The MBA Student's Job Seeking Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Land a Great Job by Graduation

Elizabeth Ph.D. Freedman

Description

The MBA Student's Job Seeking Bible provides practical tips, do's and don'ts, and plenty of hands-on examples, exercises and strategies that are specifically geared to help the MBA job seeker get hired. This includes:

What to say in a voice mail or email to sound professional, persuasive..and
get a response!
How to perfectly position your resume, every time
What "networking" really means, and you'll get a detailed,step-by-step guide for how to make contacts and keep them
How to get a foot in the door to a company, even when you know nobody
Special strategies designed for international MBA students

The user-friendly guidebook format allows you to answer questions, complete the exercises provided, and put your thoughts into action. When it comes to a job search, talk is cheap - our action-oriented approach will help you stay focused, stop procrastinating, and put your job search first.

Sujets

• Recherche d'emploi
• Recherche d'emploi
• Recherche d'emploi
• Carrière & Mobilité
• Carrière
• Business
• Economics
• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Careers
• Job Hunting

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 21 février 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456603137
• Langue: English

Extrait

The MBA Student's Job Seeking Bible: Everything You Need to Know to Land a Great Job by Graduation
by
Elizabeth Freedman
 


Copyright 2011 Elizabeth Freedman,
All rights reserved.
 
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0313-7
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 
The Job Search is a Marathon
On your mark....get set……
 
GO!
 
For today’s MBA student, conducting a job search today is like running a marathon. It takes time, practice, and lots of endurance. Sometimes, the job search race can seem really, really long, with no end in sight. Even worse, it can be painful.
 
But here’s the good news: If you get in the race, eventually you’ll finish. Like most of us, you’ll reach the finish line, and, hopefully, feel good about your accomplishment.
 
Here’s the problem: Too many of us treat the job search like a series of sprints, instead of the marathon it resembles. Instead of accepting the fact that the job search is a long road and we need to start running if we’re going to finish the race (which, hopefully, ends by the time we graduate!), we take action in short bursts, stopping almost as soon as we start. Like a good sprinter, we gear up for the short race, putting all of our energy into our next interview, or dashing out dozens of resumes to employers when we’re feeling productive or panicked.
 
Soon, however, our energy dissipates, and we need to rest, to stop…to collapse! We’re done, spent, and don’t have the resources to devote to the ongoing follow-up, networking, and relationship-building that the job search requires. Until we realize that we’ve only got a month until graduation, and then we sprint again, trying to make up for the time and distance we lost because we stopped running. Calgon, take me away!
 
The job search is a marathon and the sooner you start the race, the better. Unlike a sprint, you aren’t expected to find a job in a day, make hundreds of contacts in a week, or send off dozens of resumes in a flurry of energy.
 
The job search is a marathon because it requires a long-term, ongoing commitment to land a job that you’ll feel good about. And that takes time. Like any self-respecting marathon runner, we know that we will hit a few bumps in the road, face a few hills, and, sometimes, get on a good roll and before we know it, we’re halfway there. But we’ve got to get in the race to win it. Start today.
 
A Word About This Guide
What this Guide Is
 
No guide or manual, no matter how good, can write your resume, draft your cover letter, or call up a recruiter to sing your praises. Unfortunately, you’ve got to do that yourself.
 
However, this guide can help you accomplish one thing, and that’s to help you help yourself. Throughout this manual, you’ll find many powerful tools, tips, and strategies to support you in your efforts to land the very best job you possibly can after graduation. If you use this guide in the way it was intended, you’ll have plenty of exercises, activities, and other action items you’ll need to take on a regular basis in order to have a successful job search. You’ll have good ideas that you can implement to help you network, build relationships, and differentiate yourself in a competitive job market. The key here is to take action– don’t let this guide become another dust-collector in your room. Use it!
 
 
What this Guide is Not
 
This guide prides itself on delivering fresh, intelligent insight in a fun, humorous way – because, let’s face it, the job search can get pretty grim sometimes. It isn’t intended to cover information on topics that are written about with such frequency– like resume writing or interviewing—that you could read a book a day on one of these traditional job search tools and still not be done by the time you graduate from business school. That isn’t to suggest that we ignore the resume or cover letter in this manual (this is a job search guide, after all!) – but simply that we take it one step further for you. While we focus on the traditional job search tools, this guide also focuses on the subtleties, the unspoken rules, and the nuances of the job search. It offers ideas about the little things that get overlooked (like how to leave a good voice mail), the big things that we all need to master during the job search (like how to network when you don’t have any contacts!), and the other things that matter to MBA students.
 
 
This Guide Is Your Friend
 
Like a cold can of Diet Coke, this guide can provide some comfort to you when the going gets tough…and, my friend, the going always gets tough at one point or another during the job search. If you’re having a bad job search day, you didn’t get the offer, or nobody is returning your phone calls, take heart, and remember that we’ve all been there. So pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep taking the steps suggested in this manual. Use the exercises throughout this guide to motivate you, to inspire you, and to remind you that we all started this job search journey with a single step. You can too.
 
Let the Race Begin!
Start the Job Search Now
 
The biggest mistake students make is that they underestimate how long it will take to actually get a job. We all know that the adjustment into any MBA program is considerable, and it’s most certainly understandable that it will take time to get the hang of things. But start the job search anyway. As you adjust and get the hang of things, your job search will ‘adjust’ itself too, and you’ll get better at it.
 
The MBA Bottom Line
We all know that there are times when the joys of business school are few and far between – extremely few and far between. Knowing that the MBA journey can be a tough one from time to time, why bother?
 
Studies show again and again that we shed our blood, sweat, and tears for one reason -- to land a job after graduation that offers us a better title, more money, and more opportunity than we could have obtained otherwise.
 
In fact, business school represents a huge turning point for many of us – we have bigger goals, dreams, and ambitions for ourselves. Getting a job that we are proud of after graduation is a huge part of the ‘new’ plan for ourselves.
 


Getting Good Grades is Good…But Getting a Good Job Offer is Better
 
What I’m about to say is probably not authorized by any business school in the country, but here it goes: Forget about grades! As crazy as it may sound to some of you, if you want a great job after graduation, you simply must make the job search your absolute first priority, and getting good grades is a distant second. Don’t get sucked in to caring so much about getting straight A’s that you neglect the real reason you came to business school – to get a great job.
 
Obviously, we’re not knocking the importance of studying and academic achievement while you’re in business school. But some students will hide in the library or behind books and use their ‘busyness’ as an excuse for not dealing with the job search. As strange as it seems, it’s often easier to deal with the finance exam or the accounting project than the job search, telling everyone, “I’m soooo busy! I have two team projects and an exam this week and there is no way I can deal with my job search now…”
 
If you’re so busy doing schoolwork that you can’t spare a few measly hours a week for your job search, take a deep breath and drink a diet coke. Then, remind yourself why you are spending $(insert six figures here) to attend business school.
 
Now, about that job search….
 


Excuses, Excuses, Excuses…
Tell the truth: What excuses get in the way of your job search?
 
Check any that apply:
 
___ I’m too busy with school work
 
___ I’m too busy with extracurricular activities
 
___ Too many other responsibilities (kids, family)
 
___ Don’t know what I want to be when I grow up
 
___ Haven’t found any jobs I’m interested in applying for
 
___ I plan to win the lottery and never work a day past business school
 
So, what’s your excuse? We all have great reasons why we haven’t devoted the time, effort, and energy a job search requires. Personally, my excuses generally revolved around cleanliness (i.e., “Just let me clean my entire apartment from top to bottom – then I’ll start working on my resume.”)
If you’ve got ‘em, it’s time to write ‘em.
 
Your excuse list:
 
1. _______________________________________________
 
2. _______________________________________________
 
3. _______________________________________________
 
Remember - there’s no shame in having an excuse – the key is to identify it, admit it, and then let it go.
 
The MBA Dilemma: What Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up?
“Ninety-eight out of every hundred people working for wages today are in the positions they hold because they lacked the definiteness of decision to plan a definite position…”
Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich
 
Clueless on Campus: It Happens to the Best of Us!
You’d think that with the time, energy, effort, and money we invest in business school that we’d have a really clear idea of what we’d actually like to do with our MBA degree when we graduate. Nonsense! That would be far too easy….
 
The truth is that some of us enter school with only a vague notion of what “business” really means. In fact, most students enter business school with only a few years of work experience, and some have held this experience in fields far outside the MBA world. For international students who have never worked inside an American company (or an English-speaking one), things can become even murkier. The result: Far too many of us don’t really know what we want t