Careers

Sean
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3
May 10

It’s the End of the World as We Know It, And I Feel Fine

Andromeda GalaxyAs schools around the country start to close out the academic year, honor their student leaders and organizations with awards, check out students from the residence halls, and prepare for graduation, I can’t help but reflect on the ways my life and career path have changed in a few short months. Last Fall, as I was finishing up summer projects, and preparing for RA training, I was also contemplating some major life changes.

I’d planned to start a doctoral program here at the University of Georgia, but I wasn’t accepted. I’d applied to the program for several reasons: first, it’s a great program; second, it is close to my family (in South Carolina) and  Sarah’s family (in Florida) and third, after 14 years in State College, I’d finally reached a point in my career at Penn State at which I’d accomplished what I set out to do. More importantly, I had to admit that I wasn’t motivated by my daily routine, and I found myself more than a little bit discouraged as I faced the prospect of another year of doing the same things.

I’d imagined (and worked quite diligently toward) a return to the classroom. From preparing for the GRE, to writing, fretting over, and re-writing my statement of purpose, I’d been single-minded about getting in to the University of Georgia, so it was kind of a blow to get rejected. Despite what some might expect, though, I won’t say a bad word about U. Ga. or their graduate admissions process, or about Residence Life at Penn State. I have deep respect for, and can honestly say that I learned a lot about myself, from both.

At Penn State, I had many opportunities to learn and grow as a professional, and my work was rewarded by several promotions and many great learning and leadership opportunities. The people there are not just my colleagues or my friends; many of them are family to me, and I will always value the time I spent there and the relationships I forged. And though it would be easy to be bitter about getting rejected from a grad program when you have a generation of experience behind you, good GRE scores and recommendations, etc., I’m not upset with anyone at U.Ga., because I learned something very valuable from the process. It was a simple but powerful realization, and it was this: I don’t love Student Development theory. I think it’s interesting, but my real love is for two things: the people and the process. While I am capable of doctoral-level work, and a Ph.D. would help me get to a logical next step, as a faculty member or senior administrator, I hadn’t really explored my other options enough, and I’d set some aside that were actually important to me (and that I have always wanted to do) because they didn’t fit with what many would consider conventional next steps along a “career path” in Student Affairs.

I’ve known several things about myself for most of my life, but wasn’t giving them a proper place in my personal “scheme of things.” First, I have always been a writer and a story-teller. Some of my earliest memories are of me telling my grandmother fabulous stories. When I was young, people didn’t read me bedtime stories: they asked me to tell them. Second, I’ve always been a “helper” and a “sounding board” for other people, and I like to challenge others to think about what they want to do with their lives. This was apparent in many ways as I grew up, became an RA and eventually moved into full-time work in higher ed. Third, I’ve always been creative and free-spirited, and Fourth, I hate bureaucratic nonsense and as much as possible, I do my own thing, and I seldom apologize for it. My track record on this count is pretty good. I am an original thinker who drives conversations in new directions, experiments, and takes risks. Usually, the results are good. When they aren’t, I explain my rationale, apologize for bad results if necessary, and move on.

Finally, late last summer, as training loomed in the near future, I took a pretty big leap of faith, and registered for a Coach Certification program with the Life Purpose Institute, and began to plan my departure from Penn State. The program was in October and after it, Sarah came down to meet me in Atlanta, and we went to Athens to look at houses for two days. We made an offer on our new house on the second day.

I’d planned to end the semester at Penn State, but finding the house kind of tipped things in a different direction, because it created a new sense of urgency toward unloading our old one and moving on. Pennsylvania winters are notoriously bad for selling houses, so we had to jump right on it. Things started to happen quickly, and before I knew it, the die was cast. After 14 1/2 years in Happy Valley,we were packing up our  life, unloading our junk and starting something new.

The strangest part of this, for me, has been how easy it has been to not look back. I don’t have any “might-have-beens” to dwell on. I did what I went there to do, and I know that I made a difference while I was there. These days, I spend my time writing, and discussing life and career issues with people from all over.  Through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, BrazenCareerist, and the wonderful #sachat community, I’m more connected that I ever have been to others working in Higher Ed.

Since I’m new in business, I spend a lot of time working on ways to bring in clients, do presentations and offer workshops. It’s challenging and very different from working for a large university. I set my schedule, pay for all my benefits, and I generally work alone. I don’t supervise anyone, and I don’t have a boss, but in some ways, I answer to everybody…either I get feedback that my work is helpful, or I work through the silence and keep trying until I find something that is both validating and (hopefully) potentially profitable. I’m not swimming in money by any means. I’ve earned less this year than I earned in a week at my old job, and most of what I’ve earned has gone to pay some of my fabulous guest writers. And let’s not get into what it costs to get certified as a professional coach through a reputable program, or to start a business.

Last August, I only imagined what it would be like to take this leap, and to forge out on my own. I had greater expectations for what the year would bring me, but, like many new graduates heading out into the world, or professionals moving on to their first (or next step), I choose to look back on the year with fondness, to reflect on everything I’ve learned…about business, about careers, about higher ed, and about myself, and to keep moving toward opportunities and experiences around each bend.

I know that I will get where I am meant to go in my career and in my life. I’ve found a purpose that drives me forward, and the realization that I’m doing the driving, so I’m the one who gets to decide where to go next.

It may be the end of the world as I knew it, but I feel fine.

How about you?

  • Have you set aside aspects of yourself as you pursue the “next steps” in your career?
  • Are there ways to incorporate these aspirations and skills into your current job?
  • What risks are you willing to take to create more fulfillment in your life and career?




Mike
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#sachat / Careers / SA Job Listings / Web/Tech — View Comments
21
Apr 10

Job Search Success via Twitter? I’m a Believer Now

Social media as a job search tool? Sure I’d heard about it but didn’t really put much faith into it beyond employer/employee fact checking and social background research.  By the time we had a position moving through our HR process in January I’d been contributing to studentbranding.com for a several months so I knew the networking expectations for both employers and candidates in the non-higher education arena.  As such, I figured I didn’t have anything to lose by sharing news of our process on twitter.

While I had been engaged in the #sachat community not much came of this tweet (note no #sachat hashtag) until we progressed as a community into discussions on job searches, of course triggered by Ed Cabellon.  Here is a sequence of tweets than ensued over the course of sixteen minutes.

As promised, when our position was finally approved right before #NASPA10 I sent a tweet sharing the news and our process from that point forward.  I didn’t have a live link yet so several people requested the job description as a result of these tweets:

Several members of the #sachat and twitter community requested a job description after these tweets.  Anyone who expressed interest in the position or had asked questions about the job, university and location via twitter was on the radar for us.  As we progressed through the search, all search committee members, including me, unfollowed all of the twitter candidates to maintain the integrity of our process.  Communication with candidates became more formal and traditional – email and phone – but by that point the networking had reaped its rewards.

Twitter can change the search process

While unexpected, twitter and the #sachat community fundamentally changed the search process by decreasing the size of an already small profession.  Certainly candidates still had to successfully navigate the gauntlet of our search process but our knowledge of them through social media outlets was very informative.

As an employer our engagement on twitter, whether individually or through our office account, helped us put information in the public domain that we wanted to share about the future direction of our office and our work environment.  Knowing that I was being followed by several candidates didn’t change how I interacted on twitter but it did reassure me that when we got to the point of fit questions that these candidates were probably better informed about us than those who were not accessing our information.

As a candidate you need to think through how you use twitter and what degree of access you want to provide.  It can be hugely beneficial for employers to triangulate your professional perspective and network connections.  On the other hand it can also be detrimental, particularly related to candidate authenticity and consistency in different settings if your interviews and application materials don’t align well with your presence in social media.

Social media expertise will be a required job criteria for all future searches

Our job description listed social media expertise as a preferred requirement.  It became a more prominent factor in our search every step of the way as our discussions to balance expertise and needs within our office became more focused.  In our next search social media engagement will be a required component.

In response to:

You may be asking:

Based on our candidate pool and how they identified their skill set as it related to our job description I would disagree that most people in gen-y have them in some form.  Facebook doesn’t cut it anymore.  That is now below the minimum – fan pages, connections, etc. Different institutions will measure social media skills differently based upon their needs and the expertise currently on staff. We were looking for someone who had the interest in and ability to give us traction in areas where we knew we needed to be engaged but were spinning our wheels – Facebook a bit, twitter, and blogs. (Again social media served as only two of thirteen criteria in our search process.)  In particular, we were looking for a solid knowledge base of how to use twitter and, ideally, high quality engagement in the student affairs community and #sachat in particular.

Very few candidates provided social media information on their resume or in their cover letter (the best approach for me – hyperlinked to your profile in a PDF resume).  Even some of the candidates we knew were on twitter didn’t identify that knowledge in their application materials.  If you are engaged in the #sachat community your knowledge base sets you apart from the general student affairs community and you need to market that knowledge.  Again, different institutions will measure social media skills differently based upon their needs and the expertise currently on staff but why make the hunt for that information difficult and allow employers to make inaccurate assumptions about your skill set?

In January I never would have guessed the impact social media would have on our search process.  I’m a believer now though.  Without getting into further details of our search I’d be glad to discuss your process as it relates to my perspective on social media and the role it can play in a successful search process for you.

What do you think?  Make it a good day.

Mike Severy is the Director of Student Involvement and Leadership at UNC Pembroke.  You can connect with Mike via Twitter.

SA Team
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13
Apr 10

TuesTally: Are you job searching?

If you cannot view this poll click here.




And here are the results from the last poll.


Lisa
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12
Apr 10

There’s only one kind of supervisor: Imperfect

I supervise. I’ve been supervising for years. Because “practice makes perfect,” I’d like to say I’m a great boss. Truth be told, I have had some gold-star moments…and some less-than-stellar ones.

Supervision is hard, and despite its complexity most of us don’t receive any formal training. Rather, we jump (or are pushed) blindly into the pool, and we flail. Because supervision involves two people, our on-the-job education means we’ll occasionally drag someone underwater with us.

Mistakes (and apologies) are an unavoidable part of it all. Human interactions, by nature, involve miscommunication, misperceptions, and imperfect decisions. It’s not a hopeless endeavor, however. We can become stronger by assessing how we handled each situation afterward and by reworking our supervisory strategies when we misstep.

Many years ago a mentor recommended I write about my supervisory experiences in a journal: What happened? How did I feel? What was the most important thing? How will I handle a future situation differently in order to achieve different results? It helped. It still helps. Just recently I ended a reflection by writing: “Next time I need to make sure [a particular staff member] knows I’m hearing what she’s saying by checking in with her while we talk.” In other words, “Listen, Lisa.”

Observing other supervisors may inspire helpful reflections too. Have you ever heard this: “You’ll learn as much from bad supervisors as from good ones”? I’ve learned:

1) Communication is a powerful thing—in most cases, more is better;
2) Running from difficult conversations usually results in bigger problems (which often involve more people); and
3) There are times for group problem solving and times for supervisors to act alone.

Supervising well requires humility and regular thinking. New York Times columnist David Brooks recently commented that consistently successful leaders believe progress comes “through a series of regulated errors. Every move is a partial failure, to be corrected by the next one. Even walking involves shifting your weight off-balance and then compensating with the next step.”

What supervisory missteps have you learned from—either yours or those of others? What wisdom can you share with those who are about to take on this role for the first time? For newcomers, what are your hopes?

Guiding and overseeing people present great challenges and rewards. Look around you for the good and not so good, make time to reflect, and cut yourself some slack. Dive in.

Lisa Tetzloff is director of student life at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

SA Team
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30
Mar 10

TuesTally: Your Undergraduate Major?

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And here are the results from the last poll.


Sean
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25
Mar 10

Taking a Leap of Faith

Today was a good day.

It started simply enough. I had a scheduled call with a potential new client, and it went well. She was happy with our consultation and at the end booked her initial sessions (4 of them), and indicated a possibility that she might be looking for longer-term coaching.

Getting this new client topped off what was a pretty good week for me in general. During the ACPA conference, which I could not attend, I remained engaged and involved in the many conversations people were having, via Twitter. I found great ideas shared in people’s tweets. I joined some ongoing side banter about a #fakeacpa conference with all sorts of people from all over, many of which are also members of the weekly #sachat community sponsored by the Student Affairs Collaborative Blog.It was fun to stay engaged and be a part of all these conversations.

During my weekly small group coaching session on Sunday, one client at ACPA called in to say he was offered a campus interview at a school he is really interested in. I’d helped him prep for his phone interview before the conference, and it was nice to see him making the kind of progress he’s been working for and envisioning in our talks. I was able to connect with and encourage several candidates who I’ve connected with via Twitter as well.

When I left my secure job at Penn State last November, I took a great leap of faith into the unknown territory of starting my own business. I did it for a lot of different reasons and in my heart I have never felt like it was a mistake. But it was nice to see that after several months of hard work, and of putting myself out there, that the universe was finally coming around to meet me halfway, and maybe in some way, telling me to stay the course.

After lunch, I got the e-mails about my new client’s payment for her sessions, and another one I couldn’t have expected. Her sister was having a job interview today and wanted to get some coaching to be ready. She asked if I could meet via phone with her at 2 pm today. I called her but got her voicemail, so I sent her an encouraging e-mail, in hopes that she would at get it before her interview and at least know I had tried to reach her. She called back shortly thereafter, and we talked for about half an hour before her interview. She later wrote me an e-mail thanking me for the talk and idicating she would like to schedule another meeting about possibly working with me long-term.

All these varied events reaffirmed for me the value in taking leaps of faith, and trusting that when you follow your heart, trust yourself and work hard, that good things will happen. Reading over the e-mail I sent her, I thought how applicable it is in relation to my own situation, as well as those of the many student affairs job seekers who are smack in the middle of their own searches right now, and trying to evaluate possibilities and choose the right next steps in their lives and careers.

I’ve adapted the e-mail below, and hope it will provide some needed encouragement and inspiration to anyone contemplating not only life and career changes, but the leaps of faith required to bring them to life.

Dear Job Seeker:

It looks like you have great experience. If we don’t get a chance to talk 1-on-1, here are some quick thoughts for you….Faith in yourself and your abilities brought you this far in your job search. Whether you are graduating and looking for that first job, or looking to make a step up, down or sideways on the career ladder, in your heart you know there is a reason, and you know it is good. Your work is good and the fact you have so many great examples to show is a testament to that fact. You don’t need to convince yourself you are successful enough to get your next job. You clearly are.

With most employers, experience is not as important as motivation, talent, and fit. You have the first two for sure. You worked hard to get through grad school, or to succeed in your current or last job. When you committed to this search, you had faith in yourself and felt some possibilities would emerge if you trusted yourself enough.

So you made it this far in some processes, and it wasn’t an accident. You took the leap, and so did they. Something must be working, because they invited you to interview. This doesn’t happen usually out of a sense of charity. If you aren’t good, or your style and temperament aren’t a good match, you don’t get invited to the next step.

Well, you got invited. Go in with faith enough to be yourself and if it is meant to be, fate will open the next door. It may be in the way of offering you the job you really want, or it could be in their faith at giving you a shot, even if they go with someone else. Inviting someone to interview for a position is an act of faith. Taking an interview is another one. If your mutual faith is well-founded, it will survive past the interview, and the next door will open when it is time.

Until then, believe in yourself, be yourself, and go kick that interview’s a** three ways from Sunday. Good luck with your search!



Shannon
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27
Feb 10

Oshkosh Placement Exchange – Day 2

OshKosh Placement Exchange Logo

I’m writing this from the Oshkosh Placement Exchange. It’s day 2 here, and a bit calmer than yesterday. Yesterday was a live showing of “The All RA Floor” and it was intense. A little overwhelming when you walk in and there’s not a bare inch of wall space left uncovered by posters and advertisements and fliers enticing you to apply at a certain school. There’s cheering in the lounges, and everyone keeps hugging and smiling for twelve hours straight and it’s a bit tiring. But fun, don’t get me wrong. This whole weekend experience has been fun.

Yesterday was the first day, and I had six interviews scheduled. My first was one at 10 am, and I was surprised how calm I felt while sitting in the lounge waiting for them to come call my name. I was thinking by that point the nerves would have set in, but I had the really good advice of knowing that I was interviewing them as much as they were interviewing me. I know that sounds incredibly cheesy, but it really did keep me calm. I knew I could go into these interviews and be myself and that any school would know exactly what they were getting. And if they didn’t like who that was, I was okay with that, because I feel really confident in my experiences.

Some interviews went really well, and it was hard to not do some fist pumps as soon as I was out of the room, or to restrain myself from dancing down the hallway back to the elevators. Some interviews just flowed nicely and I got along with the interview teams well and I had lots of personal things to write in a thank you note. Other interviews I walked out of feeling kind of “meh” about. For whatever reason – personality, hearing more about the job, having a curveball question- just left me with a feeling like while it could have been better, it probably could have been worse. There’s only been one interview so far where I walked out feeling rather ambiguous towards the position. While they didn’t seem interested or engaged during the interview itself, as I was leaving afterward they were very fun and friendly about the social and seeing me again. Out of the first day of interviews I got two second interviews, bringing my total for Day 2 to six interviews.

It’s hard to believe right now that it’s already 3 pm, yet I’m only halfway through my day. I have two more interviews this afternoon, then an evening full of socials. I’m going to suggest a future professional development on mingling, because it’s so hard for me to walk right up to someone and start up a conversation when we’ve already talked for an hour, and have been conversing through thank you notes in mailboxes. Hopefully it goes well though.

My apologies for such a rambling sort of blog post. It’s been a very long and very busy two days. You’ll all be excited to know that I did name drop the #sachat in one interview, and they were really intrigued by the concept of free, weekly professional development. So good job to all of you – the word is spreading!

Shannon
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15
Feb 10

#jobhunt No. 3

Balance

Deciding which interviews to accept? It's a balancing act.

Why can’t it just be that you are assigned 10 schools to interview with, you go do those, and then choose from any offers that result?

Have you ever watched a movie where the main character is like “Oh, my life is so hard, two people are in love with me!” And their funny sidekick friend is like “That must be such a horrible problem for you to have.” Whenever I’ve seen a movie like that I’ve instantly disliked the main character. Really? You’re going to complain about having more than one person that likes you? That must be just a terrible problem for you. I would instantly side with the friend, who usually got stuck petting a dog at the end as everyone else paired off. This was perhaps because I never had two attractive suitors chasing after me at the same time.

This is not meant to sound overly confident, but it is really hard when all the schools you sent interest letters to sent letters back saying “Let’s set up an interview!” Because then, in all the excitement of feeling wanted by these institutions, you set up interviews with ALL of them. Like when the main character decides to date both people at the same time. It’s stressful, it’s tiring, there’s wacky hijinks. And I’ve never felt bad for that main character until now. It actually is a horrible problem to have.

So that’s where I’m at this week. Currently trying to do a balancing act. I’m thankful to many of my amazing mentors who have been help me process it all on twitter, over email, and in their office as I came crashing in with a bag of Dove chocolates and the look of a crazy person. I’m hoping today to contact a couple schools and apologize for the change, but decline the interview. It would be nice to not stretch out the stress to next week.

Maybe I could also stop imagining myself as a character in a movie.

According to my countdown calendar there are 75 days left until graduation. Job hunting has been sucking up the majority of my time lately. I never thought that working on my thesis would be a nice, relaxing change of pace. I spent the majority of my weekend on that, other homework and just getting away from the whole job search process for a while. And the Olympics. No matter how hard a job search is, at least I’m not required to hurl my body down a mountain of snow with me feet strapped to a board.

Next time: Practice interview questions!



Sean
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29
Jan 10

5 Tips for Conquering the Student Affairs Placement Conference

In my last post, I gave somewhat of an overview of major placement conferences for candidates in Student Affairs. In this post I hope to share a few tips for all you Higher Education/Student Affairs job searchers out there who are attending a placement conference this season.

During my 15-year career in Student Affairs, I was on both sides of the interview table at placement conferences, and can offer you some perspectives that will hopefully set you at ease and help you be more confident, and more prepared.

Save your money now. These things can get expensive!

  • Ask your employer if professional development funds can be spent to attend a placement conference. For many institutions, the answer will be “no,” and you shouldn’t be surprised or offended by this. It’s just where many employers draw the line in the sand. Institutions give PD money to help their employees learn new skills and enhance their skills sets, but it’s not realistic to expect your current employer to help you find a new or better job.
  • Find a roommate (or two or three) to share lodging expenses. The nightly rates at convention hotels are usually pretty moderate. (For example, nightly rates at preferred hotels for this year’s ACPA convention range from $199/night for a single room to $259 a night for a quad.) And don’t forget about parking, which will probably be in the $35/$40 per night range, or taxis and shuttle service to and from the airport if you are not driving in.
  • If you have your own transportation, and can find a less expensive non-conference hotel near public transit, then drive in, or take the bus, and save some money.
  • Take advantage of free in-room coffee and free continental breakfasts (if your hotel has them). It’s also easier than you might think to find yourself skipping breakfasts, or unwilling to fight the teeming throngs trying to get breakfast at the same time. It’s also a good idea to bring snacks to your room, in case you are pressed for time and need to eat and run.
  • Bring a water bottle and refill it when you can rather than buying drinks at hotel/convention center prices.

Have all your ducks in a row before you get there.

  • Make sure your resume is impeccably written, targeted toward the positions you hope to apply for, grammatically correct, well laid-out, and easy to read. Placement centers will give you a candidate number. Make sure it is on your resume and that all pages stay together. Staples are fine at a placement center. Take a stapler and use it. When an interviewer has a huge pile of resumes and interview forms and brochures and giveaways to deal with, the last thing they want to do is spend their time searching a pile of loose papers for one errant page of your resume that got separated from the rest, because your paper clip slipped off.
  • Speaking of candidate numbers, many candidates these days make personalized message to employer forms that give a brief statement of interest, and leave room for the candidate to write in the employer number and the posting number on the form. If you do make your own, consider using colored paper. It stands out. As a conference interviewer, I always liked these, as long as messages were brief and concise. They also helped me find a candidate’s packet more easily.
  • Make contact ahead of time with potential employers about listings posted before the conference. Ask to pre-arrange an interview for your position of interest. Many employers pre-arrange a significant number of their interviews when possible.
  • Make sure all your references have been prepped about your goals for the placement exchange, any positions you are planning to apply for, and your reasons for applying for certain types of positions.

Be on Your Best Behavior. At All Times!

  • It won’t matter how you are dressed or how you interview if you make an ass out of yourself in some other way. Some do’s and don’ts:
  • Do:
    • Come prepared for each interview
    • Be friendly to the interviewers and to other candidates
    • Stay positive
    • Thank your interviewers for their time at the end of the interview
    • Network with other candidates and encourage them in their job search
    • Use the preparation table areas to organize your thoughts and your materials
    • Wait a few minutes if the interviewer is running late. Since most interviews run about 30 minutes, you should feel free to go after 10 minutes. But these are very busy days and people do get off-course. If you have back-to-back interviews, let the interviewer know.

    Don’t:

    • Schedule back-to-back interviews (if you can help it). You’ll need time to get from one place to another and you will periodically need a break.
    • Badmouth, make fun of, or make rude comments about an interviewer, a university, another candidate, your boss, your current employer, or basically, anyone. This means in the placement center, the hotel, the lobby bar, the McDonald’s across the street…wherever. If you need to vent or talk out frustrations, go to your hotel room and talk with your conference roommates or call a friend or family member on the phone. For everyone else, act like it’s raining daisies and nothing could be finer.
    • Stay in the placement center all day (especially if you are not especially busy at some given time with interviews.) This can lead you to think too much, stress out, and get down on yourself. You will need fresh air and walking-around time. Take it.
    • Flirt with your interviewer or other candidates, make inappropriate jokes or off-color comments, or go on and on and on about how many top scholars you know in the field. It’s boorish behavior and it will count against you in the eyes of many employers.
    • Expect to leave the placement center with a job in hand. Most universities just don’t work that way. There are human resource guidelines to follow, and many student-services positions really like to involve students, colleagues in related departments, and upper administrators in their selection processes, and it’s unlikely that all of these parties will be represented on the interview team.

Learn Something!

  • If the placement center is part of a longer conference with professional development sessions, go to some! They are great places to network, you might learn something new that leads you to explore additional opportunities, and you will need a break from the placement center.
  • If you have the option of talking about your career or some topic of interest with more experienced professionals, do it. Sometimes, these opportunities come up in sessions. Sometimes, they come up on the sidewalk, in a restaurant or at a volunteer post.

Volunteer!

  • Volunteering is a great way to get informal opportunities for networking, to learn how the conference is organized, and to be of service to other candidates.
  • It’s also fun. Did I mention that you are likely to need a break from interviewing? This is one way to take a break but depending on what you volunteer for, you may end up volunteering in the placement center. Just be sure that you are doing it during an actual opening in your interview schedule!

Best of luck to everyone interviewing this season!

Sean
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Careers / Conferences — View Comments
26
Jan 10

Preparing for Success at Student Affairs Placement Conferences

Springtime…the sun is shining, the birds are singing, and at colleges across the country, a young person’s fancy turns to thoughts of…unemployment?

In Student Affairs, this can only signal one thing…placement season is here. It’s time to brush up the resume, line up the references, check job postings, write cover letters, practice interview, really interview, and hope for the best. One part of this cycle in higher education is the placement conference, where candidates by the hundreds can answer the cattle calls of multiple employers, line up several interviews, and kick their search into a higher gear.

The three-hundred pound gorilla of placement centers these days is the Placement Exchange. A joint venture of ACUHO-I, ASCA, NACA, NASPA, NODA, AFA and HigherEdJobs.Com, this year’s exchange is being held in Chicago from March 3-7, just prior to the NASPA Annual Conference. According to the Placement Exchange’s website, 5070 interviews for 359 positions were held at last year’s conference in Seattle.

Two other larger conferences also offer placement centers: ACPA and the OshKosh Placement Exchange. ACPA hosts Career Central at their annual convention, held this year at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston from March 19-23. The OshKosh Placement Exchange is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-OshKosh and is in its 31st year.

For candidates that have a more regional focus, several regional organizations also hold placement conferences, including MACUHO’s Mid-Atlantic Placement Conference in Lancaster, PA from February 26 to 26 and the Southern Placement Exchange from March 11 to 14 in Memphis, TN. There are more, but these are the ones I could find while preparing for this article. If you know of another, please send it along, and I will make note of it in a future post.

For candidates that have never taken part in a large placement conference, the prospect of competing with several hundred people for positions can be pretty daunting. ACPA offers a great Guide to Demystifying Career Central at the Convention as a downloadable .pdf.

This guide offers steps for success before, during and after the interview, sample questions to help candidates prepare, resources and tips on handling illegal questions, negotiating an offer, planning your relocation, and more. These practical resources should be an asset to anyone in the Higher Ed/Student Affairs job market. I recommend reading it through well in advance of participation in any placement conference. It will give you a great feel for the placement experience.

Best of luck to you if you are a candidate this hiring season! In my next post, I will share some tips of my own. Though I probably can’t be as comprehensive as the ACPA Guide, I have been on both sides of the interview table at placement conferences, and can offer you some perspectives that will hopefully set you at ease and be more confident, and more prepared.

I’d also like to try a Twitter experiment to help keep the conversation going this placement season. If you are a candidate with a question about placement or an experienced professional (or employer) who has advice and perspectives to offer, please hashtag your placement questions and comments with #saplacement. Users can then follow these comments using their Twitter client and those of us with employment-related blogs and websites can post links to the trending topic or incorporate a feed to help others follow the conversations and add in their questions and advice. Let’s see if we can create a huge collaborative conversation that will help our colleagues and students succeed this placement season!

(This post is a cross-posting from my blog at  higheredcareercoach.com where you can find a Twitter feed tracking the #saplacement hashtag. Let’s get the conversations underway!)

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