Career Builder reported in a July press release that their survey conducted this summer on more than 2500 employers showed that 23% of those employers reported getting applications from older (50+), more experienced (10+ years) workers. The press release headline suggested that the college students will be competing for internships this fall with older, more experienced applicants (which Career Builder termed “mature”).

Rosemary Haefner, VP of HR at Career Builder, sees this as a “reshaping” of internships, as “..a way for experienced workers to explore new opportunities.” Haefner’s  implicit message is that older, experienced workers have a better chance now  of getting internships that would have, in more normal times, gone to undergrads. (In other words, the glass is half full for “mature” workers, and for undergrads, traditional recipients of internships, the glass is half empty.)

Other notable findings reported in the survey are that 27% of employers plan to hire interns before the end of 2010, and that 52% anticipate hiring interns as full-time employees later. Also, the surveyed employers will offer a salary range from nothing (7% of employers) to $25/hour “or more” (5%), with 53% offering $10/hour “or more.”

What the press release did not mention, or perhaps the survey did not ask, is what policy employers intend to take (whether they have expressed a preference) when it comes to hiring younger, less experienced interns versus, older, more experienced workers.

Haefner’s recommendations to applicants include starting to look for internships now, networking even when companies don’t list internships as available, and being open to “organizations with limited budgets,” like non-profs and start ups, which she suggested may be more open to interns. (I think she meant to say low-paid interns.)

I’d like to point out that academics (many of whom are graduate students) tend to be both older and more experienced than undergrads, and are more likely to be able to accept low or nonexistent wages than more experienced “mature” workers. (After all, they’ve learned to live on practically nothing for years.)

Grad students have a second advantage in that they are likely to be self-motivated and intelligent, so they can be largely self-directing and would require less direct training than most undergrads. What could be more efficient for employers who want both experience and mature, reliable (and less expensive) workers?

I recently caught up my reading in the Chronicle of Higher Education (the voice of US academics) and was disheartened to read Peter Conn’s article from April of this year, “We Need to Acknowledge the Realities of Employment in the Humanities,” which actually refers to the lack of academic employment for those with higher degrees in the humanities.

Conn makes five suggestions on what we (as a society) should do about this reality.

1. The US should decrease the number of  humanities Ph.D.s accepted into programs that take too long to graduate into what is a dysfunctional market (in traditional academics).

2.  Humanities programs need a corollary to the truth-in-lending statement that advises potential students of the astounding attrition in Ph.D. programs, as well as the dim prospects for traditional academic jobs for the survivors.

3. Humanities programs should keep records of job “placements” of graduates.

4. Graduate education should be “re-imagined,” broadening employment opportunities beyond the traditional academic career path, which is inexorably being squeezed off.

5. The place of humanities should be strengthened in American education and life.

While all his suggestions to cure the ills of current trend data might help the situation, he focuses on his first suggestion, that we have too many people in humanities degree programs. I cannot agree and suggest that we as a society can’t afford to allow the economic waste of any well educated brains, especially those interested enough in humanities to spend years of their lives preparing by learning the intricacies of ethics and considering the very essence of what makes us human.

Conn is far more eloquent, and says that humanities

“are not merely ornamental and dispensable. They lie near the heart of mankind’s restless efforts to make sense of the world. Debates over war and peace, justice and equity: From the uses of scientific knowledge to the formulation of social policy, the humanities provide a necessary dimension of insight and meaning.”

And universities cannot save the humanities by themselves.

Career professionals can help academics see that employment opportunities depend much more on being able to articulate one’s skills rather than on the simple ownership of a degree to establish what one can do.  We all know the concept of transferrable skills, but we need to able to help pull those skills out of the academic vocabulary and present them, not only as viable, but necessary to our continuing success as a society.

Conn’s own pro bono experience with developing a program for “alternative careers” for humanities students was effective, but temporary. He developed a summer program which combined elements of  business coursework with intensive resume-writing and interview-preparation, and brought corporate and non-prof recruiters to campus, “persuading them that our participants had unusual profiles but were eminently employable in all sorts of fields.”

Conn reports that they were successful in helping humanities grads find work in corporations, particularly in “consultancies, management training and human-resources groups.” Even more important, they found that the men and women who were able to make that career transition, found “somewhat more job satisfaction” than the others in the program who continued with academic careers. Other similar programs reported similar results.

Many grad students can find enough flexibility in their programs to add coursework that gives them broader employment options, and most have access to career-planning and preparation resources, but that isn’t always enough to bridge the gap. We, as career professionals, need to be more aware of the value of humanities education in this country, of its perilous situation and encourage the employment of  those with humanities degrees.

(If you are a potential humanities grad student or a career professional who may be working with potential humanities academics, you may want to read the whole article. http://chronicle.com/article/We-Need-to-Acknowledge-the/64885/ )

We’ve all heard buzz about the value of LinkedIn to business professionals, but not all academics have noticed what membership in LinkedIn Groups can do for them as professionals. If you haven’t looked into that, you’re missing an opportunity.

Here’s how easy it is to find people who share an interest with you.

First, find the groups relevant to your discipline or industry. Go to the “Groups Directory“ in LinkedIn, and, in the upper left corner, under “Search Groups,” click on “All categories” to get the drop-down menu of categories. Try any you want, but be sure to try “Professional group.”

If you don’t add a keyword, under Professional group, you’ll get 171,053 of them (as of this writing in May, 2010). They’re listed in order of largest membership first. (In this case, it’s ExecuNet with 185,040 members). If you add the keyword, “Anthropology,” you’ll get just 16 groups. “Astrophysics” brings just 2, but “Psychology” has 215. Change that to “Positive Psychology” and you have 11 choices. (But if you add too many qualifying terms, you’ll confuse it and get nothing.)

Of course, this organizational scheme is true of the other kinds of groups, too. If you enter no keywords, Conference Group brings you 13,359 choices, beginning with TED, a wonderfully idea-heavy group for thoughtful people, including academics. (TED stands for Techology, Entertainment, Design, but the scope is very broad.)

Joining Groups and Finding Your Network

When you decide to join a group, you’re actually submitting an application. In some cases, everyone is accepted; in others, the group owner or manager will look at your LikedIn profile to see if your background fits the criteria. (For example, if it’s a school alumni group, your profile should show your relationship with the school – and sometimes, your graduation will be cross-checked.) Sometimes admission is immediate; sometimes it takes days or weeks for the group manager to notice your request to join.

The value of membership in the group is not only that you can listen in on discussions of interest, but you can learn about current issues in your discipline or industry. It may keep you on the cutting edge when in face-to-face discussions with colleagues and peers. You are allowed to view the profiles of all the members in your group and you can search for specifics in their profiles – name, organization and specific key words or areas of expertise.

If you’re writing a dissertation, or publishing, you can check to see who else is interested in similar topics. As a grad student who needs a professional network, this is a great way to start developing that network, because you’ll have the option of contacting people in your group. (Of course, you’ll want to begin asking more people to “link” with you, to increase your own individual network, and you may need to have 50 or more before you see enough activity to consider it a worthwhile investment of your time.)

Another way to find groups relating to your interests is to look at the profiles of your peers and friends (maybe even professors). That’s how I discovered many of the groups I’ve joined (and found particularly useful). In fact, I wouldn’t have known to search for those keywords before I saw those groups in my friends’ profiles.

More Reasons to Join and Useful LinkedIn Functions

Groups can give you a thumbnail view of what’s going on in your industry or discipline. For example, one of my groups (Career Change Central), has an ongoing discussion of whether cover letters (for resumes) are obsolete and a waste of time. So far, it’s generated 450 comments and it’s still going strong!  It’s been very useful to me professionally, to get multiple views on the topic and many, many ideas for handling different situations with resumes and cover letters that my clients run into.

You can ask questions of the group and get very helpful responses, and you may even be able to develop relationships with potential mentors. You can show your own expertise when you answer questions or pose discussion topics, and consistently showing your expertise in front of the right individuals may bring you a job offer at some point. You may even become a mentor to others.

Some groups have active jobs lists, too, and there’s a group function that allows you to “follow” discussions and individuals whose opinions you value and want to stay in touch with in future.

Another function within groups is the option of changing your contact and privacy settings, so you’re not flooded with every listing to the discussion. (If I had not set my listing to get the weekly “digest” for the Career Change Central group, I would have had more than 400 emails about the discussion on cover letters! The weekly digest setting that I chose is just about right.) Other of my groups are not very active at all, and for some groups, I turn off all email and merely visit every several weeks to see what’s happening.

Don’t use the fear of too much email as an excuse for avoiding LinkedIn Groups. You have many choices and much control, so go check out the advantages and all the opportunities the Groups may bring you.

For more information on LinkedIn Groups – http://learn.linkedin.com/groups/

Every academic needs to invest in a kitchen sink resume/portfolio!

There, I’ve said it. It still feels radical – but right.

So, what do I mean, and why do I say that?

First, a definition:  a kitchen sink resume includes every job (full- or part-time, even paid or volunteer internships or temp gigs) you’ve ever had, and any other experiences that gave you joy, satisfaction and pride – even maybe including hobbies, vacations and family activities.

Forget the page and time limits. The kitchen-sink resume can occupy many pages, and the more detailed the information, the better. It’s almost certainly an electronic file that you can simply add to, as you complete jobs and projects, and as you add education/training and skills/abilities to your list of accomplishments.

If you can expand it to include actual examples or representations of your work (evidence of your skills, abilities and knowledge), it’s called a career portfolio.

Second, the why:  you’re keeping it more for your own record (especially if you write your own resumes), than for anyone else to see. But, it’s also vital to anyone you would hire to write a resume for you, because they need that information to be able to write the best resume.

If you ever apply for government jobs, especially any that require security clearances, you’ll need the detail of specific job information, such as employer name(s), address, exact dates of employment, managers’ name(s), phone, email, etc. Keep a description of the job responsibilities, the skills required to fulfill them, and list what you did to go beyond the job descriptions, and your accomplishments in each job.

Even if you never apply for a government job, you can refer to your kitchen-sink resume information to keep your resumes and applications accurate, so you don’t accidentally give false information that could confuse (or lose) a potential employer who suspected the worst.

This information also can be the foundation of your analysis (with or without the help of a career professional) of your own preferred skills. You’ll be able to look at your work history and recognize your work preferences. As you engage in that process, you may come to recognize and be able to more fully articulate your strengths and transferable skills, which you can use in future, more specifically targeted resumes.

As an academic, you already have a greater skill in analysis than most people. This kind of data collection gives you a unique perspective on your own career history, and you may come to see patterns you hadn’t noticed as you were living your work. You can use that information to help structure your work to fit your strengths more closely, and you’ll be able to work more efficiently, and at least equally important, happier.

Of course, considering this time in the history of academic institutions, when the number of tenure-track jobs is decreasing and the number of higher-degree graduates is increasing, knowing how to articulate your career skill patterns will be a significant advantage if you decide (or are forced)  to look beyond the academic job market. You need to be able to articulate your skills to an audience of employers who don’t know enough about your world to understand it.

So. Do it for yourself – your future self. Your investment of nothing more than time may pay off big for you.

“I don’t have time to look for a job while I’m writing a thesis and finishing classes!”  In my time as a career counselor at a major university, I’ve probably heard this line a thousand times.

Most grad students saying that are right because they’ve avoided all thought of jobs since they started grad school, and they are especially pushed in the weeks before graduation. But now LinkedIn offers them an opportunity to become known in their field while they are taking all those classes and writing that thesis – if they take advantage of it.

The beauty of LinkedIn is in offering both a public profile of accomplishments and a communications platform. The profile can be filled in bit-by-bit, a few minutes at a time, and it can replace at least some of the email in their lives.

If grad students started a LinkedIn profile when they began their first classes, and invested 5-10 minutes a week, by the time they graduated, they’d have developed both a complete profile that will help them attract job offers and a way to become known and stay in contact with colleagues in their field.

What’s the minimum for you to get started with LinkedIn?

1. Start with your name. First, Google your name to see if others share your name, and if so, find a way to individualize your name, perhaps using a nickname (but keep it professional), a middle initial, or writing it out in full.

2. Choose a descriptive profile headline, such as “graduate student, University of Michigan,” or “Master’s Candidate, E.E.,” or even, “MA expected June, 2010.” The headline helps define and label your focus.

3. Upload a photo of yourself, and keep it professional. Think of the headshots of professors you’ve seen in professional conference programs. You don’t have to be wearing a tie, but don’t use a picture of your dog, either. Save it for FaceBook.

4. Use the summary section to describe your disciplinary focus. You can include your classes, your thesis title or a description of the research you’re involved in, but try to avoid sounding like a stuffed shirt. Interests, travel and languages you speak could fit here, too. And, you can use the Specialties section to add keywords that relate to your disciplinary focus or future job title.

5. Fill in the education and employment sections as completely as you can. Include internships, assistantships or any special training or research projects, as well as student memberships in campus and professional organizations. Include awards and accomplishments, especially if they’re related to your education.

6. Fill in your status box periodically (at least every term, but monthly is better), so people know your profile is current. Note the courses you’re taking, the professional events you’re attending or leading, awards/ accomplishments, or papers/publications you’re working on.

7. Join groups, especially those connected to your discipline or the field you hope to work in when you graduate. This is one of the best kept secrets of LinkedIn because you can interact with experts in your field just by engaging with other group members. By paying attention to the group discussions, you can learn about the issues in the field, and in the workplace, which don’t always come up in the classes you’re taking. Ask questions (and answer them) whenever you can. It’s a way of signaling that you’re willing to contribute to the field. When you see an article of interest to the group, post a News link, or begin a discussion. Engage and learn.

8. Set up your personal URL. Make it easy for folks to find you by replacing the nonsense URL (that LinkedIn automates for you) with your name.

9. Ask for recommendations. Faculty are used to being asked for recommendations. Ask them, and recommend them, too. Ask employers as well, and anyone who has supervised your volunteer work or your co-authors or research partners.

10. Start adding connections by inviting your fellow grad students, then professors, advisors and anyone else you interact with by email, especially if it is related to your research or future work. It’s commonly said that 50 connections is a tipping point and you’ll begin to see significantly more activity when you have that many.

11. Add content in the form of applications. That will allow you to add papers you’ve written, publications, PowerPoint presentations and other examples of your work. You can list books you’ve been reading and review them. Your resume could fit here, too.

Remember that this is not just a social twirl. You are building the basis of your job search a little at a time, while you are making your way through grad school. By the time you’re half way through, your job search will be under way, even though you may not have time to cruise the job banks the month before you graduate.

Woody Allen is credited with saying, “80% of success is just showing up.”  But that was before the Internet and the recent rise of social media.

These days, showing up “inappropriately” on the Internet may kill your chance at a job. Academics and teachers may be at particular risk because of the responsible nature of the work and expectation of the roles.

Among college career counselors, it’s common knowledge that at least a few students have lost job offers because of “inappropriate content” on the Internet, such as photos of them drinking and disporting themselves at parties and such.

But the trend for online “data mining” seems to have stepped up considerably, according to a study done in December of 2009 by Cross-Tab, on behalf of Microsoft. Titled “Online Reputation in a Connected World,” it reports how recruiters and HR professionals use “online reputational information in their candidate review processes…”

While the sample sizes are small, involving “approximately 275 recruiters, HR professionals and hiring managers, and about 330 consumers” interviewed in each of four countries, the results are striking.

Considering only the US recruiters and HR professionals,

• 89%  have used online data mining as part of the hiring process and most consider it appropriate to consider personal data.

• 70% have used data they’ve found online to reject job candidates – despite their own concern about the authenticity of that information.

• 63%  check social media sites of candidates, but only 57% report checking applicants’ professional and business sites.

• 75% of companies surveyed now require this online screening as official hiring policy.

• 85% say they are influenced positively by strong positive online reputations of candidates, and nearly half say their hiring decisions are influenced by this to a “great extent.” (At least there’s one positive for online reputation data mining.)

The  Trend Promises to Increase

For better or worse, recruiters and HR professionals in the US, the UK, Germany and France all expect this use of online data mining for “reputational information” to increase significantly in the next five years! Thus, even if these figures are not representative of the current state of recruiting, they may well be very soon.

Information that has influenced rejections of candidates has included

• lifestyle
• poor communication skills displayed or comments/text written by the candidate
• including that criticizing previous employers
• photos, videos and information deemed inappropriate
• membership in certain groups and networks
• concern about finances

and in addition, the list includes

• inappropriate comments or text written by friends, relatives, colleagues or work acquaintances!

“Consumers” Are Not Aware

As few as 7% of US consumers surveyed believed their job search would be affected by their online reputation.

And, 19% of those surveyed think it “very appropriate” for potential employers to check their social media sites for photos and videos, versus 44% who considered it “very inappropriate.” (Note: When age is considered, 56% of the 18-24 year-olds think this is “very inappropriate.”)

This implies, of course, that most consumers are not taking steps to protect their privacy in even simple ways, and that’s not even considering the complexity of dealing with comments or text written by others about them.

While most academics have left their former peers and childish escapades behind, their Internet history may continue  “just showing up,” but NOT contribute to their success.

For an overview of the report, see http://www.microsoft.com/privacy/dpd/research.aspx.