By Jessica Wagner
Many schools online offer a liberal arts degree preparing graduates to later become career counselors. Career counseling could not only save others financially, but help them live the financial lives they have always dreamed of living.
Unfortunately, several traditional colleges today either offer limited career counseling services or none at all to their post-grads. This leaves grads searching for employment on their own through various online search engines.
Guest Post by Philip Reed
Even at the best of times, mounting a job search can be intimidating and often, disheartening. With today’s unemployment numbers and still shaky economy, a job search can be downright terrifying.
It’s important that you don’t let the whole process of it overwhelm you by taking it one day, one resume, or one interview at a time. If you can remain focused on the individual tasks required you will present yourself to prospective employers in a far more confident and positive manner. The more confident that you appear; the higher your chances are for a successful interview and—ultimately—a job offer.
New graduates are facing a difficult road in getting that first job. If you’re just out of college, or will be in the next year or two, your major area of study will be a critical factor in both how quickly you land a job and how much you will earn.
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By John Durfee
One of the last things you worry about when coming home from serving your country in a time of war is post-service employment. Unfortunately, there is still a bit of a struggle when it comes to finding a job with ease outside of our armed forces for our veterans.
Despite incentives to hire our country’s vets, there is still about a 15% unemployment rate among returning vets out of the more than two million Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. That’s unacceptable in my book. While combat training may not translate seamlessly to the civilian job market back home, there just might be more similarities than you’d think.
To begin, you will no doubt be highly suited to a career in some facet of law enforcement or security. Both physically and mentally, your training with the military has already prepared you for this and it might be something that interests you; something you can transition to quite easily. But if you’re looking to go in an entirely new direction, here are a few tips and guidelines to keep in mind:
By Kevin M
As if the poor economy, high taxes, too much regulation, advancing technology and globalization weren’t doing enough to torpedo the job market, there’s yet another obstacle to finding a job, one of a more personal nature and it’s having a bigger impact all the time.
It’s the background check.
Background checks now go farther and wider than they ever have, but it’s happening against the backdrop of a time when life is getting uglier and more complicated than ever for tens of millions of people.
It’s getting more difficult for a job seeker to pass a background check; in fact, at times it looks like a conspiracy. With computerization and the increased availability of data at progressively lower cost, more information is available about us than ever before. And unfortunately, economic, legal and social conditions are combining to make it more difficult than ever for the average person to pass employment muster.
Consider some of the information employers seek in background checks against the state of the world we now live in.
By Kevin M
There’s a popular line of reasoning that once you’ve lost your job and you’re collecting unemployment benefits that you’re new “fulltime job” is finding a new fulltime job. You have the motivation (being jobless) and at least some income to cover you until you find something else, so this makes sense.
But what if you were to approach the situation a bit differently, say by recognizing your time of unemployment as a valuable opportunity to experiment? You can do that through various forms of employment—temporary jobs, contract work, and part time—and even though you’ll lose some or all of your benefits for a time, it may be worth doing.
Here are some reasons why taking at least a part time job may be better than staying home and spending all of your time looking for a new full time job.
Guest Post by OOYR Reader Angela Shirley
I am hoping that my story will keep some other “laid off” person ENCOURAGED. Although it took 2 years to find another job after being “laid off” – I never stopped looking.
At age 50, I lost my job working in a school for juvenile delinquents. While I was relieved, as it was not a job I enjoyed or planned on doing for a long time – being laid off was both a blessing and a challenge.
This was my second time being laid and this time I was prepared with savings which supplemented my unemployment benefits.
For the first few months, I enjoyed my blessing and really did not start to look for a job even though it was required in order to continue to receive unemployment benefits. I did the minimum of 2 job searches each week on two different days of each week. But deep down, I was hoping no one would call me for an interview and that is exactly what happened.
By Kevin M
Even with hints of economic recovery in the air, getting a hired into a new job has never been harder, even for the fully qualified. I know many people who are or have been on extended periods of unemployment in the past year and one common theme is that the usual methods of getting hired aren’t working.
Getting a job is largely about getting noticed, and the best ways to do that are to approach employers in ways most other job seekers aren’t using. Try one or more of these and see if your luck doesn’t improve.
By Kevin M
Work for free—preposterous on the surface, I’ll admit! But it’s an effort that could pay off in a big way, especially in this economy. Think of it as though you’re starting a new business and you’re working to build a customer base by giving out free samples.
Just so you don’t think this is just an idea I heard somewhere and decided to write about, here’s my story…
By Kevin M
Now might not be the best time to make a job or career change, but does that mean you have to sit where you’re at and just tough it out until better times come along and open up the doors of opportunity? Well, don’t go quitting your job, but there’s plenty you can (and should) do right now to get yourself prepared for the day when…
Start preparing yourself now for the place you want to be when the economy starts to creep back—many of the best opportunities will come as the elevator begins to rise, and pre-positioning yourself for that moment is something you don’t have to wait to start.
By Kevin M
One of the driving purposes of OutOfYourRut.com is the identification of career and business opportunities, primarily for people engaged in one line of work but seeking entry into another.
In that vein, a noteworthy article appeared on Yahoo! Finance yesterday, 10 Jobs With High Pay and Minimal Schooling Required! written by Michael King. The article lists 10 careers that don’t require a bachelor’s degree for entry, but pay wages which are generally above average.
There are several articles with this same theme here on OutOfYourRut.com, either as full reprints or by excerpt, but in this time of career transition for so many people, it’s one worth revisiting often. The jobs appearing on each list tend to be at least somewhat different from one list to another, either because of the time of compilation, or the orientation of the source.
