Career Development: Strategies and Technologies for Career and Life Balance,Used

From the Inside Flap Preface Today's market is ripe for the wellprepared 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 rsums 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 timeconsuming process. It requires fulltime 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 fulltime search or limit yourself to a 20 people a week parttime 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) rsum; when you identify management levels to consider your rsum; when you consider just what kind of rsum 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 email 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 attendingknowledge, 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. Twentyfour 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'