. Coming from the university into an uncertain job market can be disconcerting and can almost make you want to never leave school. Unless you’ve got Mommy and Daddy paying all your bills, if you can’t make it out there, you just might end up on the street.

So to hear that statistics for employment upon graduation are improving as we are pulling out of the recession is wonderful news. Especially when compared to last year’s numbers that showed 95% of graduates with bachelor’s degrees either getting jobs or continuing their education. An improvement on 95% is almost an A+.

Average starting salaries for graduates are rising as well. This depends upon your field of study, but overall, college grads are getting paid more fresh out of school than they have been in recent years. The demand and pay are even better for those who studied finance, accounting, information technology and engineering.

Of course every silver lining has a touch of grey (to quote the great words of Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter). Some fields do not fare so well. Government hiring has gone down 25%, so those looking for work in the public sector might be having a tough time. Teaching jobs are also hard to come by, with schools still cutting back on the “unnecessary” courses like music and art.

Things may be getting better in some areas, but overall it still seems like a struggle out there. Inflation keeps going up, but there are still plenty of folk who have been earning $10 an hour for the past decade with no raise. Gas is another story in itself. When will it end? $5.00? Or will the prices just keep going up until the majority cannot afford to drive anymore? What then?

It’s too soon to say that college grads have one less thing to worry about, but at least they don’t have to worry quite as much as they did a few years ago.

 

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Forget College – Get Paid to Take Your Ideas to the Next Level

June 13, 2011 under Articles
Mark Zuckerberg at South by Southwest in 2008.

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The importance of going to college has been ingrained in our brains starting at a very young age. From elementary school (and maybe even earlier) we are taught that you go through years of schooling, finish up high school with good grades and move on the next step; a college education. But is this always the right answer for everybody?

San Francisco technology tycoon suggests that maybe it’s not. In a recent interview with Thiel on Nightline, he outlined his plans for “20 under 20″, a fellowship that would grant two dozen kids age 20 or under $100,000 to skip college and instead develop their innovative ideas over the next two years.

Thiel believes that in doing so, he will prevent the stagnation of revolutionary new concepts and help young entrepreneurs to not waste their time in school. If the idea and the knowledge is already there, what more will they learn in college? After four years of cramming for exams and playing countless games of beer pong, their fresh ideas might be all but washed away or drowned in a pile of unpaid student loans.

By keeping these kids from spending four years at a university, Thiel believes that he will help to progress our nation that already places too much stress on high-schoolers to seek advanced education. Not every high school kid is a genius with entrepreneurial ideas ready to go, but some can really benefit from these scholarships and so can the rest of us in four years less time. The two dozen have been given a unique opportunity to bring their innovative concepts straight to the real world.

Peter Thiel is no stranger to technology or investing in young minds. After graduating from Stanford Law School, Thiel became the co-founder of PayPal. The online payment service system continues to make him millions and led him to be the first major investor in Facebook.

A $500,000 investment Thiel made in Mark Zuckerberg’s social media empire years ago is now worth billions. Zuckerberg is in fact a dropout from Harvard, a choice he made to pursue his entrepreneurial dreams. That decision has obviously benefited him greatly, as the world is now pretty much run by Facebook.

Just as Thiel saw potential in the young, bright mind of Mark Zuckerberg, he sees promise in his investment to the 24 lucky ones who don’t have to go to college. $2.4 million is most likely just a drop in the bucket for Thiel, but for young kids fresh out of high school, $100,000 opens up a world of opportunity.

That’s not to say that everyone should skip college, but the stress and importance that is put on a university education should be lessened quite a bit. Most kids don’t even know what they want to study when they start their freshman year. A lot of them just want to be done with school. Some students might just benefit from taking a year off, toughing it out in the real world for a little bit and figuring out what they really want to do with their lives.

But if you are one of those young prodigies with the next big idea that could make a monumental impact on the world, hit up Peter Thiel. He might have $100,000 with your name on it…

 

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