Career Services - NOT Job Hander-Outers!

This is a cross-post from my PSH blog, I skipped the one I did yesterday, which basicall talked about a new way I’m gonna do this blog topic thing. You can check that out at my PSH blog.

Yesterday there was talk in my office about a news article about someone suing their college because they couldn’t find a job. So, I had to find this article and read it for myself. I hit up Google, and with the little information I knew I was able to find the CNN posting of this article. Alumna sues college because she hasn’t found a job, go check it out. It opens in a new window, so you can read it first and then continue on with my comments.

A quick summary, this 27 year old woman graduated from a New York based college with a B.A. in Information Technology this past April and hasn’t been able to find a job. Therefore she is suing said college for $72,000, covering her tuition for the time she was there plus $2000 for the stress she has endured over the past 3 months of not finding a job.

This entry is going to fall under Chris Brogan’s blog topic number 10, Somebody Has To Say It. I’m sure a lot of people are saying it, but I have quite a bit to say about this.

First, allow me to point out that this person is just one year younger than me, has earned the same degree that I will be getting in May, and has somewhere near the same GPA that I have now (although I am hoping to improve on that over the next year). Saying that, I wouldn’t dream of saying its Penn State’s fault if I don’t walk out of here with a job right away. The economy sucks right now, companies aren’t hiring, the job market is rough, the 2009 and 2010 classes are going to have the hardest time finding jobs in their fields of study. The best we can do is get out there and go to job fairs, submit to listings on-line, through career services, and in the newspapers. Nothing is guaranteed.

Now, onto the article itself.I’m going to pull a few quotes out so you get a feel of the tone of this woman.

“Office of Career Advancement did not help me with a full-time job placement. I am also suing them because of the stress I have been going through.”

“They’re supposed to say, ‘I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?’ They’re not doing that,”

“The office of career advancement information technology counselor did not make sure their Monroe e-recruiting clients call their graduates that recently finished college for an interview to get a job placement. They have not tried hard enough to help me.”

“It doesn’t make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”

So basically, in saying she held up her side of the job search thing, for 3 months, she’s sent resumes and called places but has only gotten 2 interviews that never resulted in an offer, yet the career services people have failed her. And, she believes that her 2.7 gpa and attendance record should have any “reasonable employer” ready to pounce and hire her.

News flash. The office of career services at ANY college or university is there to HELP and GUIDE students in preparing for the job search, the interview, the follow-up, everything they need HELP with to find a job. They do not guarantee that EVERY student will find a job within a week of graduating. They can help with a resume, make sure its written correctly, not overloaded with uneeded information, no typos, etc. Most have some kind of online job search/application system that holds a list of employers for students to search through and contact. This system ALSO does not guarantee a job! Those listings aren’t “clients” of the college or university, those listings are places where students from that college have been hired in the past, or places looking to hire college graduates. Its like Monster, pacentral.com, phillyjobs.com, careerbuilder, or any other job search site that companies can list on. None of those sites say “apply here, job with in a week, guaranteed!”, nor does any career services listing of jobs.

The end of the article, where she was asked if other students should consider suing their schools if they don’t get a job, she says yes.. and that last quote I have up there, about working at payless or mcdonalds not being what someone plans after 4 years of school. Someone HAS to work at those places or they wouldn’t exist. Payless runs because a manager is in charge, and cashiers keep the place organized and customers happy. On the corporate level, Payless exists because someone had the idea for an affordable shoe store, and the business state of mind to make it a success and turn it into a widely known chain of stores. ALL of these people are important and have various levels of education. You can bet the CEO of Payless has a degree, and that he didn’t stumble onto his first job overnight, nor did he become CEO overnight. The same applies to McDonalds – a world wide chain, mind you.

This person sounds like she feels entitled to a job just because she completed her degree. She also feels that the career services office should be calling businesses and telling them to call or hire her. It sounds as if she believes that the purpose of career services is to hand students job offers. That it is the responsibility of the counselors in career services to call places that have openings and get her a job. This is NOT how it works. NOT how ANY type of career services works.

To further make my point, and show an example of someone who HAS stressed over getting a job after getting his degree, I’ll tell you all about my friend and her boyfriend. The boyfriend graduated from Penn State this past may. He’d been applying at different places prior to graduation. Once he graduated, he went home (somewhere north Pa) and worked at the farm he’d worked at for years during the summers he’s been in school. Not what he wanted to do, but what he had to do until he found something. He continued to apply at places in Harrisburg (where my friend is still at Penn State Harrisburg for another year), places near where he lives, places in Maryland (near where he had a summer job before), and I believe places in the upstate NY area near the PA border, near where my friend’s family lives (which isn’t all that far from where his family lives). I don’t know how many total application/resumes he sent out, how many total interviews he went to, but I do know that he DID get a job in Maryland. Yes the search stressed him out, I heard about it through my friend, it took a little while, and he got a couple rejection calls or no call back at all, but he dealt with it and continued. Never did he decide to blame Penn State for the fact he wasn’t getting hired. He kept trying.

My point is this, the job market is tough now and probably will be for a little while. None of us with college degrees are entitled to a job right after graduation. All we are entitled to is the degree we worked for. Some students will get lucky and get hired by their internship, or get hired quickly after visiting job fairs, others might take a little longer to find something. It really depends on the area a person lives in and the area they are willing to work in. Some will relocate to where the jobs are, others don’t want to. It also depends on how hard someone works to find a job, waiting for someone else do do it for them won’t help.

So, Ms Thompson, your law suit is is an example of you taking the easy way out. Putting the blame on someone else, and trying to get them to pay you. You paid for an education, NOT a job. It is true that people that have a degree have a better chance at getting a job, but your diploma is not a golden ticket for a job. You are not the only one attempting to find work. You graduated with a couple thousand other people, they want jobs too, think anyone is handing them work on a silver platter? Get online, Get a newspaper, Get to a job fair, whatever you do, just GET OUT THERE and apply for jobs and STOP waiting for someone else to do it for you!!

And as a side note, please stop making college students look lazy and like we expect things to just be given to us. We aren’t all like that, some of us want to earn what we get. Sometimes we get such crap for just BEING college students, we don’t need someone like you making us look bad.

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Technology That Empowers Me (blog topic)

Getting back my regularly scheduled programming of the next blog topic on the list of Chris Brogan’s 100 blog topics to write about. I’m going to start just using the subject or title in the subject line and slowly phase out (blog topic), all of these entries will still be tagged Chris Brogan and Chris Brogan Blog Topics.. and any other relevant tags.

All technology is empowering. The simple fact that I can write my thoughts about any given topic and post them for the world (ok, internet blogosphere) to see is empowering. Right now I don’t know how many readers I really have, if any are repeat readers, on any of my blogs.. but still, its fun for me to write.

I enjoy all types of new technology. New computers, cell phones, software, websites, plug-ins, pretty much anything. If I can get my hands on it, and its compatible with my laptop, I’ll play with it.. try to figure it out.. and make it useful, or at the very least useful to me.  Like TweetDeck, a program that allows users to check and reply to their twitter messages (and facebook) without having to go into the website. I hardly use it, but it is nice.. facebook and twitter in one area, customizable user interface, nice to put on a flash drive or something if needed.  I hardly use it because I always have a web browser open, and twitter open in one tab (and who knows how many other tabs open).

Last night I helped a neighbor set up Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Last weekend I installed it for them, had to do a little google search and windows patching to go along with it, otherwise it installed like any other program. The set-up is pretty straightforward, but she still wanted my help just in case. Not the most technologically-inclined person. I don’t mind really, gave me a chance to play with the program. I had a version of Dragon a long time ago, I don’t even remember which version. It was good for what I used it for (dictating letters to pen pals), fun to play with. I  hadn’t used it in forever. Her daughter has autism, and uses writing stories and drawing pictures to illustrate them as an outlet. She would either write her stories, or until recently have her sister type them. For reasons unbeknownst to me, she fired her sister. Not quite sure why. So her mom bought this software. The new version has lots of stuff going on in it, really really nice interface, and its customizable. So, I ran through the set-up just to make sure everything worked. It did, so I created another user and her mom ran through it in hopes she’d be able to have her daughter use it without trying to get her to read the prompts to “train” it. Something I hadn’t thought of. But, once her mom got through the training, and went into Word to start playing with it, and got it working.. the daughter was able to talk to it as well. It will probably adapt to her voice as it compares to the original trained voice. That was nice to see. So now, she can dictate her stories right to the computer without having to have a middle person type for her. Talk about technology empowering someone!  Of course, now I want to get a copy so that I can play with the other features, such as opening programs and documents and searching the internet. Not because I can’t do them with a mouse and keyboard, but just to see how it works. And of course, I could dictate my papers and blog entries, but thats really just a bonus. I saw a really good price on this one student software discount website.. I might just be purchasing that.

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I haven’t tumblr’d today.. weird, I haven’t done my usual blog and its almost 3. That gives me something to do between now and 4:30ish. yay. Nothing much going on here, LOTS of baby talk. (babbiiieeesss!!) With 2 preggers in the office, due within weeks of each other, its bound to happen. One is a first time mom (doesn’t wanna know) and the other has an 8 year old son (does wanna know, is finding out today). That being said, everyone in the office (99% women, just 2 men.. all of which are parents except maaaybe 3 of us - 2 of us for sure) is bout ready to explode since she hasn’t called yet ad her appt was at 1. On any given day.. baby names.. baby stories.. when I was pregnant stories.. omg its drivin me nuts. lol

Harry Potter.. and blog topic A Community I Love

I finally saw this movie. Well, in its first weekend, at midnight.. just not the first midnight showing. Overall it was a good movie. I need to see it again to let all the details sink in, I’m sure I missed something in amongst all that was going on. I will be seeing it with my boyfriend at the imax when it comes out the end of the month. I will post some initial reactions and link to them so that no one accidentally gets spoiled. And now, to tie harry potter into todays blog topic from Chris Brogan’s list of 100 blog topics - A Community I Love. If you are a Harry Potter fan, you are part of a huge community of people that span the entire world. It is a community of people where things like age, gender, nationality, religion, and other things like that don’t matter. Everyone has one basic thing that ties them together, and that is the love of a story and set of movies about a boy wizard. The internet is full of fan sites and forums, on which you can find many ways to interact with other Potter fans. I’ve been visiting 2 fan sites for a couple of years, probably the two most well known, Mugglenet and The Leaky Cauldron. I also listen to their respective podcasts, Mugglecast and Pottercast. I don’t think i’ve ever sent in anything to either one, but there is contact info where you can send them questions or comments and they read them and respond during an episode. Its just fun to listen to their comments and discussions. Recently both sites have released their own HP themed social networking pages, Mugglespace and MyLeaky. These are pretty cool. Even though all of the books have been released, and the last movie is filming now, the fan community is far from dying. There is always something to talk about, always some new way to look at things that happened, and believe it or not always something to argue about (in the nicest way possible). These books will be popular for a long time, new generations of kids will read them and discuss them just like we do now. The community will always be there. Unlike some other fan communities I’ve seen go quiet over the years.

Side note about the tumblr aim thing.. you have to come back and edit to put a title in.

Tumblr.. through AIM? Can blogging get any easier? Of course I had to try it out, right away.. soo.. sending…now.

Blog Topics - Should My Town Use Social Media

This is cross-posted from my PSH blog. Middletown is still relevant because it IS where I am right now, but I think you could think of your own city in terms of what I’m saying here about social media and locals.

Keeping in line with my Chris Brogan Blog topics, today I’ll be answering the question- Should my town use social media?

In short, I will say yes. I believe that the everyone can benefit from social media. To make sure I was thinking correctly, I did a quick google search for the term social media, and this is the Wikipedia page that explains social media. I will be using Middletown, Pa as “my town” because that is where I am right now, at work, on campus.  I don’t know all that much about the local area, I don’t live in Middletown. I only know about things that are close to campus.

For starters, I believe that the campus at large could benefit from social media outlets such as Twitter and YouTube. Right now, I know of one Academic School that uses Twitter and a club that has a YouTube Channel.  I have talked to teh secretary in Marketing about using Twitter to get the Weekly (a weekly newsletter sent through email with news about things going on around campus and the psu community) out using Twitter. Right now, there is no Weekly, because its summer. But when the fall semester starts, Weekly will be back. I read it, every week, and I use it to advertise events. I know over half the student body does not read Weekly, I’m willing to wager that they don’t know about it because they don’t check their email as frequently and aren’t sure who or what that email is so they delete it. I am also willing to wager that more people would read it, if there were a Twitter that people could follow that would update when a new Weekly has been sent out, with a link to the catchy-est story. I think it would draw people in, and once they’re there, they’ll look at the rest. Another good use of Twitter would be Admissions or some department to manage a general PSH Twitter… this could be used to advertise things going on around campus or in the community, or events open to the community. We want the community to know we’re here, and that we want to get involved.  A YouTube channel would be more specific, I think Admissions would benefit from using youtube to post little videos of events around campus, such as Undergrad Open House or a quick tour highlighting the main areas of the campus. It could draw people to come see for themselves. The Admissions Office has already decided that blogs are a good idea (you’re reading this one, aren’t you?) to reach a younger and more technological crowd. I thought that some faculty were supposed to keep blogs as well, now that would be interesting.  Another interesting thing, I’ve started to see it on Twitter and the one Harry Potter fan site that I visit, is vlogs, or video blogs (on twitter theses are called bubbletweets). These would be a fun thing to use along with blogs, maybe once in a while post a video blog, so it seems a little more “interactive”. It could also be fun to conduct an ‘interview’ with an Admissions person and post it in vlog form, there is so much that can be done with that for the benefit of campus.

In the wider community, I know the Pizza Hut (sorry.. The Hut) uses their website to allow people to place an order for delivery. Thats not really social media, however, since they’ve already got access to email in their store (to get the orders), they’ve got internet. They could use Twitter to post about lunch specials, daily specials, coupons, new promotions, new menu items, and so on. It could bring them more customers, or repeat customers who may not always think about going out for lunch. A coupon or special might entice me to get out to The Hut for lunch.

The local Giant could do the same thing, throw up an add on twitter about the new sale ad, or a coupon, or a reminder about earning gas points or how to check your gas points online.

Any of the local businesses could make use of twitter to promote their businesses. Being so close to Harrisburg, I’m sure there are local politicians. They could make use of social networks like facebook, or blog sites that lean more toward a professional type blog like WordPress or google’s Blogger, to get their message out to the public. Maybe even a youtube vlog would make local voters feel as if the person is reaching out to them for their vote.

In other blog insight, tomorrow night I am going to Philly to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with my friend. I am looking forward to it, I have been since last November when it was supposed to come out (the earlier twilight release band aid worked for all of a week).

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Blog Topics - How I Embrace My Audience

This is the second in my series of blog topics listed by Chris Brogan on his website. I’m going to try doing these in order, but I was reading through some of the topics and they might require a bit of research or something so I can do them justice.

So, without further ado - Ways I Embrace My Audience

Truth be told, I’m not sure I have an audience. This blog was intended to be a student-written blog about life here at Penn State Harrisburg. The link to this blog is on the Admissions website for all interested students, parents, etc to look at. I do get hits, I can check that, so people ARE reading. I don’t know that I get repeat readers. I do know that I have some faculty members who read it every now and then. But the target audience is future or possible students coming to PSH and/or their parents.

No one tells me what to write about, except “penn state harrisburg”. So, I try to embrace my “audience” by talking about what is going on around campus. I am one of 3 student bloggers, each of us has a different perspective about college and campus life. I am a “non-traditional” (read.. older) commuter student, not unique by any means, but different than my blogger friends. I’m originally from Philadelphia, I’ve been in Harrisburg for just a little over 3 years, so I talk about the differences between the two places. I also talk about my internship/job here on campus, working with the website. Which is a lot of fun. Of course, what kind of student blog would this be if I didn’t talk about classes, professors, clubs and events stuff. Its like.. free advertisement for everything going on here, and a LOT of course talk up. If I really like a class, I really talk a lot about why the class is good or why the professor is good. If a class isn’t so good, I don’t bash the professor or the class, I just talk about why I don’t like the course or professor. I have been lucky with the classes I’ve taken, I’ve had good professors, I may not always like the class itself (like subject matter) but the professors have been good at trying to make it not so bad.  The best example of me trying to be objective about a class I hated, and a professor that was so-so (lol) is that for the last 7 weeks I have been blogging about Calculus that I was taking online.

I try to think about questions that students or parents ask me while on a tour or while I’m doing a student panel, and I try to address those just in case someone reading didn’t think of that question or couldn’t get to the tour or panel or maybe they hadn’t contacted the school for a tour yet and something I’ve already answered makes them call (I can hope!).

If I can think of something Penn State Harrisburg related to write about, no events to advertise, or classes to talk about, like this summer (like now), I usually talk about what I’m doing. I write a lot about Harry Potter and Twilight, or World of Warcraft. It shows the outside-academia me, the more fun me. The things outside of school that keep me sane.

In my “about me” page, and in posts when I think of it, I give my email address for people to contact me with suggestions for topics or questions for me to answer since comments have to be disabled. Not that I have gotten emails, well I got one email from someone who wanted to know if the campus community would be interested in his band. But still, I’m always open to questions and suggestions.

I do have other blogs, a livejournal that I’ve had for years. That “audience” was mostly friends I chatted with, so it was pretty much a “heres how my day/weekend/month went” and so on.. kinda boring I’d guess to anyone who didn’t know me. Lately I have been cross posting these posts, usually with the PSH-specific stuff edited out. Recently I created a Tumblr blog (linked in the sidebar) that I’m cross-posting these blog-topic posts in hopes to get more people. Right now, its just my one friend and I who have them. We need followers. lol Its like twitter only a blog, but its cool.

Check in soon for a blog on Should My Town Use Social Media.

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So lemmie get this straight, mr Gov. The Pennsylvania State University, where public service/community service is not only a HUGE suggestion its a REQUIREMENT for everyone (if clubs want to keep standing, the NEED a community service project each semester!), is not a STATE FUNDED University? Yet, in some legal documents it states that it is, as long as they contribute to state/public service, which they do. And.. AND… with this funding cut, you know what the answer is?? Of course you do, ANOTHER tuition increase. Do you think we can afford it!? Most of the people here, myself included, are using financial aid (grants) and/or student loans. For the summer, I couldn’t GET a loan, I had to PAY out of pocket, for my tuition. Which included borrowing from family and paying back. A LOT of money for ONE class. Over $2300 for ONE CLASS. And you think everyone trying to get a degree can afford to drop FOUR TIMES THAT per semester?? BUT it’ll be MORE than four times that if tuition gets a “major” hike again. So on top of the pressures of passing to graduation, to get a career (skip the “job” because hell, we’ll be paying back student loans till we’re dead), now we’ll have to figure out how to pay for it all. I thought Obama was giving money to universities all over? I thought we, students, were supposed to get a little help from the stimulus. How can you decide that no, those universities don’t need it.. can’t have it.. whatever. Good. Job. Governer. THANKS!

Blog Topics - How I Use Facebook

This is somewhat cross-posted from another blog I write for PSH, but edited somewhat. I want to try to keep up with this at least here. I googled “blog topics” and found this website – chrisbrogan.com and this article that he wrote about blog topics, including a list of 100 things to write about. I am going to try to do them all, starting with number 1. Hopefully I’ll be able to do them all. I will tag these “chris brogan” and “chris brogan blog topics”.

First topic – How I Use Facebook.

I started using facebook about 3 years ago when I first came to Penn State Harrisburg and joined Lion Ambassadors. One of the get to know you activities was to find each other on facebook, so I had to create one.  I found it to be really neat, and it seemed to lean more towards being useful than just being fun. So the first group of friends I had on there were my fellow LAmbs. Throughout the year facebook was used to create groups for some committees and advertise events using the events feature (which allows people to respond with whether they are coming or not). I still use the groups and events features for boobies ball (which I am in charge of).

I have found a lot more people, former classmates, new classmates, friends, family, etc and a lot of people have found me. Just a few months ago, someone from my high school who is in charge of our reunion found me. And through her, people she had already found were then able to find me. Our 10 year reunion should have been last year, but before using the internet it was hard for her to track people down just using the yearbook and people she still kept in touch with. The last time I saw the “mia” list, it was down to 15 or so people, which is really good. Thats the power of facebook.. and persistance… and networking.

I’d like to say its all academic and networking, but its not. If you ask someone what they look at most on facebook, you’ll get one of two common answers – status updates and photos. These are my two favorites. Status updates can be entertaining. Photos, well, the comments or captions can be entertaining. And its always nice to see what people look like that I haven’t seen in 11 years or more. Its also an easy way to share pictures from club events. Since I  manage the websites for the 2 clubs I am in, I always want pictures but don’t always remember to take them or get enough variety. So, I have an agreement with one of the members of Lion Ambassadors who is the “historian” therefore takes LOTS of pictures of EVERYTHING, that when she posts them to facebook I will steal.. um.. borrow.. and put them on our website (and totally credit her!)

There are also tons of apps and games out there, I get requests every day for different things. There are only certain ones that I use though. Right now I’m kinda hooked on Farm Town (if you have it, neighbor me!), its this little game that lets you plow fields and plant seeds and harvest crops to earn fake money to buy more seeds for your farm and other goodies. You can also send gifts (of plants, trees, animals, etc) to your friends or neighbors in Farm Town. Its silly, but fun. I also use Pieces of Flair, which are buttons that display on a “cloth” in the sidebar of your profile. Most of my flair is twilight related or harry potter, some penn state, some baseball, lol thats fun too.. I haven’t looked recently for any new flair, I should do that. There are some harry potter apps there somewhere on my profile, under the “boxes” tab. I liked this update (when they added tabs) because it neatens up the front page of the profile.. where the wall is and all the messages people leave you. There is also an app for courses that I try to keep updated, in case any of my classmates use facebook I’ll be able to add them – its always nice to have a classmate just a click and a facebook message away.

There are a bunch of “fan” pages too, where you can become a fan of things or people. I am a fan of a bunch of things/people. Some of them totally real or realistic, other things kind of silly. But, its nice to meet other fans. My aunt, who is an author (Isilwath) uses a fan page to promote her book, and give updates to her fans. Its awesome.

So that is how I use facebook – to keep in touch with people, to find people, and for entertainment.

To find me on facebook, click here.

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