Because I've been doing to job search for quite some time... coughMAY2010cough... I feel that I can give some advice to others doing the dreaded job search. The best piece of advice I received while searching was to get involved with the local Chamber of Commerce. I contacted the Central Bucks Chamber of Commerce saying that I was just looking for experience and maybe an internship if they could offer that and they were so nice and let me help out with some events and sit in on meetings to network with people.
One meeting I went to was the new member orientation and a membership directory was passed out. I decided to kind of "spam" email everyone in the directory that did anything pertaining to PR, event planning and marketing. I said I was an intern at the Chamber and was looking for full-time employment and attached my resume. Many of the people responded; some said they had nothing available but would keep me in mind, others gave me advice and other places to look, some gave me the names of other people to contact, and ONE said "perfect timing, my PR assistant just left." Perfect, it was all worth my time! That's how I found my part time Public Relations job and through my boss there and a friend from college, I found my new full time job!
It's ALL about who you know, and networking in this job search, and a Chamber of Commerce is a great place to do so. Each meeting is a group of diverse people working together. There could be engineers, architects, nutritionists, and marketing consultants all serving on the same committee, all of whom you'll meet if you attend the meetings.
While job searching, I also did not use the traditional "job search" websites. I stopped using Career Builder before I even graduated college because there were so many spam AND scam job postings, it was annoying to weed through them. Monster is nice because you can "browse" jobs in your area instead of just searching for them. Idealist.org had a lot of jobs I was interested in pertaining to PR, event planning and marketing and I applied to a few there, and even Craigslist was a good resource for me. Not all companies post on job sites though and you have to remember to go directly to company's websites to see their job listings; I had a list of about 15 company websites I'd visit on a regular basis to check the listings.
I hope some or even ONE of my tips help someone. Do you have any job searching tips? I'd love to hear about them!
Congrats lady! They are lucky to have you. :) This is kind of an obvious job tip, and just about sums up everything you wrote, but be proactive and keep your head up! So many people think they will find a job by applying to a few positions here and there. In today's day and age, that is so not the case, especially when employers are receiving hundreds of resumes daily. It's important to stay on top of your game and stay positive.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much! And YES staying positive should have been my #1 tip, thanks for adding that!
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