When it comes to finding a job networking is invaluable. It’s best to network throughout your academic and early professional career. Waiting to network until you’ve been laid off from you first professional job is far less effective than say…networking the entire time you were at that job and the entire time you were in college.

What does it take to network?

A little bit of shamelessness. There’s not need to worry about the shamelessness though. Someone has to initiate the awkward discussion about how you and the individual you are attempting to network with may be able to help each other out in the present or in the future. Put on your big girl pants and talk to strangers!

Social networking sites for professionals such as linked in and visual cv are excellent resources, but you can’t replace face to face contact. I am so comfortable stalking people from behind the computer monitor and finding friends of friends who work for my dream companies. Putting on that business suit and walking into a room filled with professionals (who are also strangers) is so much more intimidating. (Can you believe I would rather admit to someone via email that I stalked them via facebook, before talking to a potential employer at a convention?)

The next month (or at least until I find a job, which I’m hoping is sooner than a month from now) will be filled with UCF Alumni resume building workshops, career fairs and miscellaneous networking events.

The moral of the story is be nice to your professors, peers and other professionals that you meet while you’re in college and maybe you’ll have to speak to fewer stranger. (Or maybe you’ll just know so many people and be so comfortable with networking that no one will be a stranger in your eyes.)

Happy Networking!

I didn’t feel guilty about it, because I had purchased a package of 8 classes before I was unemployed. However, every penny that I have had to spend since last Friday has been so painful.

There are only two very terrible things about finding myself unemployed. The first of which is the financial situation that I may face if it takes me more than a couple of months to find a job. The second is that I am uninsured.

I am a statistic. Unemployed. Uninsured.

It seems that keeping a close eye on the politics involved in both the job market and the health insurance industry may become a hobby of mine. Though, the never-ending bickering that is going on regarding the health overhaul leads me to believe (or at least to hope) that I will have a job before anything productive comes of that situation.

Tune in tomorrow for another episode of diary of an unemployed college graduate.

I hope you don't mind that I stole this from your blog, Brecca.

Take it away Brecca

lessons learned in the classroom:

• find a way to take interest in what you are learning about. going to school is so much more fulfilling if you have a passion for what you are doing.
• making friends in a class proves to be very beneficial. you can help each other in study groups and have morale support through the grueling times.
• seize the opportunities that allow you to travel and see the world. that’s where the important learning really happens.
• don’t stress out too much. ok so this is basically a life lesson, but i try not to get obsessive about things that i’m not going to care about next month, enjoy the ride.
• be personable with your teachers. i don’t want to say i’m a suck up but i try to have some connection with my teacher. it’s who you know not what you know people.and i truly think it makes a difference when you are really a person and not a number to your professor.
• remember NOT to volunteer your laptop to be hooked up to the projector (during your final advertising pitch to the client you’ve been working with all semester) when this picture is your current wallpaper. might be a little embarrassing…


Brecca: far right

in the process of learning

• how to balance being a mom, working and school. i love my advertising program and that has been helpful in keeping me motivated to finish, 18 credits left!

• the art of organization. some people are just naturally good at it and for the rest of us, it just doesn’t come naturally. i hope to someday be on top of it!

• to be a better writer. i absolutely love writing and it has always been my favorite part of school. people don’t get it when i look forward to writing a paper, i just like the freedom of creativity that it offers as opposed to a stuffy test!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/topgold/ / CC BY 2.0

While many of my friends might think I’m the Twitter Queen, it’s only because she with the most tweets wins! The truth is, I’m still new to writing web content and using social media to promote my work. The internet is a wonderful place that not only brought us Twitter, but also bestowed upon us Twitter tools that will surely fuel my [tweeting] disease. I did some research (courtesy of the fantastic sources cited) and found terrific tweeting tools!

1. The advanced search feature allows you to use special operators such as “or” and “and” to expand your searches, just like a search engine would! (NYTimes)

2. There are desktop applications that don’t require you to open a browser window to tweet, such as Digsby. (NYTimes)

3. If you can’t openly tweet around the office you can sneak tweets using sweet applications like SpreadTweet or OutTwit that look like MS Office programs. (Nytimes)

4. TweetBeep allows you to set notifications when tweets with selected keywords are published. (NYTimes)

5. Twitter Grader and Twinfluence allow you to measure how engaged your followers are and how influential they are (respectively). These are scientific processes– take that all you haters who think Twitter is silly! (Mashable)

6. Qwitter and Twitterless let you track the followers you lose–they even tell you what you were tweeting about when you lost them. (hint  hint stop tweeting about that!) (Mashable)

7. Tweet Rank lets you track your tweet quality. Which tweets resulted in a gain [of followers] and which ones were a total loss? You’ll never know until you use it!(SociableBlog)

8. TweetScan notifies you [via email] of your @replies so you (or I) never have to worry about missing something that might stroke your (or my) Tweego! Am I allowed to make social media terms up, or am I still too new to this? (SociableBlog)

9. Twitter Local and Nearby Tweets let you search for Tweeters in certain locations. For those (like me) who write web content about local businesses and events, this is a lovely way to promote. (SociableBlog)

10. Twellow allows you to find fellow Tweeters from your industry– an efficient way of networking, if I may say so!

I leave you now with these 10 tools in hopes that you will make use of them and also share your terrific Twitter tools with me [in the comments].