Jobs For Communications Majors Hard To Get?

One of the interesting things about a degree in communications is the number of different fields it opens up. When you do a preliminary job search, it can look like there aren’t very many jobs for communications majors. After all, it is not like most areas of specialty where all the jobs are in the same thing. For example, if you major in business, you can find all the opportunities you like on a business jobs website. As a communications major, however, you have to be a little bit more clever.

Basically, jobs for communications majors depend on your other interests and skills. Many communications majors, understandably, like to go in to advertising. If you have an advertising degree in addition to your communication major, there are a lot of doors open for you. You’ll be able to work in both traditional advertising and more novel types such as viral marketing. Your background in communications will make you more skilled in getting the contacts that you need to succeed in this field.

Of course, many of the jobs for communications majors are in public relations. Being a communications major almost guarantees you an interview with a public relations firm. After all, even fresh out of college they can assume that you are skilled at representing clients and spin doctoring whenever the situation calls for it. Make a good impression, and you will be a shoe in.

Of course, there are also jobs for communications majors in nonprofit industries. If you really want to use your communication skills to make the world a better place, this can be one of the most promising career fields for you. Nonprofit organizations particularly national and international ones need communications representatives every bit as much as businesses do. In these jobs for communications majors, you will be able to take pride in the quality of work you do while helping out in a cause you believe in. What could be better than that?

Of course, if you are in the unfortunate position of not finding any of these career paths appealing, don’t despair. A major in communications is a respected liberal arts degree that will open up many other venues for you. You could be a traffic coordinator, A retailer shipping manager, or really anything else you put your mind to. Majoring in communications opens up many doors, but it doesn’t close very many. With a little bit of imagination and a lot of hard work, the world is wide open to you.

Some Words About Pre-Employment Background Screening

Depending on your age, you probably remember when pre employment background screening meant that someone checked to be sure that your past job listings are accurate and they may have called a few of your references. Some places would confirm your education, but not all of them were as concerned about that point. Those were the simple days and you always knew what to expect through that type of background screening. Things have changed, and the laws keep changing. These are the things business owners must keep up with today.

There are some other things that have come up as a part of pre employment background screening that you should be aware of. When anyone is hired by a school system, daycare facility, or any other place that puts someone into contact with young children, there is a search done for a past record of child abuse or sexual misconduct. Those that come up with something on their record through this type of pre employment background screening are automatically eliminated from being hired. If they refuse to give clearance for an employer to do this search, they are not going to get the job.

Depending on where you want to work, your pre employment background screening may also include a check into your criminal history. Most applications ask outright if you have been convicted of a felony. It is always important to be honest about this, as they are going to find out anyway. If you have lied, you are not going to get the job. On the other hand, depending on what you did, being honest about it may mean that you are a good candidate. When asked for this as a part of pre employment background screening, be honest and up front.

The problem with some of this is that the laws in regards to pre employment background screening and records searching are becoming murky. There are some things that are now forbidden in some places, even if the candidate gives written permission for someone to search out this type of information. If you are doing the hiring, make sure you know the laws in your sate. If you are looking for work, you should know what someone can ask you for and what they can not.

Finding People Through Social Networking Web Sites

There are many great tools that you can use to find the people that you’ve lost contact with. Many of them are online. You may have thought to use the search engines to search for someone by name, or perhaps you turned to the white pages to see if you could find a current landline phone number through which you could contact them. These tools do not always work, but don’t should not give up just yet. Thanks to the internet, you can use social networking websites to see if you can find them. Even those with no mention anywhere else online can come up in these social sites.

There are quite a few ways that you can go about searching for someone through social networking websites. You can start with the most obvious. You can use the name search that each has to see if something comes up with that name. You should be prepared to have a lot of results to go through if someone has a rather common name. You can then look through the listings on social networking websites to see what you find through the pictures. They can help you look through much more quickly.

If you dont seem to find someone that way, dont give up just yet. Some will sign up for social networking websites with names other than their own. They may do this for many reasons, the biggest being privacy. They may have changed names due to marriage or other life circumstances, so finding them through social networking websites this way is tricky. If you have an email address for them that you are not sure is current, use the email search. If they used that email to sign up, they are going to come up for you that way.

You may think that you have hit a dead end if neither of those options have worked, but there are other ways you can search social networking websites for that person that you miss from your past. You can see if you can find any people that you both knew. If you can find their profiles on any of the social networking websites out there, you may find the person you seek on their friends list. If so, you then know how you can contact them.

Some people are simply not online, or perhaps they do not have profiles through such social networking websites. They may have one through some professional networking websites however, so use the same tools to search through them. Keep your own profiles open if you really want to find someone, as you never know, they may come looking for you. If they can see your profile, and they can tell it is you, they may very well surprise you by contacting you through these sites.

Should You Choose A Career Assessment Test?

Everyone stresses out about choosing a career at some point or another. The healthy ones get the stress over with at the beginning, worrying about it before they get too involved in their chosen field. People with less self-knowledge usually just go into a chosen career because they are expected to, because it will make their parents happy, because it is traditional in their family, or for some other arbitrary reason. They think that they have escaped worrying about choosing a career, but they are wrong. Down the road, they will stress out twice as much when they realize that they may not have chosen the right lifetime occupation.

When you are choosing a career, you can feel pretty bleak and lost. After all, it is difficult to decide on what you will do for the rest of your life. This is why a career assessment test can be useful. A lot of people dismiss career assessment tests ,claiming that they are too simplistic. In some ways, these people are right a typical career assessment test is quite simplistic. This simplicity, however, is the whole point.

You see, a career aptitude test is not meant to tell you what you should do, but to help you locate your own motivations, desires, and ideas. By asking you targeted questions, your career test can give you some indication about what might make you happy. If it seems right, you know what field to go into. If it seems wrong, you probably already have some idea about what you want to do something that you have never thought about before. Your way, the career assessment test has just helped you to make up your mind.

Remember, a career assessment test isn’t there to judge you. That isn’t the purpose. It is there as a tool for you to use to help yourself choose the right job. Given the number of free career assessment tests out there, you can afford To try out more than one. If you find the information to be simplistic, incorrect, or unhelpful, you can always try out another free career assessment test. If, on the other hand you find the information useful, you have just gotten some excellent advice for free. Even employers can use career tests as a way to screen potential employees. The right test can tell an employer who is interviewing because they really have a passion for the job, and who is just looking for a way to make some money until something better comes along.

Careers in today’s high technology sector

The high technology job sector has evolved quite dramatically over the last few years. The technology infrastructure that provides us with broadband access, mobile everywhere and anytime, anyplace access to information has really spurred a plethora of new services and by inferrence has created enormous job opportunities for the right people.

Case in point is the presidential campaign of Barack Obama. His campaign team was able to garner an enormous cache of money, because they learned to leverage the web’s ability to touch huge numbers of people simultaneously and oftentimes with different messages. In addition, with the ability to target, iterate and re-focus the message at a moments notice, Mr. Obama’s campaign team showed that they are an online marketing force to be rekoned with.

Oh, and by the way, did you know that Senator Obama’s Twitter profile is the most followed Twitter account? What is Twitter, you ask?

This is the new world within which you must learn to work. I cannot count how many employers now employ or seek to employ the new generation of marketeers and sales agents. If you don’t know SEM, SEO, PPC, CPA, blogging, wikis, twitter or the numerous other direct marketing concepts, you will surely be left in the annals of the technology dinosaurs.

I recently attended an Adtech conference in San Francisco. Picture this … at the Moscone Center … 100s of new wave technolgy companies that just 5 years ago were barely a blip on the screen … commission junction, hitwise, double click, hydra networks … All of them giving out free food, booze, and chatchkas. And, to top it off, “booth babes” galore. This reminded me of the heady enterprise software days of the early to late 90s. You’d think that the real estate fiasco was over and the “happy days are here again”.

The truth is, though, that every major and minor company is integrating online marketing with their offline marketing at incredible speeds. In fact, there are many companies who are even forgoing offline in favor of online. And, the reasons make sense: wider audience, faster target response time and most often a lot less money.

What should you do to prepare for this new approach? As Nike’s slogan says “just do it”. Or, David’s iteration of this slogan, “get on with it”. There are many ways for you to participate in this market with little or no capital costs. Work with your local school, non-profit, or sports group and help them with optimizing their websites.

You can also create your own websites and create adsense ads or PPC to CPA type offers. If you want to get in on the new action, you MUST learn these techniques now before the storm really hits.

Once you’ve ventured into this realm, there really is no turning back. Emphasize your experience, highlight your successes and tout your ability to move a company’s Google PR from 0 to 8 and Alexa rating down from 1M to 1K and then give me a call.