By Trishia Hughes
When it comes to procrastination, college students are at the top of their game. Whether it’s a project, paper or presentation, no one else can pull off an all-nighter and still make deadline quite as effortlessly. But when it comes to the unavoidable task of entering the workforce upon graduation, no amount of coffee and power bars can save even the most determined dawdler.
Sooner or later, everyone is faced with the inevitable: finding a job. Not a part-time gig to pay for weekend cover charges, but a real job with that hard-earned University degree to back it up.
As overwhelming as this process may be, living in the age of the Internet can make the daunting task of sending out resumes a thing of the past. Technology has paved the way for employers to seek out applicants with the click of a mouse.
Now the big decision: to be a small fish in a big pond or a hungry shark in a kiddy pool?
Web sites like careerbuilder.com have the online recruitment market cornered with affiliates in more than 200 local markets. The site boasts itself as “the nation’s largest job site with more than 20 million unique visitors and over one million jobs,” according to a recent press release. They’re so big, in fact, they just launched a new site designed solely for college grads: cbcampus.com. Here, students can post online resumes and get automatic job alerts, much like they can on sites like monster.com, or its college equivalent monstertrak.com.
December graduate Andrea Schmidt, 23, took a chance on finding work online. She sought the aid of all the major players: monster.com, hotjobs.com – she even hit up mediabistro.com for a set of listings tailored specifically to her major. No such luck.
“Those sites, especially Monster, really didn’t do much,” Schmidt claimed. “Monster.com sends you ‘results’ daily, but the results are for jobs that either have nothing to do with your qualifications, or jobs that you would have no interest in taking.”
Schmidt did some networking and eventually landed a job through a friend. Now she’s the development editor for Springer Publications in SoHo.
Schmidt said it all depends on the field you’re interested in. She says a friend was offered a great job through Monster, while her own search yielded no results.
The problem with such commercially-driven sites is competing with so many other applicants. Using a site with 15 million-plus posted resumes, such as CBcampus.com, makes it a lot easier to be overlooked than a smaller site like www.lijobs.com, which focuses strictly on Nassau, Suffolk, Brooklyn and Queens.
The University’s Career Center posts a slew of trusted links on their site, listing them by field to make it easier for students to find career matches. Links in all career paths – from art and design, to business, government, healthcare, science and education – are posted online, and according to Career Center Director Marvin Reed, each site is carefully explored before receiving the seal of approval.
Reed’s personal recommendation is rileyguide.com. “It is a tremendous listing of general resources as well as specialized resources,” he said.
The Riley Guide prides itself on teaching users how to effectively use the Internet as a job search tool. It goes one step beyond the typical Web sites by providing users with the reasoning behind each tip in order to better understand what they’re doing and why.
Even though there are more than 200 sites on the University’s Web page, the Career Center recently launched a new search tool: the Pride-Career Management System, (Pride-CMS).
Here, the process is flipped. Instead of students posting resumes and hoping for something in their area, they’re able to browse job openings posted specifically for the University’s students. The best part is: once a University student, always a University student. The current system provides grads with the same resources they had as students, so they will still have access to current job openings long after they’ve left the pack.
The Career Center is open to all students, and with just a swipe of your ID card you gain unlimited access to all available job listings. Last year, about 4,000 students took advantage of those listings, though the Career Center hopes to see that number rise in ’06.
Ideally, Reed hopes to see all incoming freshmen come in during their first year to get acquainted with the center, pick a major and work toward finding a suitable internship.
Reed believes that junior year is an ideal time to stop in and ask, “What should I be doing?” He says the staff is available for resume critiques, interview techniques and everything in between.
According to Reed, the center strives for a friendly, welcoming atmosphere void of that “stuffy” feeling that might cause students to steer clear of the place.
Scheduled appointments are typically 45 minutes long to provide students with as much information as necessary, but quick questions can be answered during walk-in hours four days a week. Walk-in hours include Tuesday through Thursday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. and Friday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
“I went in last year because I still didn’t know what I wanted to do,” said senior Erin Duff, 25. “They had me take a career test to see what I would be good at according to my interests and gave me a list of jobs I might be interested in. It really made me feel better about being so unsure of my major.”
Duff continued to take advantage of the Career Center, in order to get a jump start on the unavoidable job hunt. “I went to a workshop on successful interviewing,” she said. “That really helped a lot.”
Since then, Duff joined Pride Recruiting, the university’s on-campus job placement program, where she was offered a corporate internship with Target working in loss prevention. “The company came to Hofstra and held an information session where I got to learn all about the position and really weigh my options.”
Whether you’re an early bird or the king of procrastinators, it’s never too late to give the Career Center a shot.
“Bottom line,” said Reed, “the Career Center can be helpful to you. Whether it’s one day before graduation, one day after or three years after, the Career Center is a valuable resource.”
As for the online job market, it never hurts to try – as long as you take full advantage of all the other options.