EPTJob search so far + sexism concerns. - Page 2
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Count9
China10928 Posts
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Empyrean
16992 Posts
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Drowsy
United States4876 Posts
On July 19 2011 09:01 twelveapm wrote: Well as a fellow business school grad, it really has a lot to do with your internships and work experience thus far. Great interviews are important but work experience is what really gets you considered. And at least in the jobs I interviewed for (granted, they're more quantitative), the interviewees are still male-dominated and for the job I ultimately accepted, the new hire class is mostly male (in my area, 5 females and around 10 males). I will say that the more technical (as in hard skills, not pure sales) you go, the more males there are relative to females. Try developing your technical skillset in this downtime--study valuations on your own, take an unpaid internship at a wealth management firm, etc. Keep up with the markets and the news. Then keep trying. If you want to work in finance, you'll find something, though it may take awhile. Edit: And NETWORK. Yeah I hate it but entry into business is sometimes really arbitrary. ("We have to fill a job now." "Oh really...I think I met a kid the other day who handed me his resume..." No kidding, more people have gotten jobs this way than I'd like to admit.) Hard skills make you a bit more competitive, but you need people to KNOW you have those skills. The internship opportunities I had were monstrously competitive. There was one with Edward Jones that had 300 applicants for 2 positions, 1 in Phoenix and 1 in Flagstaff. I had another was actually invited to apply for with the founder of my business school's private equity firm, it was paid too and there were 10 applicants and 2 positions (1 in Phoenix, 1 in Singapore). They were all way better than me, to put it bluntly. I still interviewed just for practice, knowing I wouldn't get it. I only have a 3.63 and I was competing against 4.0 president's of honors societies and MBA students. I was only selected because I was one of the few people to get a very high score on an econometrics exam. I think an unpaid internship might be my way in, just offering to fetch coffee and take out the trash in exchange for mentoring and experience might be worth it. | ||
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goldrush
Canada709 Posts
It'll feel REALLY when you do land something though! I'll also suggest that there likely isn't any discrimination. Women tend to focus more on schooling and get better GPAs. They also tend to plan ahead way better, which really helps them out. I mean, I know that some companies have their job fair for September 2012 early in the Fall semester. Starting in April puts you behind in the game and it's possible that they spent even longer than you looking for a job, but they also started way earlier than you. Not getting a job after 3 interviews isn't really indicative of discrimination, that's a ridiculously small sample size. It's possible that you don't interview as well as you think you do, or that you come off desperate or cocky/arrogant. Try your school to see if they have anyone who can take a look at how you interview. | ||
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Drowsy
United States4876 Posts
On July 19 2011 09:52 Empyrean wrote: Yeah, twenty applications seems pretty low. Have you checked your school's e-recruiting website? Pretty much send a resume to every single firm you can that remotely matches your interest/degree. I'm talking about 50-100+ here. My school's e-recruiting website is very unregulated and has a lot of horrible scams. That's where I got the First Investors offer. I did a full count from my outbox and came up with 26 + a handful of applications through websites, which means I do need to send out a lot more. I've been going exclusively toward finance/banks/retail, I should probably explore some opportunities in insurance. Substitute teaching might not be a horrible plan as a temporary thing though while I search, I'm good at it and have very relevant experience with it. It would actually pay more/as much as many entry level finance positions. On July 19 2011 11:00 goldrush wrote: Not getting a job after 3 interviews isn't really indicative of discrimination, that's a ridiculously small sample size. It's possible that you don't interview as well as you think you do, or that you come off desperate or cocky/arrogant. Try your school to see if they have anyone who can take a look at how you interview. It wasn't so much the number of interviews or not getting the jobs, but the composition of the people working there that made me wonder. When only a little less than half of your classmates from finance/economics were male, but 80+% of the people you saw at Vanguard are female and you notice that there's literally nobody from your demographic working there, you have to wonder just a little bit. I mean if you come across 300-400 people in the few hours you spent there and the gender/ethnic breakdown seems off, there's a good chance something is up. It doesn't quite add up, but I can't speak for any of the other firms as I haven't been there and spent a few hours in their buildings. I guess when I mentioned discrimination, I specifically meant Vanguard. I would be entirely un-surprised if I came of as desperate and anxious, because if I wasn't, I wouldn't have made this blog. | ||
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twelveapm
United States46 Posts
On July 19 2011 10:58 Drowsy wrote: I think an unpaid internship might be my way in, just offering to fetch coffee and take out the trash in exchange for mentoring and experience might be worth it. Yeah it sounds shitty but most people usually do at least 1 unpaid internship just for the experience and contacts. They usually do elevate you to the point where you can make spreadsheets, of client returns or whatnot. (Hurray, I know.) Your expenses should be pretty low though, since you live at home, so the pros outweigh the cons. Then just keep your resume up-to-date (and get a peer to review it) and spam it out. Good luck! | ||
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accordion
Canada58 Posts
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Pyrrhuloxia
United States6700 Posts
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Drowsy
United States4876 Posts
On July 19 2011 12:05 twelveapm wrote: Then just keep your resume up-to-date (and get a peer to review it) and spam it out. Good luck! That reminds me of one more thing. I've been doing individualized cover letters for pretty much every job I've applied for that was a salaried as opposed to hourly position. Is this good or should I not worry about it and just go for volume? I've written 11 so far. | ||
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twelveapm
United States46 Posts
On July 19 2011 13:02 Drowsy wrote: That reminds me of one more thing. I've been doing individualized cover letters for pretty much every job I've applied for that was a salaried as opposed to hourly position. Is this good or should I not worry about it and just go for volume? I've written 11 so far. Well it depends on what you call "individualized." Ideally you want a good ratio of quality to quantity: let each employer know that you looked into their company but at the same time be able to apply to a lot of jobs at once. Thus I would recommend having a cover letter with a few "moving parts": a 1st paragraph about each job/company that is specific and personal (from scratch per position), a 2nd paragraph that is one of a few stock paragraphs about interests/background/qualifications (switch out based on what type of position it is--accounting, sales, assistant, whatever--and of course making changes as necessary), and then a 3rd that is the "I would love to discuss this further, looking forward to hearing from you" stuff. Honestly though, cover letters don't matter too much: you should have them for positions that require it, but they can really only hurt you (e.g. you forget to change a company name in a template cover letter and send it). A recruiter for a big bank told me straight out she never reads them. Probably the smaller you go, the more important it is, but even then a resume+interview+connections should be your focus. When I mean "spam it out" though, I mean for positions that only require a resume drop. There is no excuse why you shouldn't be applying to those. (Unless you have a "why I am suited for this job" section in your resume, but you shouldn't, really.) | ||
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Deleted User 101379
4849 Posts
On July 19 2011 09:52 Empyrean wrote: Yeah, twenty applications seems pretty low. Have you checked your school's e-recruiting website? Pretty much send a resume to every single firm you can that remotely matches your interest/degree. I'm talking about 50-100+ here. I agree, 20 is very low. Think about it, there were probably around 100 people finishing with this degree from your university and there is only a finite number of jobs open, so for every application you send, there are 99 other applications in their inbox from the same university plus a lot of other applications from other universities, older applications, etc. Lots of them are better qualified than you are. You really need to send out a lot more to even have a chance. With about a hundred sent and fruitless applications in the span of 3 month you can start to complain, below that it's only your fault for not sending enough applications. Job market is tough, especially if you focus on a too small area and are not willing to move. On the topic of individualized vs mass mail: Individualized is the way to go. You can keep many parts static, but don't just replace the name. Searching a job is a full-time job, spend 8 hours a day preparing and sending applications and you don't have to worry about the individualizing so much, you can still send 10 applications a day. | ||
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bonifaceviii
Canada2890 Posts
Frankly I'd choose neither since they're pretty useless, but women are slightly less so straight out of school. | ||
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beberly
United States117 Posts
On July 19 2011 23:11 Morfildur wrote: I agree, 20 is very low. Think about it, there were probably around 100 people finishing with this degree from your university and there is only a finite number of jobs open, so for every application you send, there are 99 other applications in their inbox from the same university plus a lot of other applications from other universities, older applications, etc. Lots of them are better qualified than you are. You really need to send out a lot more to even have a chance. With about a hundred sent and fruitless applications in the span of 3 month you can start to complain, below that it's only your fault for not sending enough applications. Job market is tough, especially if you focus on a too small area and are not willing to move. On the topic of individualized vs mass mail: Individualized is the way to go. You can keep many parts static, but don't just replace the name. Searching a job is a full-time job, spend 8 hours a day preparing and sending applications and you don't have to worry about the individualizing so much, you can still send 10 applications a day. Very much this. I'm doing a job search in the legal field which, like every other industry, is kind of screwed right now.It shouldn't take much more than 30 mintutes to and hour to draft a cover letter from scratch. That time can be reduced if you have a dozen or so stock paragraphs, each one focusing on particular attributes of your resume that highlight your individual strengths/skills/experience/education. For each employer, surf their website for a bit to try to determine the kind of person they're looking for (it probably has an indiciation in the job description), and use the stock paragraphs that relate to those characteristics. Mold the stock paragraphs to show a bit of personalization, and use and introductory and closing paragraph that are tailored to the company, written from scratch for each letter. You should be able to bang out 1, maybe 2, per hour. 20 applications/cover letters is a good start, but it's just a start. Real job hunting is quite a lot harder than high school/college job hunting (where you're seeking positions like retail/restaurant/construction where there's lots of turnover and someone with an education is an exception, rather than the norm). Keep at it, though. I know older friends who graduated from law school and bought envelopes and paper in bulk so that they could mail things to every District Court judge in the state in an attempt to get a clerkship. In an economy as poor as we have right now, volume might be a little more important that it has been historically. | ||
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OpticalShot
Canada6330 Posts
After I finished 3rd year of my undergraduate program in infrastructure engineering, I looked for a full-year co-op position to get myself some cool experience. All but 3 (out of 19) people in my program (same year) opted to do the same. Out of that 16 that looked for co-op positions, there were 5 female and 11 male (yes I know, for an engineering program, our ratio was pretty good). All 5 girls got a position, some of them were ones I was also interviewed for. Out of 11 male, 7 got a job. Other four of us, including myself, had no choice but to scrap the co-op plans and go straight into 4th year. As you can imagine, I was pretty pissed. I out-performed most of those people (girls and guys) in terms of GPA, and also I had vastly superior experience through previous summer research and part-time research opportunities. I had connections with two of the leading professors in the field of transportation engineering in Canada. I speak English fluently and I researched+practiced for my interviews like crazy. I still do think that sex played a factor here. I chugged along in 4th year, GPA dropped a bit, graduated with still decent grades but no co-op experience. Since the exams ended in April, I went into full-time job hunting mode for jobs in my field. I sent resumes to pretty much all relevant firms in Canada and some in the states too. As a result, I got ZERO interviews. Not even a phone call. A couple automated-reply-received-application emails. ZERO interviews. By this point I'm thinking, on top of sexism, there might be racism being played (because my last name reveals that I'm of Asian descent). All sorts of negative thoughts. Waking up every morning knowing you have no future is not an easy feeling. Then I get connected to an interview. It was like 6-times linked connection through my family and someone else's family and blablabla, but my name did get through and my resume did get reviewed. Funny how this same firm didn't respond to any of my 4 applications (different positions) I submitted online earlier. I got an email for an interview - a position I was vastly under-qualified for - and I knew that this was my only chance anyway. Research and practice followed, obviously, both against the mirror and my poor sister who had to listen to me blab about how great and motivated I am. I dressed in full business attire and was interviewed for an hour by three people in polo shirts and slacks. Oh well, better overdressed than under. Notification for second interview came, this time at a different office location, and again there was an hour of talk and then an hour of case study + report writing. I didn't expect and prepare for the case study, but I did the best I could. Skipping to the end, here I am at my cubicle. Yes I'm browsing TL hehehe but the work I do here is pretty much exactly what I wanted to do, I'm at the firm I wanted to be at, and although work stress kicks in time to time, I feel like my life is on the right track. So don't give up, OP! Seems like you know exactly what you want to do and you prepare well for your interviews. I'd say quality over quantity, so take time to writing really convincing cover letters and fine-tuning your resume to each position - but most importantly search out your network of connections and look for ways you can be directly referred to. There will be an opportunity for you soon (perhaps unexpected) and as long as you keep up the same confidence and effort, you will be able to seize it. Good luck! =) | ||
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Classysaurus
United States78 Posts
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Zorkmid
4410 Posts
It's not what you know it's WHO you know. Of everything I did in university, networking was the most important by far. Keep at it, once you get your foot in the door somewhere, you should be fine. It's not unusual to spend 6 months or so job hunting. Most companies have reservations about hiring someone who is unemployed. It would look better if you were doing SOMETHING, anything at all. The reality of the workforce these days is that very few people spend their entire careers in the same field. I started out as an organic chemist (with a bio degree), did IT work, and now I'm a health care business analyst. Just keep at it, widen your focus, and get money. First you get the money Then you get the power Then you get the weeeemin. | ||
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Gnial
Canada907 Posts
Currently she does part-time babysitting and has been for a few months. (she hates this joke, but when people ask what she is doing I tell them that she is working on her masters of Child Rearing) So you're not the only one, and its not like all educated women have jobs. You should figure out when the primary hiring cycles are for the various sectors that you're trying to break into. I know that many of the big firms in Western Canada have a large hiring cycle in around September, so thats what she is holding out hope for. Perhaps it is something similar for you? | ||
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cameronkrazie86
United States296 Posts
The job market sucks right now. I'm trying to stay positive and just keep on looking. I can't even get a part-time job right now since apparently I'm "over-qualified" and all that crap. Apply to anything and everything, the shotgun approach is probably the best way to go after things at this point. With the rumors of a second recession on the horizon, it may be the only option in a couple months. Good luck. | ||
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