I'm pleased to share this guest posting, from Steven Rothberg, on a very relevant topic!
Much is written about the top employers for mothers, college students, recent graduates, minorities, and other demographic groups. Yet how useful are these lists?
Candidates should look at three factors when deciding on which jobs to go after: their competencies, interests, and values. What are you good at? What do you like to do? And what is important to you? It is unlikely that a list of the biggest employers of college students and recent graduates such as the one at
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com/weblog/archives/2006/01/top_500_employe.php
are going to shed light on the first two categories, yet many candidates look to these types of lists and blast off their resumes just to the first listed. Other candidates will define their career goals around their skills, and not consider that they may be good at something but not be interested in it. For example, I would probably make a pretty good accountant as I'm good with numbers and very detail oriented. Yet I love selling and business development so being a stereotypical accountant would not be a good fit for me.
Other candidates focus on what is of interest to them and neglect to consider their values. A good friend of mine graduated from law school and was doing securities work for a large law firm. He said that he loved his work but hated what it was doing to him as he was always working. In his first two years, he took five days off and that included weekends. Yet he's a guy who loves to bike and canoe in the wilderness. You can't do that from behind a desk at 10pm on a Saturday evening.
Once you've made lists of your competencies, interests, and values, look at industries, organizations within those industries, departments and divisions within those organizations, and job opportunities with those departments and divisions to see which opportunities best line up with you. We all spend far too many hours working to be stuck in a job that we have, and you will hate your job if it does not line up with your competencies, interests, and values. Even if it is with one of the top employers of college students and recent graduates.
-- Steven Rothberg is the President and Founder of CollegeRecruiter.com at
http://www.CollegeRecruiter.com, a leading career site used by college students who are searching for internships and recent graduates who are hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities
