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.

A Fresh Perspective

Hey all,

It's the start of a new school year and with the start of Fall comes more communications classes. This semester I am venturing out of the classroom and into the field. I have taken an internship with my school's career development center and that will count as my communications class for this semester.

We just finished up putting together our school's fall career fair. As an intern I did a lot of marketing for the event. I designed flyers to hand out and hang around campus and wore a t-shirt the week of to promote the event. The interns also marketed and helped to host a Free Rita's day where we continued to market the career fair.

At the Career Fair I managed the tables when people first walked in making sure students signed up and received a list of all the employers. As a senior I went to walk around the career fair myself. However, I was disappointed in the options. Most of the companies were looking for business majors...people who were majoring in accounting, finance, marketing, etc. When I told the representatives that I was an English major, most of them just looked at me and said they were sorry they didn't have any positions suited for me.

That was somewhat disappointing but I know there are other ways to find a full time job besides a career fair. I guess it's lucky that I'm interning with the career development center.

Multimedia Project

Our class has started a multimedia project and my group will be focusing on the video aspect of multimedia.

The story we will be covering is about professors and their first jobs. What their first jobs ever were and what their first jobs out of college were. We will be interviewing professors on campus and asking about their first jobs and the effect that their first jobs has had on their lives.

I have set up an interview for Friday with one professor.

Challenges: With all the stress of class registration it is hard at this time to find professors with enough time to be willing to be interviewed and our group discussed interviewing in pairs so it is also hard to coordinate schedules.

Controversy of The Falling Man Photo

Seeing the picture of the Falling Man for the first time is awe striking. It shows a man in mid air falling after jumping out of one of the twin towers on 9/11. I find it somewhat ironic that the man looks so relaxed as he is plummeting with the force of gravity.

One of the controversies of the photo is that it exploited a man's death, invaded his privacy, and stripped him of his dignity. I don't know that I agree with that. I think the picture shows a man trying to save his life in the only way he knew how at that point in time, given the situation he was in. It is representative of what a lot people forced themselves to do that day.

I think that, while the photo does not encapsulate the whole event including the people on the ground and the smoke rising out of the building, the photo captures the man trying to save his life and getting those last few breaths of fresh air. It is part of journalism to report the truth and that was a big part of what happened that day. Although the resistance to the image makes sense. It is psychologically scarring to see something like that-especially for a child. It is upsetting and serves as a constant reminder of the heartache and pain of that day. And I agree when the article says that the images are disrespectful to the victim's families, it just makes it more painful.

Captions can be very helpful

I went on to socialdocumentary.com and watched the Street At Night photo essay. While I think the pictures were very good and that each one tells its own story, I found myself asking for more information.

I know the photo essay is called "Street At Night" and the pictures were taken in Austria. But I would like to know exactly where in Austria and if it was just one street that the photographer is shooting. I think it would have been interesting if the photojournalist had taken the pictures of the same spot for about an hour and took pictures of the different people walking by or possible events that may occur on that part of the street.

The captions could be a little more informative, maybe saying if the picture is taken in a bar or place located on the street. However, as a whole I don't know if there is enough information for the continuous slide show to make sense, but each picture tells its own individual story which I found to be interesting.