College Students Go Creative in Fishing for Jobs : Employment: One person sent out animated videos as resumes--and landed a job. Another passed out the plain-paper variety at a conference.
They’re graduating seniors, but the students in this Simmons College seminar look as apprehensive as freshmen.
The subject: How to get a job.
“I’ve gotten three rejection letters already,” said Sabrina Greenberg, who is boning up on how to network, dress for interviews and write a cover letter. “Looking in the Sunday paper for a job, you’re one in a million.”
College and university students like Greenberg, an education major, have been looking for creative ways to draw attention to themselves.
Students in an international business program at the Monterey Institute in California mail their credentials both in English and Chinese to prospective employers. Seniors in an environmental studies program at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., wrote their cover letters on one side of a sheet of recycled paper and their resumes on the other, then sent it as a self-mailer to environmentally conscious employers.
“They will almost send you a bushel basket worth of fruit and make it look like a resume,” said Roy Chapman, head of college recruiting for J.C. Penney.
Why be creative? “They have to. They don’t have a choice,” said Dawn Oberman, a statistician for the College Placement Council.
Eight out of 10 graduates take from one to six months to find a job, according to the placement council. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says 20% of college graduates are toiling in positions that require no college education.
“The whole business of getting a job out of college is a lot tougher than it used to be,” Oberman said.
And things aren’t likely to get better soon.
“It might get a little more competitive, if anything,” said Dan Hecker, an economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There will continue to be people with college degrees doing word processing or driving vehicles or working in retail stores.”
So this year’s graduates are striving for new ways to get their resumes to the top of the pile.
“If you want to find a job, you can find something,” said Chris MacGill, director of career development at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa. “Sometimes it means being a little creative.”
Lycoming offers a seminar called “Wine, Dine and Act Fine” to teach students how to dress and even how to eat in front of a recruiter.
“We may assume that everybody just obviously knows this,” said MacGill. “But some of the real basic things are what nobody has told them about, all the way down to which fork you pick up first at the interview luncheon.”
The “final exam” in the non-credit course is a formal dinner with Lycoming’s president and deans playing the parts of company recruiters.
Lee Costic, a student at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., sent out an animation video resume titled “Don’t Make Lee Costic Move Back Home With His Parents.” A sequel, “Don’t Make Lee Costic Work in a Department Store,” landed him a video graphics job.
“I figured it would be a unique way to get some people’s attention,” Costic said.
Christine Lukasik, who graduated last year from the Kent State University College of Business, walked into a business seminar in Cleveland and handed out 300 copies of her resume. The speaker was so impressed that he read her resume aloud. Lukasik got five job offers.
“I don’t think I should be grouped in with the rest of the masses sending out resumes, so I wanted to do something innovative,” she said.
Some placement officials tell students who want to get a foot in the door to consider working for a temporary agency or nonprofit organization. They also suggest volunteering or telling potential employers they are willing to cover the cost of traveling to the employer’s office for an interview.
But students, who have to repay college loans and are concerned about health benefits, resist the idea of working free.
“I’ve been doing that too much already,” said Janel Clague, a Simmons senior who has held four internships. “I want a job that pays.”
“The majority of them were ranking certain things as appropriate that we thought were not,” said Margie Bogenschutz, director of undergraduate career services at Ohio State University’s College of Business.
