Tag Archives: careers

Using Social Media to Find a Job

September 9, 2014 Suzanne Shaffer

These days the recruitment process has moved online, which includes a shift to social media. Not only do employers browse social profiles when deciding who to interview, they’ll also use social channels to advertise opportunities. This media can help you or it can hinder you when trying to land that dream job, whether it’s for a learning mentor or a care worker, marketing professional or a skill tradesperson. Here’s how:

Private versus Public

There’s a strong chance employers will try to learn more about you via your social media profiles. For this reason, your public profile should convey the right impression. If anyone and everyone can view your Facebook or Twitter profile pictures, make sure they’re professional. Pictures that reveal aspects of your private life show you drinking excessive amounts of alcohol or generally just clowning around are best reserved for friends only. This also applies to the information you choose to publicly display on your social profiles. Do you want potential employers to be able to see your relationship status, the bands you like or even your birthday? If there’s any information you don’t feel entirely comfortable with employers seeing, switch your settings to private.

An opportunity to network

Many companies use social media to head hunt as well as recruit. Setting up a professional profile can get you noticed. At the same time, you don’t have to wait for employers to approach you. LinkedIn is an excellent networking tool and there’s no harm in trying to connect with companies or organisations you might like to work for in the future.

Creating the right impression

There are, of course, social profiles you might want potential employers to see. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you’re likely to use it to network and hunt for jobs. This makes it essential for your profile to create the right impression. Choose a professional-looking photo. If in doubt, ask a (trusted) friend or family member which photo to use. You should also update your profile regularly, ensuring it showcases your talents and experience. List all of your skills and try to get LinkedIn references from past employers. Your social profile could be your first impression—and you won’t get the chance to make another one.

Employers advertise through social media

Advertising positions online is commonplace nowadays. As well as updating their website with job details, many employers add vacancies to their social media feeds. If you want to be amongst the first to know when new jobs come up, connect with employers you might like to work for via their primary social channels. LinkedIn is particularly useful because you can receive email updates of jobs in your sector. Some sites are even area-specific, such as S1Jobs, and following their social feeds you can plan your next career move within a particular part of the country. Perhaps you’d like to work with children and young people by becoming a learning mentor. You could use social media to showcase your experience to potential employers and hunt for jobs.

Whatever career path you want to follow, social media can help you land that dream job if you use it wisely. Make sure all the public information you display gives the best impression.

careers, parenting

Helping Your Child Choose the Right Degree

August 14, 2014 Suzanne Shaffer

It’s an important time when your child is just about to finish high school and is working out where he or she would like to go next. You want to let him or her make their own decisions and follow their heart, but you also want to ensure he or she is making the best decisions for future life and career. For example, when looking at degrees to study, maybe you want her to choose the chemical engineering degree, but she wants to complete an arts degree. It’s a real minefield: deciding whether to interfere or to let her make her own decisions unaided to choose the right degree.

You Know Your Child

You’ve seen him or her grow up, you’ve watched them play with other children and develop into the young adult they are today. You know them inside out, probably better than they know themselves. Children do value their parents’ opinions, even if they won’t show it. You’re allowed to help.

Find Resources

You can give your child the resources they need to think through their own decision making. Send them links to quizzes online which ask them about their interests and suggests routes for them based on their answers. Find websites aimed at school leavers which outline career paths and which courses are needed to get to where they want to go. And then let them soak up the information themselves.

Go With Them

Take your child to university open days, trial study days, and guided tours. You can walk around with them, let them soak up the atmosphere and imagine what attending these places might be like. There will be talks about courses so your child can learn what their chosen course will be like, along with taster sessions.

Help Them Find Opportunities

If your child still isn’t certain, take a top-down approach: find out what career areas interest them, and then work out how they can get there. There are many work experience and internship opportunities available: even a couple of weeks in a role will give them a taste for whether they would enjoy a career in a certain sector. Do you have any friends who could offer them work experience or shadowing opportunities for a couple of weeks over the summer?

Ask Them Questions

Sometimes it’s helpful just to sit down with your child and talk. Ask them what makes them tick, what gets them excited about life, and where they see themselves in ten or twenty years? Bring along a pen and paper and make notes or draw a mind map: this is a great opportunity to be supportive and help them find a direction without forcing them where you think they shouldgo.

Support Them

It might be that your child wants to study a subject, and you don’t agree that this is the best decision for them. It’s okay to tell them how you feel, but ensure you’re thinking of their best interests: it is as important for them to study a subject about which they feel passionate, as it is important for them to study a subject with excellent career prospects.

Most of all: good luck to your child on their future career. With some guidance, they will make a decision which suits them and brings them to the place they want to go, wherever that is.

college guidance, college planning, parenting

Exploring career options with your college-bound teen

May 7, 2013 Suzanne Shaffer

Kids either know what they want to do with their lives or they don’t. Some kids might even know what they want to do with their lives at an extremely early age, which makes it a lot easier for parents. However, a lot of kids have no idea. In this case, it is up to the parents to work with their teen to start exploring career options and even gauge what some of their interests might be. It is crucial for parents to start before the child enters their first year of college, because this will determine what classes they should be taking and even what major they should declare. Here are some ways to explore career options with your college bound teen.

Assess their strong points

First off, assess what some of their strong points are. If they are good at writing and they are interested in language, there are a plethora of jobs tailored for them. If they are good at writing, this doesn’t immediately mean that they have to become a novelist or English professor, but they can also land a job in communications, advertising and any other field where having a grasp of language makes them an asset. So make sure you find out what your teen’s strengths are in order to go through the list of available job positions within a certain field – some of which they might not even know about. Moreover, if they are interested in a specific field, it is important to make sure you dispel any myths or rumors about the field.

Determine their passion

Next, what is your teenager passionate about? If they are passionate about politics you should encourage them to pursue their studies towards this particular field. If they are interested in the healthcare field, there are a number of degrees they can acquire to have a sustainable and fulfilling career in the healthcare field. After getting their undergraduate degree, they can acquire a health care management MBA to land a position in careers ranging from finance, to biopharmaceuticals, to insurance and beyond. If they are interested in current events, they might pursue a career in journalism, television or radio media.

Take a career test

Another way to explore career options with your teen is to find out what they are good at by having them take a standardized test. There are a number of tests your teen can take that will determine what they have a natural inclination for. This option is usually best for those teens that are really struggling with what they want to do with their lives. For instance, a test in math will determine whether or not they are good with numbers and another test might be able to determine that they are more inclined towards abstract modes of thinking. Either way, this is a great way to get quantitative proof of your child’s strengths and weaknesses, which can motivate your teen to really start thinking about their career aspirations.

At the end of the day, it is important to not get frustrated with your child and let them come to their own conclusions, especially if they are going off to college. They might need a few years to think about it and in the meantime they might even go undeclared. However, after a few years of college, your teenager will eventually realize what they want to do with their lives, which can be an incredibly relieving moment for most parents and well worth the wait.

college guidance, college planning

Hottest Careers for College Graduates

January 4, 2011 Suzanne Shaffer

The College Board has posted a list of the occupations with the most job openings between 2008-2018. They get these figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics: new jobs being created and openings created by retiring workers or those leaving the fields.

I’m skeptical when it comes to any job statistics these days, but it’s worth your time to glance over the list and have your college-bound teen do the same. If they are interested in teaching, it looks like they are headed in the right direction. Also notable are the jobs predicted to be available in computer related fields. At the top of the list, however, are jobs in the field of nursing–now that’s job security!

There is a book coming out this month, Closing America’s Job Gap, that might interest you as well. You can check out an article I wrote related to the findings in this book about the Top 10 Job Sectors for future careers. It’s always helpful to consider the job market when spending thousands of dollars on an education!

college guidance, college majors, college planning, parenting, Uncategorized

Career planning tips for parents of teens

April 2, 2010 Suzanne Shaffer

Our guest blog post today is by Susan Posluszny, the founder of OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning, specializing in unique programs and services to support students with college major and career planning. Susan is a Master Career Counselor with over 25 years of career counseling experience including 18 years as a college career center director. She is the author of In Search of a College Major & Career Direction, an interactive program designed to support teens and young adults with choosing a college major and career path.Her career counseling and coaching practice is located in New Boston, NH. Subscribe to Susan’s e-newsletter, Career Options, at www.collegesandmajors.com

Think Big Picture

It’s common to overly focus on the details: Which ‘one’ major should I pick? Which ‘one’ career should I pursue? Yet, research studies show that it’s common for students (and adults) to shift direction over time as they explore, grow, and change. What to do? Get your student to identify their top 2 – 3 academic and career interests and then explore ways to simultaneously prepare for and reality test more than one interest. Sound impossible? Not at all. Careful selection of academic courses and career exploration strategies (job shadowing, internships, career related employment or volunteer experience) will do it. Be sure to spread these efforts out over time so as not to overload.

Discard Outdated Notions of ‘Job Security’

Job security in the form of long term employment with one employer in exchange for dedication and hard work is long gone. Instead, shifts in the work world have been moving towards project based work and ways to match individual interests and skills to marketplace needs. Don’t expect selection of the ‘right school’, the ‘right degree’, or the ‘right career’ to provide guarantees of post graduation employment or career success. Today’s students will need to take charge of their own career development in order to ensure a sense of ’employment security’ for themselves.

Consider Career Interests Relative to College Loan Debt

According to the College Board, the average debt for a Bachelor’s degree was $23,200 in 2007-2008. an individual student’s loan debt can vary significantly from this figure but the bottom line is that many students are feeling pressured to pursue academic and career choices that will allow them to pay off their loans…even if these choices don’t particularly interest or excite them. So, how about your student? Will college loan debt drive your student’s college major and career decisions? If so, it’s as if your student is working for the financial institution. Help your student to identify their top career interests and to explore creative options for pursuing career preferences while owning one’s financial reality. Do all that you can to help your student avoid limiting future options by taking on too much debt.

Explore Career Preferences Prior to Choosing a College Major

Many students choose a college major first and then determine their career choice based on their chosen major. This is a no brainer when a major is directly linked to a career field (nursing, education, engineering, etc.) but this approach has its limits. First, it doesn’t work so well with majors that cover broad interest areas like English or Business Administration. Second, many students end up pursuing career interests totally unrelated to their majors. While it can be helpful for students to consider academic subjects that interest them when choosing a college major/career, it’s also valuable to explore your career interests Once key career interest themes are identified, research to see if these interests have specific college major requirements. Chances are that there’s quite a bit of flexibility with academic choices relative to career pursuits.

Copyright, Susan B. Posluszny, OPTIONS for Career & Life Planning LLC

If you would like to contact Susan or find out more information about the services she provides, you can contact her at:

Her websites: www.careeroptions4me.com and www.collegesandmajors.com

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/susanposluszny

Email: susan@careeroptions4me.com

college guidance, college majors, college planning, parenting

When a parent disapproves of a child's career choice

March 5, 2010 Suzanne Shaffer

While watching the Food Network channel one day, I happened upon a series called ‘Chefography’. This episode of Chefography featured a biographical account of Wolfgang Puck’s journey to success. I knew little about this renowned chef but I was intrigued since I’d recently been to Disney World and had a great experience at his restaurant, Wolfgang Puck Café, in Downtown Disney. While annual revenue from his cluster of businesses now averages millions of dollars, his father did not approve of his career interest and his early career experiences were quite shaky.

At the tender age of 14, Puck left his home to work as an apprentice in a hotel kitchen. Evidently, young Puck was a bit of a klutz and the chef threw him out and sent him back home to his parents. He was ashamed to face his father with the news of his job loss since his father was against this career choice. Dreading going home, he spent hours on a bridge contemplating suicide while looking over a river that ran through town. Eventually, Puck went back and hid in the hotel’s basement, peeling potatoes for the kitchen workers, until the chef discovered him two weeks later. The chef appreciated Puck’s tenacity and made arrangements for him to apprentice in another hotel’s kitchen. Puck’s career took numerous twists and turns over time as he honed his culinary skills and began his ventures as a restaurant owner.

As I watched this show, I couldn’t help but imagine the emotions that surged through Puck as he contemplated facing his father or committing suicide. It’s natural for children to want to please their parents and fear of parental scorn can weigh heavily on a child. If young Puck had committed suicide, would his father have realized the role his influence played in the choice to end his life? As I reflected further on Puck’s life and career, I couldn’t help but wonder what his father must think of his son’s career decision now that he’s a successful businessman and one of America’s most famous and influential chefs. I expect that he no longer considers his son’s decision to have been a poor one.

Research that I conducted while working as a college career center director revealed that parents are the number one influence in the career and college major choices made by their children. That influence may be subtle, and beyond the conscious awareness of the child, or not so subtle as was the case with young Puck and his father. Now I suppose you could argue that his father’s influence actually helped to lead young Puck to success. You might say that what helped Puck to hang in there, when the going got tough, was wanting to avoid hearing his father say, ‘I told you so’. I don’t know about you, but I can’t help think that there are better ways to influence a child.

As parents, it can be most challenging to support a child’s career decision when it goes against the grain of our own personal values and the future we envision for that child. Yet, we can never know what the future holds and where a chosen path may lead. As children grow, they need to cultivate a sense of self in order to one day make their own way in this world. Along with a growing sense of self, they also need to develop confidence in their ability to take positive action towards their career goals. This includes learning how to identify their career and lifestyle preferences, how to explore career options that match those preferences, and where to go to gain the skills and life experiences that will move them in a direction of their own choosing. Parents can help their children to build self confidence by telling them they believe in their ability to take positive action on their own behalf. Parents can also facilitate a growing sense of self by encouraging their children to engage in activities and experiences that let them explore and reality test their career interests, so that they are making informed choices. Yes, as parents, we are the number one influence in the lives of our children. It’s up to us to decide the form that our influence will take.