Career Development: Strategies and Technologies for Career and Life Balance - Softcover

Breidenbach, Monica E.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0130867594 ISBN 13: 9780130867599

Publisher: Pearson College Div, 2000

Synopsis

This guide to job hunting and career exploration enables the college graduate—using the latest technology— to find and secure the best job possible given one's accumulated education, experience, skills, and talents. It helps give job candidates that competitive edge in today's over-crowded marketplace. Coverage includes resumes, interviews, Internet tools for job hunting, negotiations, financial literacy, marketing, entrepreneurship, and business politics. For recent graduates of degree and certified programs of study, or anyone interested in college completion and going to work in a given field.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

Preface

Today's market is ripe for the well-prepared and focused job searcher. College graduates have more opportunities for better jobs where they can improve their status on the job as well as with continuing education.

What makes today's market a good market is twofold: The rise in the need for college graduates in almost every field and the improvement of technology, which continues to improve exponentially.

Time used to be when a job search was hard work. Only typewriters were available to provide letters and résumés in professional styles. Interview by interview was the only way to contact people to determine interest. Company profiles were hard to come by unless you knew someone inside an organization.

Job searching still is a difficult and time-consuming process. It requires full-time attention. However, the tools to assist with the search are more prevalent, easier to use, and the process is very professional, quick, and pervasive.

Do not be misled into thinking that job searching is a linear process today, anymore than it ever was. The process is a zigzag, back and forth effort on the part of the searcher. "Zigzagging" will happen if you implement the plan to see at least 40 people a week on a full-time search or limit yourself to a 20 people a week part-time search.

Example: research into "business profiles" will come into play:

when you are considering what companies may need your skills and talent; when you look for Career Fairs to attend with your first (new) résumé; when you identify management levels to consider your résumé; when you consider just what kind of résumé posting firm you want to use; when you decide where/when to store information for easy access when employers call; and when they contact you by e-mail or some other electronic connection, you need to have your files in a ready access state.

"Career Fairs" is another research item that reoccurs:

when you are considering which one to attend; when you identify your purpose for attending—knowledge, connections, new information, etc.; when you compare professional opportunities in a broader context; and when looking for new fields and jobs potential.

Your need for reference and research materials constantly zigzags back and forth throughout your campaign. So do not be alarmed if you notice reference to various components of the process show up again and again in the text.

What this is telling you is, "Format a clear and accurately named set of files." Examine the "why now?" in each case and you will notice a new focus for your use of the term. This will help expand your continuing breadth of information, job searching process, and counsel.

The subtitle of this book is Strategies and Technologies for Career and Life Balance. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week a job searcher must be visible in the marketplace in order to locate the choicest jobs possible given one's education, experience, skills, and talents.

The only way a searcher can be available at this scope and rate is with the use and extension the newest technologies provide. One must be computer and network literate or you will be left in the dust of your contemporaries.

This text emphasizes the need for constantly measuring career goals against life goals, and wherever possible combining the two to succeed in both. If you want a family, consider whether a traveling sales job/career may prohibit your participation a bit in your family's development. (See: Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.) If you want to travel then do it before you start a family.

You need the support of your family and friends throughout your life so dismissing them for some part of your life while you leap to new heights in a career without considering them may produce a friendless and lonely life in your after work activities. It is lonely at the top. Booze is effective in killing the pain, but the pain manages to find you again in the morning. (See: Eugene O'Neill's A Long Day's Journey Into Night.) Themes of the Text

The cycle of job searching is endless and constant. The major themes are research, marketing focus, résumés, interviewing, negotiations, politics, and financial awareness. Once a job option is accepted, the search begins for the next opportunity. This requires sensitivity to your own continuing education goals, knowing if and when your own career goals may change, awareness of the industry's options/problems/growth, and the needs of the market.

These areas are addressed separately in different chapters and infused into many other chapters for the searcher to make the connecting links in understanding the job market and this search process. The goal is to find the choicest job in your respective field that you can handle successfully.

The market's needs are global, no matter your chosen field. Below is a short summary of the chapter contents for an overview.

Section One clearly explains the steps to follow when preparing your résumé. Chapter 1 directs the searcher to follow a clear outline or plan of operation to prepare for assembling resume information that will enable a professional-looking representation of one's readiness for the market of choice, which will be obvious to those who receive this resume.

Chapter 2 focuses on the variety of forms that a résumé is now accepted in the marketplace. If you are searching in international markets, the curriculum vitae is explained with advice about how to proceed in another country where the language is not English. New formats for business cards are revealed. Searching for company profiles to augment your decision about where to search is also developed in Chapter 2.

Chapter 3 covers cyberspace résumés, which are hot in today's market. Cool design and killer content are imperative to make a good first impression. Your résumé reaches the decision makers before you do. CD-ROM business cards are introduced as résumé substitutes, and sites where these are available are listed. How to approach and submit résumés to résumé posting services are also described.

Section Two describes different types of interviews and prepares you to negotiate for the best salary and benefits possible. Chapter 4 describes the subdivisions of Internet use and career fairs' potential for the job searcher. These interviews are basically informational interviews, but can lead to more substantive job interviews if worked for their potential effectiveness. Working existing networks and forming new ones are both part of this chapter.

Knowing how to answer an ad so that you are considered for the position is an art, and the rules can be learned by anyone, as explained in Chapter 5. Importance of company knowledge before the interview is stressed. Understand that "experiences" in an interview situation refer to people, challenges, problems, options, and resolutions that have been a part of your past. To most interviewers, the best predictor of your future success with them is your past success with other employers.

Chapter 6 introduces the GAME theory of John von Neumann and John Forbes Nash, Jr. I have translated and processed their theory to apply to negotiations, and the 3-step charted process is in this chapter. Understand the financial options that are available for the now (what comes out of your check) and the future (what you have saved for retirement). Creative and imaginative ways that employers are figuring out to reward employees go beyond salary. They are more numerous and inventive among today's managerial options.

In Section Three you will learn what it takes to put your best foot forward in today's job market. To understand that looking for a job is essentially a marketing process is difficult for some to grasp as explained in Chapter 7. If you work it, marketing is to the advantage of the searcher. You are the product, the salary range is the price, your resume is the promotional ad, and the distribution is wherever you send the resume given 24/7 options to deliver the good news that you are available for the market.

Market potential is described as unlimited and global in Chapter 8. Using e-commerce, there are constant changes and unpredictability about tools and methods for designing an effective search. A market plan and strategy need to be designed at the outset so you won't be overwhelmed and thus unable to take advantage of the opportunities that will come your way with these suggestions.

Chapter 9 introduces entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is for a few. Learning what a risk taker you are, what newness you may bring to the market, who will be there to assist you, and what success can you expect are all questions that need to be answered before you make this leap where only about 2 percent of the American populace ever goes. Knowing about Web page design and e-business techniques cannot be highlighted enough to prepare anyone for this leap of faith.

Chapter 10 delves into office politics: It is

From the Back Cover:

In today's fast-paced, ever changing economy, knowledge of current technologies and their impact on the job search is more crucial than ever. Not only must job seekers be focused in their search, but they must also be able to adapt new methods of exploration and communication. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, job searchers must be visible in the marketplace in order to locate those jobs that afford them the best opportunities and are best suited to their interests. Then, they must have the most competitive tools to land the desired jobs. In Career Development: Strategies and Technologies for Career and Life Balance, Fourth Edition , Dr. Breidenbach has revised and expanded the job search process to include information that will ultimately help every job seeker achieve success in their career and life pursuits:

• CD-ROM Business Cards
• Interactive Interviewing
• Negotiations
• Enrepreneurship
• Politics
• Money and Taxes
• 401(k) and 403(b) Options
• Investments
• Retirement Planning

About this edition

• Publisher: Pearson College Div
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0130867594
• ISBN 13: 9780130867599
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 4
• Number of pages: 194