Sunday, May 30, 2010
Experienced MIT Grad for Hire
Unemployed Banker And MIT Graduate Peddles On The Street For Job
"Joshua Persky, an unemployed financial engineer, stands in front of the Charles Schwab building at 50th Street and Park Avenue with a sign proclaiming "Experienced MIT Graduate for Hire" June 24, 2008 in New York City. Persky, who lost his job in the volatile banking industry six months ago, thought standing on a corner passing out resumes would be a novel approach over networking and writing emails at home. Persky is married and supports five children."
(June 24, 2008 - Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images North America)
UPDATE: Even though this story was from 2008, Persky eventually did get a job, before being laid off 5 months later.
Looks like the economy isn't picking up anytime soon. Hmm... maybe I should have taken up those insurance sales offers...
Life sucks.
Parents taking over their kids' job hunt
Parents go overboard to help college kid get job
Some apply for positions for adult child, stick nose in salary negotiations
By Eve Tahmincioglu
Some apply for positions for adult child, stick nose in salary negotiations
By Eve Tahmincioglu
msnbc.com contributor
updated 9:40 a.m. ET, Mon., May 24, 2010
Salary negotiation with candidate’s mom
Some parents also are sticking their noses into the salary negotiation process.
Late last year, Lisa Fedrizzi-Hutchins, a hiring manager for an environmental company in New York, made a job offer to an entry-level candidate and asked her to review it and call if she had any questions.
“The following day, I received a phone call from her mother because she felt her negotiation skills were far better than her daughter,” Fedrizzi-Hutchins recalled. “She had explained to me that the salary was far too low for her daughter to live comfortable in New York City and wanted to know what we needed to do to bring her salary up.”
The mom also asked for four weeks of vacation, above the standard two weeks' vacation for employees starting out.
Suddenly Fedrizzi-Hutchins found herself doing salary negotiations with the job candidate’s mother.
“The mother was not very happy with how our conversation ended, and sadly, her daughter did not accept the position with our company,” she said.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
"No one needs you, Class of 2010"
Everyone definitely needs to read this article. It makes a lot of good points about society, such as how the smug older generation likes to paint today's youths (Generation Y) as being lazy and spoiled. The criticism comes despite the fact that the older generation needs Generation Y to pay off the federal deficit as well as support the Social Security system in the coming decades. How nice of them to brand us all as a bunch of spoiled, lazy, rotten, airheaded, good-for-nothing freeloaders. And right after dumping the terrible economy on us, no less. (Maybe I'm just bitter after having been constantly belittled, ripped apart, and otherwise psychologically/emotionally eviscerated by my parents over the past year.) Anyway, enjoy the article. And then please pray for our generation.
No one needs you, Class of 2010
By Joe Queenan, The Wall Street Journal
No one needs you, Class of 2010
By Joe Queenan, The Wall Street Journal
Over the next several weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higherlearning . They will celebrate for several days, perhaps longer. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them.They will enter an economy where roughly 17% of people aged 20 through 24 do not have a job, and where two million college graduates are unemployed. They will enter a world where they will compete tooth and nail for jobs as waitresses,They will console themselves with the thought that all this is but a speed bump on the road to success, that their inability to find work in a field that is even vaguely related to the discipline they trained in is only a fleeting setback.pizza delivery men, file clerks, bouncers, trainee busboys, assistant baristas, interns at bodegas.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Lies People Tell You About College, Part II
Continued from "Lies People Tell You About College".
2. "It doesn't matter what you major in. You'll end up doing something completely different anyway."
I kept hearing this over and over. Art history and film students going directly into finance, English majors into... uh...... Anyway, the common saying that your major does not matter is a lie! In reality, if you have little to no "real" work experience (like most recent college grads) and your major is not highly related to the jobs you are applying for, employers will consider your degree irrelevant and worthless. When you can't get a job, any job, then you won't end up doing anything at all. Oh well.
The only exception to this is if your major is super quantitative and/or technical, and the average Joe or Jane will never be able to amass your amazing skills and knowledge. In other words, your amazing skills and knowledge must be in high demand but in short supply. Only then will you have numerous job opportunities across various positions and industries. It sounds like common sense now, but I couldn't change my major (not much, anyhow). Plus, I assumed that if English and art majors could jump right into profitable lines of work, I could too with a Bachelor of Science. (Apparently not. In general, be wary of any success story/anecdote you hear.)
3. "Your first job doesn’t matter at all."
4. "It doesn't matter where you go for undergrad. It's grad school where name recognition matters."
Ummm... who has the extra money (and sanity) for grad school anymore? (See "College Debt Nightmare".)
5. "Major in a subject you're passionate about, one that you truly enjoy studying."
I did. Now what?
6. "Don't be another liberal arts major."
But I thought we were supposed to follow our passions... Either way, I have a Bachelor of Science. I technically was not a liberal arts student, yet I might as well have been since I would have ended up unemployed either way. Actually, some liberal arts majors are really employable. More so than the Bachelor of Science degree I have, apparently.
7. "Stay in school! (Especially if you don’t have a job offer.)"
(See explanation to Lie #5.) Well, undergrad is over for me. But certainly, if you pay for my tuition, living expenses, and a 2 year supply of Red Bull, then I'll gladly go to grad school. Only to risk graduating unemployed again.
8. "Enjoy college before it's over!"
Why? So once it's over you can suffer in unemployment? And when you're graduated and unemployed, you can obsess over every tiny detail from the past 4 years in an endless, futile attempt to pinpoint where exactly you had you gone wrong. It kind of sucks all the enjoyment out of the formerly cheerful memories.
9. "College is a time for finding yourself."
I found myself unemployed. *Insert sad face.*
You have thus been warned.
2. "It doesn't matter what you major in. You'll end up doing something completely different anyway."
I kept hearing this over and over. Art history and film students going directly into finance, English majors into... uh...... Anyway, the common saying that your major does not matter is a lie! In reality, if you have little to no "real" work experience (like most recent college grads) and your major is not highly related to the jobs you are applying for, employers will consider your degree irrelevant and worthless. When you can't get a job, any job, then you won't end up doing anything at all. Oh well.
The only exception to this is if your major is super quantitative and/or technical, and the average Joe or Jane will never be able to amass your amazing skills and knowledge. In other words, your amazing skills and knowledge must be in high demand but in short supply. Only then will you have numerous job opportunities across various positions and industries. It sounds like common sense now, but I couldn't change my major (not much, anyhow). Plus, I assumed that if English and art majors could jump right into profitable lines of work, I could too with a Bachelor of Science. (Apparently not. In general, be wary of any success story/anecdote you hear.)
3. "Your first job doesn’t matter at all."
4. "It doesn't matter where you go for undergrad. It's grad school where name recognition matters."
Ummm... who has the extra money (and sanity) for grad school anymore? (See "College Debt Nightmare".)
5. "Major in a subject you're passionate about, one that you truly enjoy studying."
I did. Now what?
6. "Don't be another liberal arts major."
But I thought we were supposed to follow our passions... Either way, I have a Bachelor of Science. I technically was not a liberal arts student, yet I might as well have been since I would have ended up unemployed either way. Actually, some liberal arts majors are really employable. More so than the Bachelor of Science degree I have, apparently.
7. "Stay in school! (Especially if you don’t have a job offer.)"
(See explanation to Lie #5.) Well, undergrad is over for me. But certainly, if you pay for my tuition, living expenses, and a 2 year supply of Red Bull, then I'll gladly go to grad school. Only to risk graduating unemployed again.
8. "Enjoy college before it's over!"
Why? So once it's over you can suffer in unemployment? And when you're graduated and unemployed, you can obsess over every tiny detail from the past 4 years in an endless, futile attempt to pinpoint where exactly you had you gone wrong. It kind of sucks all the enjoyment out of the formerly cheerful memories.
9. "College is a time for finding yourself."
I found myself unemployed. *Insert sad face.*
You have thus been warned.
Lies People Tell You About College
Take it from someone who graduated during the Great Recession and is still unemployed: NEVER LISTEN TO OTHER PEOPLE'S ADVICE!
Literally, don't even listen when they start talking. Trust me on this one, all those ideas will gradually seep into your mind and seem to make sense. If you get too many opinions thrown at you, you'll just end up confused when it comes to decision-making time. Especially watch out for those well-meaning people who sound like they know what they're talking about. They're probably just trying to make you feel better (and/or justifying their own past decisions). In the end, no one can predict the future, and even "really good" advice won't work for a lot of people.
In no particular order, here are the Lies People Tell You About College:
http://ihatedcollege.blogspot.com/
1. "It doesn't matter where you go to college."
WRONG! It does! Many colleges, even a lot of the nationally ranked and recognized ones, have few to no employer connections and little influence outside of their immediate geographic vicinity. If you can't see yourself settling down and working in a particular area for at least a few years, do not go to school there. Otherwise, you might end up browsing your college's job postings in your junior/senior year and finding no opportunities posted that are more than 10-20 miles away from your school. Also keep in mind that you could end hating any place after truly living there for awhile. Maybe you'll discover that Californians don't actually spend all day at the beach or that New Yorkers don't really spend all night at the bar sipping cocktails.
Whatever the case, you might graduate from college wanting to leave the area. When you realize that your school has no out-of-state employer connections and job postings, you'll have no choice but to place your entire future in the hands of Monster and Craigslist. On those public job sites, instead of competing with dozens (or hundreds) of college students for job openings, you'll be competing with thousands of applicants from all walks of life. The "entry level" job postings will require 2-3 years of work experience. And 90% of your competitors will have many more years of job experience than you. Good luck with that.
I had to learn this the hard way, but here are my unscientific statistics: suppose you can get one interview for every dozen or two applications submitted through your school website. On public job sites, you'll be lucky to get one or two interviews for every couple of hundred applications.
Lie #2 will have to wait until the next post because it's getting late. I need to get up early tomorrow for my summer internship. This marks my 4th internship and counting! (FML.)
Literally, don't even listen when they start talking. Trust me on this one, all those ideas will gradually seep into your mind and seem to make sense. If you get too many opinions thrown at you, you'll just end up confused when it comes to decision-making time. Especially watch out for those well-meaning people who sound like they know what they're talking about. They're probably just trying to make you feel better (and/or justifying their own past decisions). In the end, no one can predict the future, and even "really good" advice won't work for a lot of people.
In no particular order, here are the Lies People Tell You About College:
http://ihatedcollege.blogspot.com/
1. "It doesn't matter where you go to college."
WRONG! It does! Many colleges, even a lot of the nationally ranked and recognized ones, have few to no employer connections and little influence outside of their immediate geographic vicinity. If you can't see yourself settling down and working in a particular area for at least a few years, do not go to school there. Otherwise, you might end up browsing your college's job postings in your junior/senior year and finding no opportunities posted that are more than 10-20 miles away from your school. Also keep in mind that you could end hating any place after truly living there for awhile. Maybe you'll discover that Californians don't actually spend all day at the beach or that New Yorkers don't really spend all night at the bar sipping cocktails.
Whatever the case, you might graduate from college wanting to leave the area. When you realize that your school has no out-of-state employer connections and job postings, you'll have no choice but to place your entire future in the hands of Monster and Craigslist. On those public job sites, instead of competing with dozens (or hundreds) of college students for job openings, you'll be competing with thousands of applicants from all walks of life. The "entry level" job postings will require 2-3 years of work experience. And 90% of your competitors will have many more years of job experience than you. Good luck with that.
I had to learn this the hard way, but here are my unscientific statistics: suppose you can get one interview for every dozen or two applications submitted through your school website. On public job sites, you'll be lucky to get one or two interviews for every couple of hundred applications.
Lie #2 will have to wait until the next post because it's getting late. I need to get up early tomorrow for my summer internship. This marks my 4th internship and counting! (FML.)
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
College Debt Nightmare
High school salutatorian turned NYU Stern alumnus has accumulated over $275,000 in debt pursuing his undergraduate degree.
Read the whole story here:
The Cost of College: Dream school, nightmare debt
http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/25/the-cost-of-college-dream-school-nightmare-debt/
Read the whole story here:
The Cost of College: Dream school, nightmare debt
http://amfix.blogs.cnn.com/2010/05/25/the-cost-of-college-dream-school-nightmare-debt/
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