NETWORK!!

I recently attended an event for my internship. It was called "So...You Want to Work in NY?" and consisted of a panel of recent graduates and alumni who were supposed to speak about their experiences working and living in New York.

While some of their advice was specific to their own career fields in marketing and finance, they provided more general advice for all the listeners, such as living in New York can be expensive so try to find a roommate and live outside the city, like in Brooklyn or Queens.

However, one of the most helpful pieces of advice that they all agreed on and seemed to be the most useful was the importance of networking.

Networking is how most of them found their jobs and they could not stress it enough.

Network! Network! Network!

I guess sometimes it really is about who you know.

Mock Interviews...not as bad as they sound

Hey everyone,

So I finally had my mock interview on Tuesday and it was really helpful. I was really nervous at first. The thought of having to talk to someone knowing they were going to judge and evaluate me and then tell me everything I did wrong at the end of it did not sound appealing to me.

I had gotten a sheet of potential behavioral-based interview questions to help me prepare for the mock interview. I was armed with my greatest strength (working well under pressure) and my greatest weakness (sometimes focusing too much on one task) and had prepared a short little monologue in my head about what to say when the interviewer asked me to tell him/her about myself.

But it turned out I didn't need any of that stuff for this mock interview. My interviewer was a woman who worked at a local radio station and my nerves went away as we started talking. This interview was not a question/answer session but an actual conversation. Of course there were a few of the basic questions such as what my career goals were and what I felt my greatest accomplishment was but she asked none of the questions I had prepared for.

I found this helpful because I realized that each person has their own interviewing technique and different people/industries will look for different qualities in their potential employers. I also asked my interviewer for some helpful hints for having a successful interview and here are some points she made:

1.) Always look your best...wear a skirt or pants suit. It is always better to be overdressed than underdressed on an interview...and also don't overdo it on the accessories

2.) Arrive 5 minutes early.

3.) Bring a nice folder containing copies of your resume in case the interviewer was not able to attain a copy.

4.) Always do your research on the company you are interviewing with and ask a question at the end of the interview to show you've done the research.

5.) Don't fidget

6.) Stay Calm...Just be yourself

Focusing on Me

Now that the Career Fair is over, things with my internship should be a little less hectic and more calm.

Because the internship is with my school's career development center, my boss would like me and my co-interns to focus on our career development as well. At this week's meeting we discussed ways in which to accomplish this and it was decided that we would each take a career assessment with someone in the career development center and attend mock interviews on Tuesday.

I hope that I will get good feedback from the mock interview and it will help for when I go on actual job interviews. This is especially helpful for me because, seeing as I am a senior, I will hopefully be going on quite a few interviews soon.

I am also hoping that the career assessment will help me make a decision as to what career path I want to go into. While I am an English major, there is a lot that I can do with it and I am not 100% sure which direction I would like to go into. I am chronically undecided. I think learning some more about myself will be very helpful in trying to figure out my future.