Career

The Online Internship Search

by Guest Blogger / October 5, 2011 / 3 comments

The Online Internship Search

A new school year has begun and for many college students, it’s time to start thinking about internships. Interning can be the best way for you to get your foot in the door at a company or organization you’re interested in working for; it can also give you valuable work experience and a taste of life in the workplace.

Just as there’s fierce competition for jobs in the current economy, the search for an internship can be daunting as well. The key to finding the right internship for you often includes consulting your school program director and campus career center. But for students who are earning online degrees and don’t have immediate access to a career center, or for students want to take internship selections into their own hands, the Internet can be an indispensable resource.

Internship databases

Finding internships online takes work and attention to detail, but it can be done. Sites like Internships.com are designed to bring potential employers and aspiring interns together, similar to job search engine Monster. Interships.com also has a blog where interns and employers can write about their experiences, a Career Navigator to help students find the right fit for internships, and an iPhone app for students on the go. And One Day One Internship features a different company every day that’s looking for interns. They also allow students to sign up for a daily e-mail with internship opportunities.

Other internship search engines include InternWeb and Monster College, Monster’s comprehensive site that helps college students prepare for the workforce and features businesses looking for interns. You can find internship opportunities by searching mainstream job engines as well.

A day in the life

Sometimes reading the experiences of other interns can give you some insight into your own internship or search. Blogs like Teen Vogue’s Intern Blogger give readers a first-hand view of what it’s like to work for a world-class publication. Interns share their education histories, their favorite things about interning, and the challenges they face in the fast-paced world of fashion magazines. Indiana handbag maker Vera Bradleyalso has a blog for their interns, where interns and employees reveal the daily life in the office. Both blogs are rather specific to their industries, but they also give you a glimpse into how interns blend into company culture and make a real difference at the businesses for which they work.

Finding your own way

Landing the perfect internship for you should start with a self-inventory of your current skill set. Your current major may not lay a direct path to your career, but your internship will give you an idea of where you might best fit once you enter the workforce. So, before you begin searching for internships, make a list of your strengths, weaknesses, and interests. Doing this could save you the headache of enduring an internship you don’t enjoy, and it could help you discover new interests.

Internships are often challenging and rewarding—and they should be. But the most important part of doing an internship is finding one that’s best for you. Take the time to search for the right one, and it could also be the first step to a fulfilling career.

Jesse blogs at the Professional Intern, and she also shared with us her thoughts on going back to (grad) school. Thanks Jesse!

What are your tips for finding internships? I managed to land a great one by cold-emailing magazine editors. I’ll devote a post to that in the future! – Emma

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Back from Europe; Ready to Work

by Emma / October 3, 2011 / 6 comments

Back from Europe; Ready to Work

Flowers in Oxford, England

It’s been a whirlwind month. Seven cities, 30 days. Now I’m back home, and starting work at a new job tomorrow. Whew!

Some things I learned abroad:

1. David Hasselhoff was huge in East Germany.

2. Professional Londoners dress very, very well.

3. I like duck. To eat.

But now I’m back, and focused on work. As always with starting a new job, I’m looking forward to my first day with nerves and excitement. What’s your best advice for starting a new job?

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On Women Competing with Women, from Bossypants

by Emma / September 21, 2011 / 7 comments

On Women Competing with Women, from Bossypants

I finished Bossypants, and I laughed the entire way through. Mere pages in, I couldn’t get over how unbelievably funny it was. Tina Fey’s description of her childhood is very entertaining.

Bossypants also has a modern feminist viewpoint. A frequent theme is that, yes, there are still gender inequities in the workplace.

Fey has observed across her career an attitude that there are a finite number of spaces in a given workplace for women, and that women must compete with each other to get these spots. On that point, she has some words of wisdom for to offer:

On Women Competing with Women, from Bossypants

It’s a good lesson to take away.

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Infographic: 10 Growing Career Fields

by Emma / September 6, 2011 / 4 comments

There’s some good info in this cute infographic on career fields that are projected to grow into 2016. Most unexpected? Performance Makeup Artist. Where did that come from? The others aren’t very surprising.

One funny thing: On the “Extinct Jobs” list, there is Elevator Operator. Except, until a few months ago, a friend had an elevator operator in her building. The building only recently switched to an automated elevator. So… maybe not entirely extinct, yet!

Infographic: 10 Growing Career Fields
Created by: Online Graduate Programs

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Hating Your Job Runs in the Family

by Emma / August 25, 2011 / 0 comments

Hating Your Job Runs in the Family

I loathe studies like this. They make life appear preordained, when I’d love to think we have more control over our emotions and attitudes.

Nevertheless, according to the Journal of Applied Psychology, hating your job runs in families.

From the Juggle:

Being born with certain genes sparks an inclination to be happier at work, while other genes are linked to lower job satisfaction, says the study by Zhaoli Song, Wendong Li and Richard Arvey at the National University of Singapore. This counters conventional thinking, that misery on the job can be blamed on lousy working conditions, low pay, mistreatment by the boss or a poor career fit.

The current thinking is that around 27% of our job satisfaction is based on inherited traits.

The genes linked to poor job satisfaction are also connected to higher rates of depression and lower self-esteem. I wonder if taking steps to mitigate the tendency toward depression and low self-esteem would also help with job satisfaction?

In any event, my dad has always seemed fairly satisfied with his job, while my mom has struggled to find work that makes her happy (or at least, not unhappy). Maybe that means, for me, it’s a wash. But I don’t know… is a “wash” a thing in genetics? Probably not.

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Don’t Quit Your Day Job before Weighing Risks

by Emma / August 22, 2011 / 6 comments

Dont Quit Your Day Job before Weighing Risks

The irony of this post following on the heels of the inspirational startup quotes post is not lost on me. Just giving a dose of the bitter with the sweet.

In a depressing piece, the New York Times featured cautionary tales of professionals who gave up their steady, lucrative (though perhaps mind-numbing) jobs in law, banking, or marketing to pursue their dreams. Such dreams included starting wedding planning, chocolate-making, and pottery businesses.

In story after story, the Times showed that following your dreams isn’t a golden ticket to happiness and success.

As for a lawyer-turned-Greek foodie:

Six days a week, she wakes up at 5:30 a.m. (“before most lawyers”) to start baking. Instead of pushing paper, she hoists 20-pound bags of flour, gets burned and occasionally slices open a finger. On Mondays, when the shop is closed, she does bookkeeping and other administrative tasks.

And here’s the tale of another quickly disillusioned entrepreneur:

In January, after 12 years in software, [Charan Sachar] quit to devote himself full time to his online store, Creative With Clay, which sells stoneware he designs and makes. (Last May, he told his story on Etsy’s “Quit Your Day Job” blog.)

Now, instead of spending his free time absorbed in visions of clay, he spends as much as 70 percent of his day on administration. He is not only his own boss, he is his own accountant, sales director, marketing manager and shipping clerk. That leaves little time to enjoy the hobby he loves.

Charan’s tale reminds me of an early post I wrote on why loving your hobby doesn’t mean you should turn it into a career.

In perhaps its most insightful observation to date, the Times noted: “Former white-collar workers are also surprised by the demands of manual labor.”

Basically, the article tell us that going it alone is hard, especially when you’re used to leaning on coworkers and company support systems. But a wise entrepreneur knows this, and has already done extensive research on what the risks and obstacles are to becoming self-employed. If you needed to a dose of reality to shatter your dreams of instant entrepreneurial success, the Times has you covered!

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Women Less Likely to Find Jobs through Contacts

by Emma / August 16, 2011 / 1 comment

Women Less Likely to Find Jobs through Contacts

According to a study, men use social connections — i.e., networking — to find jobs at a much higher rate than women.

Looking at a dataset of 12,000 people, men with specialized work experience were 12 percent more likely to find a job through informal recruiting — social connections — than formal job channels.

Women with specialized backgrounds, on the other hand, were no more likely to find jobs through informal recruiting than through formal channels.

The author of the study, Dr. Steve McDonald, suggests that this difference may explain some of the pay disparities for women, as high-wage, managerial jobs are often filled through an informal recruiting process — that seems to favor men.

“Previously, researchers have argued that women face lower-wage payoffs than men with similar work experience because the women have fewer opportunities to develop job skills,” McDonald says. “But this study suggests that a lack of useful social connections may also be driving the gender wage gap.”

The next step, the Dr. McDonald says, is to figure out why women get fewer benefits from social connections.

[via Psych Central]

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Unpaid Internships

by Emma / August 11, 2011 / 9 comments

Unpaid Internships

One of my favorite design bloggers — Bri of DesignLoveFest — recently posted a notice that she had an internship position available.

Bri has her hands in a bunch of amazing projects. She’s the creative force behind Rue Magazine, she has a fabulous blog, and she does freelance design work. Seems like a budding designer or editorialist could benefit greatly from an internship with Bri.

Problem is, the internship — 20 hours a week — is unpaid. And among other things, it requires “nitty gritty things like managing finances with accounting software, keeping up with correspondences with professional etiquette, and lots of research.” Some commenters pointed out that this may run afoul of the Department of Labor’s unpaid intern guidelines. Namely, the requirement that “the intern does not displace regular paid workers and that the employer ‘derives no immediate advantage’ from the intern’s activities — in other words, it’s largely a benevolent contribution to the intern.”

A battle erupted in the comments, over whether it was appropriate to bring up the Department of Labor guidelines, whether the internship was actually violating the guidelines, and the value of unpaid internships in general (similar to the comments on a Design Sponge post about hiring interns). Many, many commenters wrote about how enormously helpful unpaid internships are in developing skillsets and — more importantly — gaining contacts in the field you want to enter.

In college, I spent a summer with a popular women’s magazine in New York as an editorial intern. Although it was paid, we earned minimum wage, which doesn’t go very far in the Big Apple. I was glad that it was a paid internship, though, because it signaled to me that our time was valued. It was a true job. That said, I probably would have still taken the position if it were unpaid.

Another thing to consider is that the nature of the paid v. unpaid debate may change based on whether college students, grad students, or non-students are the potential interns.

Apart from what the law is (you can check out a NY Times article on the legal guidelines), what are your thoughts on unpaid internships in general? Do you think the benefits outweigh the lack of compensation, or do you think unpaid internships just give employers an excuse to avoid hiring paid employees?

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Marissa Mayer on Why More Women Aren’t in Tech

by Emma / August 10, 2011 / 5 comments

Marissa Mayer on Why More Women Arent in Tech

photo credit: Jim Rice

The Huffington Post’s new editorial section Women in Tech is excellent. I first happened upon it when reading this article on Rent the Runway’s CEO.

In a new profile on Marissa Mayer in the HP, Vice President at Google, Mayer addresses the dearth of women in tech jobs. She blames the low representation of women on the stereotype we associate with techies:

Mayer also has concerns about the relatively low number of women working in tech. She estimates that just 15 to 17 percent of Silicon Valley engineers are women, who make up less than 20 percent of all engineering and computer science majors in the US.

Mayer blames the dearth of female programmers and Internet entrepreneurs in part on tech’s image problem. She argues that growing up, girls are offered a narrow stereotype of what it means to be a “geek” — something akin to the bespectacled loner who spends hours typing away at a screen. Attracting more women to the Silicon Valleys, Alleys and Roundabouts of the world requires doing away with those stereotypes and showing young women that techies don’t have to love video games. Mayer herself is no ordinary geek: she’s a former ballet dancer with a penchant for cupcakes and the fashion designer Oscar de la Renta.

* * *

As women become more familiar with technology, Mayer predicts they will become more curious about it, which in turn will attract more of them to computer science and engineering.

What do you think of Mayer’s theory? Growing up, I never thought of being a tech entrepreneur as an option. I’m not sure why. I know that I felt that tech entrepreneurs had a skill set and abilities that I didn’t have, and never would. I never considered why I felt that avenue was closed to me. Perhaps I just didn’t want to explore it.

Knowing what I know now — the exponential growth of the tech world, the ability of tech-oriented people to start their own companies with relatively nothing — I would have focused my energies on a career in tech rather than law. For now, though, I need to pay off my law school debt.

What about you? Did you ever consider a career in tech? Do you ever wish you had followed a different career path?

[via Huffington Post]

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Stay Safe During Business Travel

by Emma / July 27, 2011 / 4 comments

Stay Safe During Business Travel

On the heels of more Dominique Strauss-Kahn allegations, the New York Times points out that hotels can be the site of sexual assaults for guests as well as staff members.

Women traveling alone can be particularly vulnerable. As one example, the Times article mentions a woman who was attacked by a man in a hotel’s business center after she turned her back to him.

Experts offer some tips for women traveling alone:

  1. Be alert when drinking at a hotel bar: “[W]omen should be aware that date rape drugs could be placed into a drink; [the expert] recommended coasters from Drink Safe Technologies, which detect some of these drugs.”

  2. Rather than drink at the hotel bar, order a glass of wine to your room. Request that a woman bring it up.

  3. Don’t allow staff members to bring items into your hotel room. Meet them at the door and tell them, “I’ll take it from here.”

  4. For extra security, wedge a rubber door stopper under your door.

These tips may seem extreme, but I’m going to implement them next time I’m traveling alone. I think it’s a small price to pay for security and peace of mind.

[via the New York Times]

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