Someday these job-related entries will stop. But for now, poll time.

[areyououtthere]

I'm curious about where my peers pick up what they know about job-hunting. I hear a lot of general laments about how liberal arts education leaves people ill-prepared for careers that aren't academia, unsure of what other options exist, and I've certainly spent enough time being bitter about my own relative inexperience. At the same time, though, I

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[crystalpyramid]

Résumé: College career services, believe it or not. They gave me a handout with formatting and a couple samples, and I went in later and met with someone in Career Services and she gave me a bunch of advice and suggestions. The suggestions were pretty good, about being concise and consistent. This is pretty much the only thing they were ever useful for. I've occasionally supplemented that information with stuff found online, but haven't had any other real sources of information. I think once I had carpenter look over my resume and give a few small pointers, but it was mostly done at that point. I've tried to give my sisters more support about résumé-writing than I got - I hope my advice has been good.

Cover letters: I think this was covered in the Career Services packet, too, but I've never really talked to anyone about it, and most of what I've been doing is self-taught off the internet.

Parsing job ads: Definitely self-taught, but I haven't found this to be challenging. Of course, it helps that I'm in a high-need branch of a high-need field, so it's reasonable to just apply for everything.

Job interviews: Self-taught, with a refresher course from the Carney Sandoe workshop for new teachers this spring, which largely confirmed stuff I'd already figured out. I think there was also some stuff on Carney Sandoe and other websites for teacher candidates with advice on how to act in interviews. That first job fair I went to, before ERG folded, was really useful for interview practice, as were the job fairs for the DOE my first year teaching - having a lot of interviews back-to-back, fairly low pressure on each one, is a really good way to get used to fielding typical interview questions. Also, maybe I'm crazy, but I enjoy job interviews, at least if they're for jobs I'd actually like.

My parents are basically useless, although they will occasionally give advice or forward me links they think will be helpful. My mom's résumé is embarrassingly bad and I wish she'd let me redo it for her.