Between the months of September, 2008 and February, 2009, over 2 million people lost their jobs. That’s 16,000 pink slips a day. Washington Mutual, Lehman Brothers, KB Toy, and even Sharper Image have filed for bankruptcy in recent months.
So with unemployment so high and so many jobs being lost, how is it that undergraduate Matt Hartvigsen was offered a full-time job last fall?
The answer is simple: he went out, found an internship, and made an impression. As English department internship coordinator Dr. Phil Murdock explains, “Most businesses who are cutting back recognize that interns are a relatively inexpensive way to go. They’re looking to hire in the future and they’re probably smart to go through a couple of interns and say, ‘Does this known quantity look better than what we can hire on the open market?’ and it usually does.” A little creativity, resourcefulness, and careful tailoring of experience can make a graduate really stand out in a sea of jobless college alumni.
Here are a few tips to ensure some job options after graduation.
1. Use your family.
“I would say the best city [to intern] would be a city where you could live relatively inexpensively while you intern, and that means sponging off relatives,” says Dr. Murdock. “You got family somewhere, and you look around.”
Many internships won’t pay anything (more on that later.) If you can live for free, you’re more able to take a non-paying internship without it destroying your finances.
Matt Hartvigsen found his internship through a family friend. At the time, his girlfriend (now fiancée) moved to Provo. He decided to do an internship in the area. “When I finally figured out that I wanted to do an internship, I knew one professor at BYU. I went to that one English professor, who’s a good family friend of ours, and says, ‘Hey, this is what’s going on in my life: I’m chasing this girl, and to make this legit and feel like I’m also progressing in school and career. I need an internship.’ She says, ‘I know two people’ and she gave me their names.”
Matt’s family connection didn’t provide him a place to live, but it did lead him to his internships.
2. Create your own internship.
New York and LA aren’t the only places to intern. In fact, the best place to find an internship may not be where an internship is even being offered.
“Go to the internet, type in ‘internship’ and ‘English’ (for example,) and find a few sample internships,” Dr. Murdock advises. “You might find the Fish and Game for some state actually has a position.” Instead of applying for that internship, find a local Fish and Game, write an internship proposal for them, and make a query phone call. “You create an internship and no one is applying. The one on the internet has 500 applicants. This has no applicants but is created from your research.”
3. Work for free.
While Matt completed his internships last fall, he worked as a baker in the morning and interned during his afternoons. He needed a part time job to give him any source of income: his internships were unpaid.
“I found a cheap place to live, as economical as I could,” Hartvigsen says. Many great internship opportunities don’t pay anything. Being willing to work for free opens up your options. “You’re probably gonna have to take what you can get,” says Hartvigsen. “But that doesn’t mean you can’t jockey for better stuff.” He says that if he had started looking for internships earlier, he probably could have found a paid opening, but he’s still grateful for the benefits he received from his internship.
“I’m really grateful that I did my internships because I feel like it gave me a new outlook on school as well as confidence to go out into the work field. Don’t look at ‘em as a check-off item, but more of a building experience for life and making the transition into the workplace.”
4. Know the market.
Blindly jumping into the job market with only the experience your degree offered won’t set you above the rest of the applicants. This is where career fairs come in. “Career fairs are really useful for asking lots of intelligent questions,” says Dr. Murdock. “In terms of interviewing stuff, they’re only useful when you’re ready, but it’s really useful when you walk around and ask the people questions.” A computer major may ask the companies what kind of software they use, whether they use open or closed source code, if they use InDesign or Quark, what way the industry is going, or a dozen other questions that would give you a better understanding of how to prepare.
Learning about the market may also make you aware of available career paths. “You really end up determining which way you’re going to ski down the mountain,” says Dr. Murdock. “You’re a writer but you realize there’s a whole bunch of writing coming out of medical areas. So if you were to see that, you might say, ‘You know, I might wanna jump over and pick up a couple of health or medical classes so that I could talk fluently about major kinds of issues. In addition to general writing, I might even mark myself as a health writer.’” Communication majors can create a niche for themselves in technology, or business majors a niche in exercise science.
5. Gain experience and tailor your résumé.
While Dr. Murdock was working on his Master’s degree, he realized that the experience from his degree alone would not prepare him for the competitive market.
“I was in graduate school getting a literary degree and started to look at what’s going to happen. I saw that with a bachelor’s degree I’m not going to get any career track in a university. Master’s students are going to community college. When you look at what community college professors are doing, they’re teaching remedial English. We had no classes, no preparation whatsoever for that.” Dr. Murdock found a local vocational school and volunteered to go work in the reading and writing lab. “There I just picked everybody’s brains on how to give standardized tests and how to tutor, and I suddenly had this whole new section on my résumé that I created.”
His experience volunteering paid off. When he interviewed for a teaching job in Virginia, the interviewer asked, “You are a Mormon white boy from out west and we’re an inner-city school that has blacks. What makes you think you can teach inner-city blacks standard white dialect?” Dr. Murdock replied, “You know, that’s a great question because I’ve never done it. I have, however, taught Navajo Indians standard white dialect and I’ll betcha their core language is further from white dialect than what you’ve got.”
Don’t start thinking about a job only after you graduate. Get experience and an internship early. You’re paying for an education anyway—why not pay less than tuition to live somewhere and do an internship? With a dedicated, smart effort, graduation doesn’t have to mean unemployment.
And if all else fails, at least liquidation companies are hiring.
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