The Career Foundation

Developing Human Potential

Job Search

The Honest, Panicked Thought Process of a Post-Secondary Student in 2019

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Post-Secondary Student Fears: Three black icons are set against a light blue background: in the centre is a paper with a large red sad face on it, on the left is a dollar bill, and on the right is a briefcase.
Not making enough money to be independent, having a lacklustre résumé, a sparse job market, and getting stuck in a bad career are all regular concerns for most post-secondary students — and I’m no exception.

Being a post-secondary student is terrible in many ways, but I think the worst part is stressing about life after graduation — isn’t that what all the painful study sessions and papers have been for? These are the three terrifying, career-related thoughts that run through my mind almost daily. To fight these fears, I’ve also laid out three student career ‘reality checks’ I typically use to calm myself down. Prepare for the darkness, but also a bit of hope? Maybe?

Do I have enough on my résumé?! I need more on my résumé!

Finding relevant work experience that’s flexible with full-time studies is hard, depending on the field you want to go into (if you even know what that is). Students who need a job to keep up with bills might be forced to sacrifice relevant extracurriculars for paying work that’s totally unrelated to their field. Even if they do manage to accumulate some experience through this minefield, it never feels like enough. So, maybe I should take on more to get that extra edge — but will I end up burning out? It kind of feels like I have to risk it, if only to increase my chances of getting a job in my field after graduating.

Sure, I have extracurriculars and volunteering, but I don’t have actual work experience. Sure, I have some relevant work experience, but it’s only one job. And sure, I’ve worked multiple jobs; however, they were all with the same employer. Nothing will ever be enough, and it all feels like an uphill, unwinnable battle.

Reality check:

Chances are, I (and you) have more experience than at least one or two friends or younger family members. At least I’m thinking about work experience, which is honestly more than I can say for some people around my age. If you’re thinking about your future, you’re a step in the right direction. However, there will always be someone who’s done more than me. But I also have some skills and characteristics that may give me the edge over someone else out there — which I should definitely play up.

What if my experience doesn’t matter and I’m a failure who lives on the couch forever?

Assuming I do have enough work experience that’s relevant, there will be no jobs for me. This kind of thinking is especially common among university graduates in non-STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields, who are consistently told the job market is set against them. Why should I be any different? I don’t have any crazy connections in the industry. There will be, like, five jobs that I’d be good for, and they’ll all be taken by people with connections or more experience or better experience. I’ll be stuck without a job, and I won’t be able to afford rent or food or bills. I’ll have to move back in with my mother — I hear it’s really common now — and I’ll live on her couch until the end of time.

Reality check:

There. Are. Jobs. Maybe not as many as in most STEM fields, and maybe they don’t pay as much, but they exist. The idea of non-STEM grads having pitiful employment opportunities is true to an extent, but it’s also been blown out of proportion by high school science teachers and anxious parents. Make no mistake, a lot of new graduates will struggle to find field-related work, but there aren’t enough coffee shops in the world for all of them to be baristas forever.

Post-Secondary Student Fears: A large pile of papers sit on a desk.
Look at all these résumés! Look at them all!! How can I possibly compete with all of these? Are they all better than me? Will I be a complete failure?!

I’m going to get stuck in an industry I hate right out of school and die miserable…

If I do find a job out of school, it’s going to suck. For those who need a full-time job immediately out of school, the future looks bleak because they don’t have the option to wait for a field-related opportunity. I can see it: I’ll get a degree in a field with few jobs and find a more attainable position in an industry where it’s easier to find work. The pay will be decent, it’ll be full-time, and maybe I’ll even get benefits. I’ll tell myself it’ll only last a few years while I pay down debt and get on my feet financially. I’ll be pretty good at the job and get promoted. Years will pass, and next thing I know everything on my résumé will be in this boring field that was supposed to be a starter job and somehow became my entire career.

My degree will have gone to waste, and I’ll have forgotten what my passions ever were in return for a steady job and financial security. I’ll end up trapped in this sad industry, never able to escape because all my experience will be in that one basket, and then I’ll retire and not have accomplished anything meaningful at all.

Reality check:

I’m still young! (And it’s shocking how many students forget that). Is it possible that I’ll trap myself in a career I don’t like just to pay bills? Yes. Has this happened to people before me? Yes. But that doesn’t mean I have to resign myself to that fate without ever trying. I could also get hit by a bus tomorrow, and people have been hit by buses in the past, but I can’t assume that this is my inevitable future. It’s also possible I’ll stumble into a career I never imagined but love doing. I just have to give myself a chance.

Blythe Hunter is a volunteer with The Career Foundation. 

From Another Perspective: The Case Against Five-Year Plans

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Five-year plans can quickly lead to stress for young people. Pictured is a young male closely examining his dream board, featuring various timelines, circled images, to-do items, and so on.

Five-year plans are the trendy things that blogs tell young professionals to make while plotting out their futures. Yet, they can also land a crushing blow to your soul before you even get a chance to enter the labour market. That deflated feeling you get when you look at your schedule and realize almost every hour of every day is mapped out for the next week? Five-year plans are the life-sized version of that.  

The whole point of a five-year plan is to help you define and achieve your goals—be they personal or professional—but there’s still something sinister about them. It has to do with seeing everything you’re supposed to accomplish in the foreseeable future (the ideal path your life would follow in a perfect world) laid out in front of you. It also has to do with sealing and accepting your fate from the get-go, without ever giving spontaneity a chance. 

Confusion, confusion, confusion 

In theory, five-year plans should be most useful to young people; they’re the ones who are supposed to be the most ambitious with the most ground to gain. However, it could be argued that they do more harm than good. Few young people coming out of high school or even post-secondary education have a concrete idea of what they truly want their future to look like. And the ideas they do have are subject to change, whether they want to admit it or not. Creating a plan in such a precarious stage of life is a surefire way to end up confused and stuck to a path that may not be right for you. 

For context, let’s give a real-life example. Ellie is approaching her mid-twenties and is currently in university part-time. She had previously been full-time but switched three years ago because, in her words, life got in the way. “While planning is important, you can never plan for life to happen,” says Ellie.   

Ellie had a five-year plan when she graduated high school. According to that plan, she should have earned her degree, entered teacher’s college, and started supply teaching in a high school by now. Instead, she’s still in school and is working five part-time jobs. 

While some may contest that your five-year plan can change and grow with you, simply having that plan in mind can keep you in a specific mindset for too long. Ellie slowly realized that the goals outlined in her plan were not what she actually wanted to do, but not before wasting a lot of time pursuing them. “No one had this plan other than me,” she laments. “I was putting this stress on myself to achieve things I should have known I didn’t want anymore.” 

No idea what’s happening? No problem. 

Young people should be allowed to be young. They shouldn’t feel the need to funnel themselves into a specific field with specific goals right off the bat. They shouldn’t be living the formative years of their adult lives on a set, self-imposed schedule that spells out the remainder of their youth. Make a handful of five-year plans and you’ll have your life planned out until retirement, and that’s really the last thing you want when your whole life is ahead of you. 

People stumble into their careers all the time, simply by exploring what they like or by pursuing the various opportunities that come their way. That’s what Ellie did in the end. “Five-year plans are pretty limiting,” she says. “They close you off to opportunities that you are unaware of, and in my opinion, you should never close yourself off. Just be ready for whatever comes at you.”  

When planning for the future, Ellie believes having a flexible, less exclusive goal is better because it “allows room for you to change and grow rather than locking you into a fake thing in your mind.” 

For some, five-year plans will certainly provide a welcome sense of direction and purpose. Maybe they’re supposed to be a way of reigning in the chaos or finding some order where there usually isn’t any. If you’re one of those people, that’s great! But if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, don’t feel like you need to set out a five-year plan right now. Direction isn’t a bad thing, but a long-term plan meticulously explaining how you should be living your life isn’t always the way to find it. 

Sure, you can have an idea of what you want to do, but you don’t have to write it out in painful detail. That can just end up looming over you, stressing you out, and keeping you on a set path with blinders on. Allow opportunities to present themselves. Look for them, even. You’ll get to where you’re supposed to be going.

Blythe Hunter is a volunteer with The Career Foundation. 

4 Changes You Can Make When Feeling Down in Your Job Search

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How to combat your unsuccessful job search: A man is shown looking frustrated while he uses his laptop at a coffee shop.

Job searching is one of the most stressful parts of life, especially when you’re not having any luck. Below are four key recommendations from The Career Foundation’s career counsellors on how you can take your unsuccessful job search by the horns and start making progress.

1.) Be Self-Aware

You need to be realistic about your skillset, as well as what your actual potential in the current job market is. According to our counsellors, one of the most common problems they encounter is tunnel vision. Job seekers struggling to find work might be picky and only apply to jobs in a specific field. It might be painful at first, but examining your own qualifications and the job market, itself, is vital to your success!

If you don’t have much experience in a given field, the chances of getting a job in said field are extremely slim at best. If you do have a lot of experience but most or all of it took place outside of the country where you’re applying, it’s unlikely that you’ll get the job you want off the bat. And even if you do have enough domestic experience, the number of available jobs in many specialized fields fluctuates.

It comes down to: if you really need a job, don’t set your sights on just one! Every opportunity should be treated as a positive opportunity. Your ambitions are important, and you’ll get there with time. Broaden your horizons and be open-minded.

2.) Be Willing to Change

It will almost always be necessary to adapt somehow to an employer’s needs. That isn’t to say that you need to overhaul your entire personality — if that’s the case, then the job isn’t right for you — but be willing to change your personal or work habits in order to better serve them. In job interviews, employers will be reassured knowing you’re not set in your ways. Emphasize that you’re always grateful for constructive criticism and always eager to improve.

It’s not enough to ‘talk the talk,’ either. Once you get a job, a huge part of being retained is taking constructive criticism well and making subsequent changes to yourself and your work. Don’t let criticism deter you or throw you off, and don’t take it personally. Accept that you’re not perfect and listen thoroughly to what employers say and suggest: they’ll appreciate knowing you’re someone who can maturely take and respond to criticism.

3.) Put in the Effort — A Lot of It

It seems obvious, but a job won’t just fall into your lap. Clicking ‘Apply’ on as many postings as you can and hoping for the best is not effective if you actually want results. Creating a persuasive, viable application takes both effort and time. The age-old tips for applying to jobs are true: research the company, read the job posting thoroughly, and tailor your résumé and cover letter with key words from the posting and experiences or skills that are specifically related to the job. It may seem like a labourious process when you’re applying to multiple jobs in a row, but employers will value your effort.

Counsellors also recommend branching out from broad, general job boards like Indeed. While they may be simpler to use and appear to have more postings, industry-specific jobs boards will have postings that are much more related to your search if you want a specialized job. Looking for work in a non-profit? Try Charity Village. Maybe media is more your thing? Try Mediabistro. You can keep looking on Indeed, but make sure you’re actively searching on industry-specific boards and company sites as well.

4.) Learn to Accept Failure

Counsellors often see job seekers who “shut down” as soon as anything negative happens during their search — it could be a bad interview, a typo in a cover letter, or anything in between. If someone has a bad experience interviewing for a finance position, they may lose confidence or become angry and not look as hard or even give up their search for finance jobs out of fear, frustration or even embarrassment. Don’t let that be you.

Failure is just par for the course during the job hunt. You may not want to fail; however, you should become more comfortable with the idea of failure. It might feel difficult, but all failures lead to learning experiences. Stay positive and keep motivated. The best is yet to come!

Blythe Hunter is the Participant Services Representative with The Career Foundation’s Completing the Circle-Mississauga Program. 

4 Lessons on Attaining and Retaining Employment – As Taught by Indiana Jones

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A screen grab of Indiana Jones in action.

To mark the 37th anniversary since the release of Lucasfilm’s cinematic opus, Raiders of The Lost Ark, we decided to look at the significantly pertinent, if unrealized, career advice that the good Doctor Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones Junior offered us. We’ve broken these teachings into four easy categories … But you’d still be well-advised to watch the movie!

1.) The Right Education and Training

Career dreams don’t work unless you do, and before any idea can be put into motion, a plan must be made. Part of any job search plan is researching the credentials and education needed for any said profession. Indiana Jones could not have become an archaeologist without post-secondary training. He not only studied archeology, but he chose his institution precisely; attending the University of Chicago where he would eventually be mentored by Abner Ravenwood. Aside from dating, then dumping, then rescuing (over five times by my count), then marrying Ravenwood’s daughter, Indiana learned from the best. This was not only a wise move in terms of where he studied, but the networking contacts he met there.

2.) Match Your Vocation and Passion to the Current Labour Market

Indiana’s father was also an archaeologist. It was a shared family passion. That was perhaps all the self-assessment needed. Keep in mind, however, that the first Indiana Jones movie took place in 1936. This was the era of The Great Depression. Working as an archeologist would have been neither gainful nor full-time. Thus, Indiana adapted what he learned and loved to also become a part-time professor at Marshall College. While this was not what he really wanted to do, he adapted his passion and vocation to the current labour market – rather than expecting the labour market to adapt to him.

3.) Dress Correctly and Adapt as Needed

It was the 1930s and even in the middle of an economic sandstorm, people generally dressed as formally as they could. As a professor, Dr. Jones wore a proper suit. As the swashbuckling archeologist in the field he dressed down; however, he was still adaptable in that he could easily respond to changing weather conditions, formal encounters with dignitaries, tarantulas, and a lot of dust and sand. And that hat is, well, legendary!

4.) The Right Temperament is What Employers Need

A paralyzing fear of snakes aside, Indiana made it work. The snakes are worth mentioning because Indiana (despite his fear of said reptiles) never let that part Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark movie poster.of the job prevent him from working and doing what needed to be done. The lesson here is simple: no job is perfect, but you need to adapt. The job doesn’t adapt to you.

No matter the position, many employers want similar characteristics in their employees. While brash at times, Indiana Jones was as equally as patient and perseverant. He was technically astute, while remaining both an independent and loyal team player. He was also never afraid to roll his sleeves up and get dirty (assuming he still had sleeves). Employers crave these qualities.

It’s also worth pointing out that perhaps the most heroic employability quality to the personality and appeal of Indiana Jones was his ability to innovate. Whether it was using a statue to go through a wall, cutting down the bridge he was standing on to get off said bridge, or using a rubber life raft to escape a crashing airplane, Indy was never afraid to take a risk by looking at things differently. The ability to accomplish goals by thinking outside the box (or in this case the Ark of the Covenant) is not only a key trait in being hired but staying hired and being promoted.

Last we saw him, Indiana was promoted at Marshall College to associate dean. For his lucky students (if they can keep up with him), valuable life and employability lessons would seem to be aplenty.

Jason Douglas Smith is a Training Application Coordinator with The Career Foundation, and has successfully directed clients in not only developing personalized job search strategy plans, but in circumnavigating the rigorous demands of applications for provincially-funded retraining. When not working, this self-professed Futurist can often be found reading, writing and barbecuing in his native Burlington.

5 Habits of Highly Effective Job Seekers

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5 Habits of Effective Job Seekers - A young male maps out his project plan using a whiteboard and sharpie pen.

When searching for the right job, you are competing against a sea of candidates. To set yourself apart from the competition, follow these five important habits.

Sell Yourself

Sell the employer on hiring you by being your own best sales representative. Oftentimes, we are taught not to boast about ourselves or our abilities. The job search is the one time when you can and should truly promote yourself.

Be convincing in the way that you present yourself and your skills. You can start by making a list of all skills, experiences, and certifications that you bring to the job.

Remember, the employer doesn’t know who you are and what you have accomplished. Be sure to share this information in a way that is relevant to your job role.

Be Visible

Show the company that you are interested in them through social media. A great way to do this is to promote the company and its activities through your own social media channels.

This includes the use of Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. It’s as simple as re-posting, sharing, or referencing a link to a corporate event, program, product, or news item on your channel(s).

You can even use a #hashtag that a company or organization is using through their social media. If they ‘like’ or ‘re-post’ your message, then this is a great sign that you are now visible to the company.

Even if you don’t receive a ‘like’ or ‘re-post’, rest assured that you’ll still remain on the company’s radar.

Make Friends

Network with the company through any opportunity available to the public.

Oftentimes, we don’t want to appear pushy when applying to a role. This often holds us back from reaching out to connections made, or from following up with an employer.

One effective way to connect with a company (without appearing too pushy) is to begin networking before receiving any offers. You could participate in events, conferences, seminars, launches, or other public avenues where the company is present.

Even if the company is sponsoring or exhibiting at a public event, it’s a good idea to introduce yourself. This will help you to build a relationship with individuals who work there.

When the right opportunity presents itself, reach out to your contact to let them know you’ve applied for a role. The personal connection will give you an advantage. It may even help you get selected sooner for an interview — or the job!

Know the Role

Know as much as you can about the job that you are applying for.

Knowing the role inside out means that you can effectively speak to the duties, responsibilities, and direction that has been outlined in the job description. Beyond this, you should begin to understand where the role fits within the company’s mission, vision and objectives.

Start by researching the company’s website, LinkedIn page, and any news related to the company. You can read any reviews available on the internet but be mindful that not all opinions online are reflective of company culture and work styles.

This is also a great time to learn more about your hiring manager and how your role fits within the objectives of their department or team. A simple LinkedIn search can tell you a lot about how your future manager leveraged their skills and experience towards the company’s goals and objectives.

5 Habits of Effective Job Seekers - A male smiles in front of his computer with a post-it note on his forehead. It reads: "Be Happy"

Get Excited

Passion and enthusiasm should be expressed throughout the job search. Be sure to introduce yourself and share your passion for the role, the industry, and the services or products being offered by the company.

After your interview, reiterate your interest and enthusiasm in the work (if your feelings are genuine). This interest and enthusiasm should continue throughout any interviews, when you accept the offer, and into your role on the new job.

Follow these habits and you will become highly effective at your job search – and at securing the right role for your career!

Rohit Mehta is the Youth Job Connection Program Coordinator with The Career Foundation. He is passionate about helping people to reach their full potential through skill building, mentorship and professional development. Rohit enjoys giving back to his community by serving as a volunteer on charity boards and supporting fundraising events.