Semester over - Job Begins

What a difference 24 hours can make. Yesterday, I delivered the last paper and presentation of the semester. What a relief.

Even though I am so motivated and focused to finish my masters program, it just feels great to go off to work this morning knowing that there won’t be any academic obligations weighing me down (until summer session starts up in July). In fact, I think that at the end of the day, I might just come home, cook dinner for my family (a first in months) and maybe hang out and watch Glee! (is it on tonight?)

So today, I can go to work (what a FABULOUS thing to be able to say), and know that when I come home, I can just come home. When I leave at 5 or 5:30, I won’t be rushing off to a paper, or 6 chapters of mind numbing theory reading, or messing with power point to get the music perfectly synched with my slides, or wondering if I had researched deeply enough, or, or, or.

Of course there are always other worries to put on my list, - like, will my job be re-funded in July, am I up for the challenge, can I handle an office with no window, etc. etc. and so on…..but today – I am just going to focus on one thing. My new sparkly shiny job!

First Week on the Job

I am in my first week as a Student Development Associate at a community college. I am involved with recruiting and reviewing admissions applications for educationally and financially disadvantaged students into a scholarship opportunity program.

Settling into my office is slow. My position is temporary through June, so I do not want to get too comfortable (although I am dying to set it up with pictures, a stash of bottled water, hang my favorite quilt on the wall, find the perfect inspirational quote for my desk, etc). It took a few days to hook up with the tech department and get my log ins all squared away.

I have met some people in my department, but I still have many folks to get to know. That's for next week.

Being the new kid in the office is fun, exciting and a little nerve wracking. I am old enough to know its okay to ask dumb questions. That's how you get un-dumb! And I'm also smart enough to get to know the folks around me and make those connections. But when the new job jitters act up, I do my breathing exercises and think about my kids. That always calms me down. Plus, I have only met fabulous people.

On our visits to the high schools, I have met with some very promising students. And that is very exciting to know I can be a part of lending them a hand as they reach toward their dreams. But, some of their stories break my heart. Yesterday, it was a sweet, bright, red head who is living with her grandparents. Youth Services removed her from her parents' home. Yet she remains hopeful about her life and has learned to over come a lot for having lived so short a time on this planet. When we meet with the high school seniors, they are smart, they are nervous, and they are hopeful. There have been some very happy experiences and I feel privileged to be in their company.

Today was difficult. We met with two students who live in the heart of darkness. Tough neighborhood. Tough personal and emotional issues. Somehow, they have kept themselves focused on their dreams and stayed out of trouble. But when I reviewed their transcripts, my heart sank. Terrible grades. As I walked to the parking lot, I realized that was a pivotal moment for those two young men. They had the dreams. They had the will. They still had hope in their eyes and sweet friendly smiles. But they did not have the grades and they did not have the financial resources.

I got in my car, drove away, and had my first good cry. When I got back to the office, I bucked up my reserve and decided I was going to have to find a way to care without letting it kill me.

The Gift of Student Affairs Interviews

So – for the last two weeks, I have been interviewing. Interviewing for jobs for pay, and interviewing for Internships that would fulfill my MSEd Student Affairs and College Counseling program requirements.

It is an exhausting process. All you job hunters know that. You have to get pumped up to sell yourself. You have to research and prepare. You have to figure out what to wear. You have to put your eyes and ears on steroids and focus, listen, learn, and get a sense of the culture, the personalities, the karma, and the office vibes. If you don’t have a GPS, and you are as directionally challenged as I am, you have to leave a good half hour for getting lost.

During the interview, you have one hour to collect enough data to decide, do I belong here?

After the interview, you process the experience on different levels. I find myself spending more time thinking about the second person in the room who said very little. The few questions she asked were incredibly focused. She also had the opportunity to sit back and observe me as I was engaged with the Director who was asking most of the questions. I’ll just bet she got a really good read on me.

This is my encore career and I want to make it count. I want to be happy, challenged, and find people and students to work with that light my fire. And I’m no dope. I know there will be good days and bad days. No matter where I land. But I want to make sure it’s at a place where it is okay to have bad day. And the folks around me will help each other out.

So guess what? Interviewing for Student Affairs positions is a gift. The self selection process means that on the whole, the people you meet on this interviewing gig are remarkable. Sensational. Amazing. They are helpers and problem solvers. They have been trained to leave their ego at the door….or to leverage it for the common good. They want to help students and they want to help their institutions. They are believers and they are excited about what they do.

My take away from this process has been the opportunity to meet many wonderful people. To all you fellow job hunters out there, what are your take aways?

Encore Careers

I am preparing my next post, based on my untethered excitement on a freshly minted book, The Big Shift: Navigating The New Stage Beyond Midlife , written by Marc Freedman.

I have not finished the book, but I have highlighted roughly 95% of what I have read so far.

The basic premise is this: we are living longer and we are living healthier. The boomers are experiencing/defining/marketing a new age category, as yet to be named. We are at or past mid life, and we still have miles to go before our children decide its time to relinquish our drivers’ licenses.

Baby boomers have defined new trends throughout their lives from the 60’s social revolution on forward. This group has consistently displayed willingness to reflect upon the meaning and value of their lives and initiate changes.

There is potential here for all types of higher education institutions to serve this interesting, inspiring, and growing trend. And in fact, several already have.

I am eager to jump into this conversation, but need to finish the book first. I’ll be back.

The Job interview invitation!

It’s been a long winter in New Jersey. Lots of snow, lots of work. I have been interning several hours per week, working in Real Estate to pay the rent, and going to graduate school at night. I am lucky. My husband does the laundry and the grocery shopping and he and the kids cheer me on when I question my efforts.

But every morning, the first thing I ask myself is “how am I going to get everything that needs to get done today?” I am tired. Reading the headlines from the Chronicle or CNN doesn’t help. Gloom and doom. Will I get a job? Will someone hire a mid-life career changer? With wrinkles? Is this investment in time, money, and loss of living a normal life worth it? All my mid life friends are busy socializing. I am too busy with Power Point. Doubt haunts me at inopportune hours, wee in the night.

But today, Joy snuck up from behind and gave me a desperately needed shot in the arm.

If I played the lottery, I’d play the number 41111, today’s date. I would play it because today was a three star date for this mid-life career changer. As a mom, I was thrilled by my 16 year old daughter’s great news. She got accepted into a summer program she has been obsessed by. Witnessing her joy was a gift. She navigated the entire admissions process on her own and did herself proud. Made my heart squeeze with happiness!

An hour later, my cell phone rang, and it was an invitation to interview for a job I had applied to! Even though I have 18 credits to go in my graduate program, my internship supervisor, the Dean at the Center for Student Success, suggested that I start sending my resume out now. I am so glad I took her advice. The position is temporary (just for the summer) but it is in my area of choice as an educational counselor working with Educational Opportunity Fund students, (a NJ program with amazing support for low income college students.)

If I am lucky enough to get the position, you will hear my shouts of joy across the land. If I don’t get the job, it will be a great start. To get the phone call, validating my choice to go to grad school is fuel enough for today. And tomorrow. And hopefully enough to get me through the semester and beyond.

The third star? I logged into my email, and found an invitation for a telephone interview for an internship position for next fall. I applied three weeks ago, and had just about given up hope. It is with a wonderful college and is my absolute first choice. I am jumping around all over the house!

Joy, joy, pure joy. Hard work does reward. Developing great references pays off. Joining professional associations and volunteering for them makes a contribution, builds your resume, makes you feel good, and helps others who are dedicated to your field of choice.

My dad was right. Just keep plugging away. It will pay off in the end. If you are feeling discouraged, contact me. Right now, I have enough enthusiasm to raise the Titanic and will gladly help you build up enough juice to do the same! Peace out!

Supervising and Being an Intern - training the trainer

In my evening class for Internship, we have an excellent professor who offers pointed advice and generous support. We speak about our weekly experiences, problems, questions, successes. It is a fantastic group of women in the class and a very supportive environment.

What I took away from last night's class discussion, was that we all, at times, feel like the 16 year old kid at our first job. The boss barks out from his or her office to get a cup of coffee and you are like, sure.....where's the coffee pot? or how do I use this thing? or omg, why am I making this guy/gal coffee? I came here to learn how to ____________(fill in the blank). Not be a waitress!

So, as it turns out, some internships are better than others. Some internship supervisors are better at training interns than others. I am lucky. My supervisor is always available when I ask for some of her time. She has been as accommodating as possible, and has been kind when I have asked for experiences that she cannot supply due to confidentiality issues. I am sure in the future I will look back at some of my questions and realize I was asking for inappropriate things. But hey - sometimes learning takes the form of mistakes.

And it is truly up to me what I make of it.

At one point last night, I felt frustrated by one of my classmates. She and her supervisor have not really gelled and it sounds like a tense situation for both. This classmate has had several weeks of sharing with us her frustrations. I finally said last night that I thought she should relax and lower her expectations of the experience. We are really as much there to observe as we are to practice.

however, this morning, I was thinking about her again and realized maybe I was wrong. We should set the highest of expectations for our internships. If the site supervisor signed up for this, they too should set their expectations just as high. However, the reality is, these folks are busy. Some, on overload. Maybe they never received training on how to train?

If you are supervising an intern, how have you tried to make this experience meaningful for your intern and for your department?

Resumes

How can something so apparently simple be so difficult?

I absolutely break out into hives whenever I sit down to work on my resume. I also get a headache.

So, I understand what purpose a resume fulfills. I understand the rules. I understand no typos.

However, if you have several years experience in a different career field, are in graduate school and changing careers, how do you package the "previous work experience?"

TO begin with, I feel proud, very proud of my recent graduate work and internship work. It is a joy to work on the EDUCATION, SKILLS, and RELATED EXPERIENCES. I am the queen of volunteering, and so much of that fits right in with Student Affairs. I also have a few professional presentation presentation notches on my belt and its great to include them on my CV. I feel good about all of that.

However, I have covered a lot of miles in my life, and acquired a lot of "easily transferrable: skills and experiences. But, I don't want to confuse the reader. And I do NOT want someone to walk away with the feeling that I might be..........too old.

If anyone has any thoughts, or has been in this situation, how would you advise?

Internships, Job Hunting, and Plan B

It is time to apply for fall internships, so I sought advice from the Dean for whom I am presently interning. I had a plan, and thought it was pretty well laid out.

Ha. No.

As it turns out, planning my own career path is like trying to proof read my own resume. Not a good idea.

My Dean runs a large student support center that offers a remarkable range of resources to the students clever enough to take advantage. She displays a great deal of respect for her Coordinators and Assistant Deans and the mutual respect and collaboration within the center is text book quality. Some days, I feel like a bug on the wall, gobbling up great ideas of how it is done, and how it is done well.

The center offers everything from Career Services, Experiential Ed, Community Service Learning, Tutoring, First Year Advising, Undeclared Advising, to Disability Services. Each of these divisions runs a full calendar with workshops and support activities. It has been a fabulous experience because as I rotate through the different areas, I have been able to discover my strengths AND my weaknesses. Passions and Luke-warms. I consider myself a lucky intern.

So – back to the internship application plan:

I was considering the importance of seeking internships at different types of institutions to make myself “more marketable.” Currently, I am interning and studying at a small, private university and I thought I should round out my experiences by interning at a large state institution and a community college.

Through our conversation, she helped me understand many things, and here is what I walked away with:

• I should be job hunting. NOW. (as well as applying for internships). Seek out all the opportunities through Career Services and get my resume and interview skills polished up. Seek advice from the Assistant Dean of Career Services. He is connected in my field and will have more advice.

• Seek internships where I might fit best in terms of personality and passions instead of simply adding notches to my belt.

• Be realistic about time management. Add the commute time into the internship hours, time needed for family, studies, eating, sleeping and grocery shopping.

• Don’t forget about the price of gas. Consider the expense of the commute to the internship site.

• Given the economy, seek additional volunteer experiences that could be aligned with “Plan B.” If not at a college or university, where else might my masters degree be marketable, and where could I see myself being successfully employed? Go there and volunteer. Become known.

• One of the schools I was considering for an internship, has recently been shaken up by questions of possible improper financial expenditures and is under investigation. My Dean’s advice? Wait until the dust settles. THEN apply for an internship there.

• Apply to the large state institution, but consider the competition when applying. Also, consider the environment. Coming from a small private school where cross division collaboration reigns, to a large state school where compartmentalization rules means the internship experience would be narrowly focused and a completely different culture. Would I be happy there? Would I be growing there? Or was I just trying to pad my resume. Consider the potential quality of the experience.

If you are applying for internships, what advice have you been offered and what tact are you taking? If you are already a Student Affairs professional, what thoughts do you offer your students?

The Difference

Mid-life Perspectives
pəˈspɛktɪv
[from Medieval Latin perspectīva ars the science of optics, from Latin perspicere to inspect carefully, from per- (intensive) + specere to behold]

When I was invited by StudentAffairs.com to blog, I was accepted because of my mid life status and the thought was that my perspective on Student Affairs job hunt might be unique compared to my younger SA bloggers.

Every week, I wrack my brain on what makes my perspective unique. And every time I study this issue, I get a headache. As it turns out, I just find it difficult to separate the older-more-experienced perspective from personality traits. I know a lot of really bright and accomplished young classmates and job seeking competitors who brim with talent and insight.

So what is the “mid-life perspective?” Okay, here’s the deal. We are afraid of age discrimination – especially in a youth oriented industry. As educational leaders strive to increase diversity on their campus, we hope this includes age diversity. In part, age discrimination involves stereo typing older people as stuck in our ways, lacking in passion, crippled in our ability to relate to students, and co-workers, etc.

But think about it. A job offer might involve relocation and uprooting our domestic partners and kids and launching an entirely new life. Pursuing our Masters in Student Affairs, we are non-traditional students, juggling a GAZILLION hats at school, work, and keeping the home fires burning. We are risk takers and have pushed ourselves out of a comfort zone, taken a financial risk on tuition, and dipping our feet into a new field with the desire to make a difference. And if that does not spell passion, I am not sure what would.

So, what else can a mid-lifer bring to the Student Affairs table?

In theory, my years give me more experience studying human behavior and I might be more adept at recognizing behavioral patterns, dealing with office politics, and understanding what works and what doesn’t, and why. I have a larger personal database from which to draw - simply because I have logged in more hours doing things well and doing things not so well. This has also given me more practice reflecting upon both – a process that allows us to accumulate knowledge, wisdom, and information and helps us fine tune our radar. I am also getting really good at asking the incredibly perspective-attaining question, “yeah, but does that really matter?”

However, all of this does not necessarily make me a better or stronger (or an inferior and weaker) job candidate. I have met many young people who are incredibly, and innately gifted in reading people and working the water cooler scene. Undeniably, younger brains are like impressively efficient sponges capable of absorbing and processing massive amounts of information. My internal experiential database and immediate access to Google allows me to keep up.

There was a time when the thought was that an older job candidate might offer an employer a broader skill set because of wider exposure and experience. As technological advances and the recession are busy re-shaping the job market, I wonder if that is still held true? A technophile, and an employee in the technology industry once upon a time, I recognize that keeping up with all the new tools is critical, but requires more and more of my time. Some days, I love the challenge of boiling my thoughts down to 140 characters and sometimes all this techno-stuff is capable of making my head hurt – massively.

But heck, not to brag – I can twitter, text, DM, IM, chat, facebook, tumble, 4square, and do Wii yoga, and that dance game on MS Connect like a wiz kid! Not many of my friends can say that – but then again, I have a 20-year-old IT major son who keeps me on my game. I understand that every minute I invest in keeping up with the tech-explosion will offer a tenfold payback in the job hunt – and not just to trick out my resume. It falls into that “can you relate to students and can they relate to you” issue. And yes, I can talk the talk and envision the possibilities.

Having lived and worked long enough to witness the pendulum’s swing, I tread a thin line between two camps: the plus ca change……camp and that of getting wildly enthusiastic about newer, bigger ideas. Technology has added a third dimension to the way we communicate and share content and may also be challenging conventional concepts of time and place. No doubt.

But fundamentally, we are still the same species with or without all these go-go gadgets and Student Affairs is still a contact sport. Technology is only as good as the heart and soul of its users. And as a mid-life geezer, I want time to reflect upon and analyze all these gizmos vs. the lightening speed we travel when engaged with one another across technical platforms.
Ruminating and chewing my cud over this age-related perspective thing, I finally stumbled over what I believe to be a profound difference between my mid-life perspective and that of younger job applicants: I have a son in college and a daughter in high school. Nothing, short of a life-threatening event can change one’s perspective the way parenting can.

My next blog will be an attempt to find meaningful ways to re-frame the parent vilification conversation with Student Affairs folks. Please come back soon!

Social Media-istory and Job Hunting Stratologies

Start Date: 19XX:

College graduate. The way to "stand out from the crowd" was to triple
proof read your resume and have the print shop run it out on heavy stock
paper. Oh, and get your dad to pass it around at work.

Enter stage left: Email.

And rock our world it did! Quick study on how to format/desktop publish
resume..... Press send to impress. Staples/Kinkos/Fed Ex - eat your heart
out.

(note: jobs plentiful, college grads welcomed. On the job training
provided - a few typos here and there forgiven.)

Fast Forward to The 21st Century:

Our kids and their on-line chat rooms and this Facebook thing got our
parental pants all in a twist. We did as we were told, and followed them
online to keep them out of trouble. In retaliation, they launched their "Keep
Parents Off Facebook" campaign, mastered privacy settings, and learned to
smell the guidance counselors' imposter profiles a mile away.

But Facebook, it turns out, was pretty shiny. Luring us into its lair,
parents were seduced and Facebook became the neighborhood bar with you
tube bands, photo slide shows on the back wall, and a place to catch up
with old friends -- no cover charge.

2008: The economy tanked - jobs were vanishing and life savings were
shrinking. Networking was becoming a really big deal - only on this round
you also had to do it online. For some of us, this involved a learning
curve. Throwing privacy issues out the window, we started to realize that
the concept of the single page error free resume was evolving into a multi-faceted online
presence.


2009: So, okay, if Facebook is Cheers, the sitcom bar in Boston, then
LinkedIn is the necessarily conservative (and slimming) Brooks Brothers
(or budget equivalent) Interview Suit of Social Media.Your LinkedIn
profile, like that suit, gives you credibility -- its a critical piece of
the job hunt scheme and building your online persona/resume. B-o-r-i-n-g,
proper, and correct. Post your resume & CVs, powerpoints, educational and
book club approved titles you are reading, and papers you have published.
Join or ask for an invitation to industry related groups and post those
memberships on your profile. Post a recommendation for someone, and they
will probably return the favor. LinkedIn gets you connected and positioned
to be found by HR web crawlers. It is a great place for them to see you in
the flesh before they invite you in from the cold. Learn to work it, and
you will soon have access to the movers and shakers in your industry.
Attend local network affairs and get in some face time. You might even get
your mug on the video they always post the next day. Post links to your
blogs and drive traffic to your website. There are scores on articles that
show you how to craft an effective profile. Read them.

2011: New Years Resolution: Figure out this Twitter Thing.

Like a true ignoramous negatron that I sometimes can be when I'd rather
not admit I don't know something, I thought twitter sounded kind
of...........lame. But the resistance came from that fact that it felt like one. more. thing. to. learn.

Wow. Totally off base. Twitter is actually, quite Starbucky. Aromatic.
Fun. Educational. Jazzy. And a great commfy couch to plop down on when I
need some inspiration from others in my field. And it is SO easy to jump into!
Tweets point me to articles and professional chat groups
I may otherwise not have found. Twitter is sort of like having a really
cool robo-professor with 24/7 office hours.

Now converted to a semi-knowledgable positron.


Conclusion:

So, okay - to recap: the job market s%cks. And you know that. But you also know you have to get
out there to be seen and be found. Pound the pavement for real, and
on-line. Build and maintain your digital persona bit by byte, but dont
become overwhelmed by the process. Its just like the old days. Really.
here's how it should go.......


Get up - get breakfast, shower and put on your best suit. Check into
LinkedIn and update/connect/see whose checking you out.

Loosen your tie or kick off your heels and grab a mocha latte. Learn the
difference between # and @. Practice crystallizing a compelling thought
into 140 jazzy clever characters. Start following people with whom you
share an interest. Report sexychick87 as spam. Or not. Tweet links to your blog
or a great article in the NYT. Follow and be followed. Thank others for retweets and follows.

Join and Like Facebook Pages and Groups relative to your industry and
start posting thoughtful comments and links to your blog.

Come to think of it, maybe you need a new blog. Write one and post it.

At the end of the day, drop into Facebook for a quick beer and let
everyone know you are job hunting. Collect a few atta girls/boys from your
friends and be encouraged to start all over tomorrow. Post a link to your
latest blog.


Remember, you have a better shot of getting the interview, or at least
having your resume read, just like in the old days, if you have a
meaningful connection. Only in today's world, its up to you to create that
connect and make it easy to be found.

It doesn't end here, but so far, you started building your on-line persona. there's still job boards and websites. Conferences and on line placement exchanges. I'm getting to all that. But In the meantime, the next step for me is to figure out that 4 square
thing. Let me know were yer at!

Job Hunting: How to Approach?

Brief intro: I am in grad school, finishing up my masters degree in Student Affairs and College Counseling. 52 years old, I am a mom, wife, daughter, sister, kayaker, potter, gardener and make a mean home made pizza pie.

This is a midlife career change for me and I hope my blogs will entertain and offer community. I hope we can share ideas and support one another as we tip toe down the same path. Thank you for taking the time to read me!

Job hunting into a new career half way through my projected life span feels a lot more authentic than when I was 21. As a young adult, I believed that time and possibilities were unlimited. As a result, I kind of ping-ponged my way through career choices until I was lucky enough to settle into a satisfying writing & project management career. But my path was completely left up to chance, and I suffered the consequences of more than a few poor decisions as well as a few delusional episodes of grandeur. Then I went home to raise a family.

I don’t feel like everything is possible anymore, and at first, this depressed me. However, recognizing limitations forced me to sharpen my focus, establish concrete goals, and square up to my strengths and challenges. I feel like I know myself a whole lot better now. And I think I like myself a whole lot better too!

Via twitter, I was introduced to an amazing TedEx video of Brene Brown, which is, as we speak, circulating the Internet virally. It became one of those miracle moments we all hope for, when someone finally puts words and validity to all kinds of messy, complicated, and as of yet to be crystallized thoughts that swirl around upstairs in my head.

Listening to her made all the tumblers click in my heretofore unlocked brain, and I finally realized, with her virtual help, how to conceptualize my job hunt. She spoke about her decades of research into connections, vulnerability, authenticity, worthiness and shame. I initially connected her speech with some of the readings and papers I have been working on at school. But I suddenly realized that her words actually also described the essence of job hunting. Connecting with employers; making ourselves vulnerable to judgment and rejection, presenting ourselves authentically, and wondering if we are worthy of the yes or no resume pile; all the while experiencing fleeting moments of shame and self doubt.

One thing is for sure. This job hunt thing is going to require a lot of courage. The economy is terrible. Funding is up in the air. There are so many qualified competitors, and I have no idea how my age will impact my chances. But when I feel myself falling into that abyss of self-doubt, I will always turn to brilliant Brene’s definition of courage as the theme of my job quest: “….telling the story of who you are with your whole heart.”

http://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html