Your Job Search
Job Choices Magazine-NACE's digital magazine
How Employers Hire
- They hire in-house, tapping current employees, volunteers, and interns.
- They network through colleagues and professional organizations.
- They post openings on their own web site, through professional organizations, and advertisements or job listings web sites.
- They partner with specific colleges and universities (like UMass Amherst!) as they have great results and really like the caliber of our graduates. Ask us about our partner employers.
- Ultimately, employers hire who they know and who they like. Your task during a job search is to get known and to be liked!
How Most People Actually Get Jobs
- They are hired or promoted from within the company. They already work onsite in some capacity, as full-time emplyees, interns, volunteers, or in part-time positions.
- They talk to everyone in an effort to make connections (networking).
Structuring Your Job Search
Job searching will consume a lot of your time and energy. Knowing how to best use your time will help you to be successful and avoid burn-out.
- Develop Experience: This is where roughly half of your time and energy should go. Gain experience in your field through internships and co-ops, volunteering, campus groups, and professional organizations.
- Network: This goes hand-in-hand with developing experience. Spend a quarter of your time contacting the people you know for professional contacts, support, and advice.
- Research: This should take up less than a quarter of your time. Research five to ten organizations or companies for whom you would like to work. Bookmark their Web sites and check their job postings frequently.
- Use General Career Web sites: Bookmark five to ten job listing sites, and spend some of your remaining time checking them for new postings.
