Countdown to Annual Conference!

With the last shipment winging its way to New Orleans, we here on staff are getting the last items ready for next week! There are so many fun things this year to do and new people to meet and new things to learn!

The attendee list is posted online (dont panic if you just registered and your name is not there- the list was run May 15) here. See who you might know and make a plan to meet. The convention center is LARGE but we are in a compact space but a meet-up is always fun!
Perhaps you want to be more leading edge and meet through a BLOG(heh!) or via Twitter(Look me up! I'll be twittering when I can!) or Facebook. Use those social tools to make your meeting even more effective!

Remember - FREE WIRELESS is yours! Use it!

Federal Career Opportunities through Partnership for Public Service--at NACE!

As I highlighted in an earlier post, there is a growing interest in careers that benefit the common good. These careers can be found in the exciting diversity of the nonprofit sector, the rapidly growing field of corporate/business social responsibility (CSR or BSR), or the wide range of positions available in all levels of government.

Whether you are just starting to figure out how to answer the increasingly frequent questions by students and alumni about meaningful careers or you have already been involved with finding ways to educate your students and alums about these opportunities, Partnership for Public Service is a great resource to check out and will have several must-attend events at this year’s NACE conference.

The first is the Call to Serve National Summit on Tuesday, May 27th from 2pm to 5pm that brings career services leaders and federal agency representatives together to network, gather and share ideas, and build relationships to collaborate in connecting people to federal government careers. For more information and to RSVP for the Call to Serve National Summit, click on the summit name and look on the right column of the page.

The other event that you will want to put on your schedule is the concurrent session on Wednesday, May 28th at 1pm called “Collaborating to Fill the Federal Skills Gap: How 5 universities and 11 federal agencies made the government an employer of choice.” Agency and university representatives will share effective ways to build a campaign on a campus that allows students to see the federal government as an employer of choice. For the session abstract and location, click here.

With just a week to go, I’m getting excited about all of the NACE events and sessions, but these two are fixtures on my schedule because they address the growing interest in (and availability of!) careers that provide more than just a paycheck.

The Future's so Bright . . .

This year's conference is nearly upon us. Most of us will be wrapping up business in our offices, packing our bags, printing our boarding passes, and confirming our reservations. We may even be meeting with colleagues to determine the sessions of most value and interest to our organizations. Oh, and graduation season is in full swing.

In this flurry of activity you may miss or put off taking a look at the May NACEJournal. Here are a few reasons not to delay (or at least take it on the plane with you):

1. Networking - peruse for icebreakers to use while waiting for a session to start.

2. Get the word on NACE award winners - see your reputation as a prognosticator soar when you predict this year's ChevronTexaco award. No one needs to know you read it there first.

3. Hot off the press research and stats to fuel your insightful questions to session presenters.

4. Get the inside scoop on this year's Future Directions Committee and their presentation "Career Services 2018: Embracing the Seismic Shifts in Work Force Development". This way you can come ready to discuss the future.

Never enough time...USE a PLANNER!

So how do you figure out what to do when you are on site at the conference? Try creating a schedule using the conference planner found here.

This is a cool tool that your whole team can use to plan your day! WARNING: dont forget sessions can fill up so you many want to have an alternate just in case. Rooms should NOT be shut out so early this year as the session rooms are larger but you never know.

No Experience? Volunteer. Even After Being Hired.

One of the most frequent statements that we hear from frustrated job seekers is that employers are rejecting their applications because they lack experience. The job seekers typically wonder how it is that they can get experience if no one will hire them.

The answer to that conundrum is that the job seekers should get the experience they need outside of the job market. Instead of looking for someone to pay you and to give you the experience you need, instead look for someone who will only give you the experience you need. That's right, work for free. Volunteer.

But what about those who are employed and struggling to advance? Their paths are frequently blocked or at least delayed by their lack of experience. If their employer won't give them the experience they need in order to earn the sought after promotion, how can they obtain the promotion? Again, work for free. Volunteer.

A small but growing number of employers are encouraging their employees to volunteer occasionally or even full-time in an effort to inspire the employees, give back to the community, and shift the cost of training the employees to other organizations. But everyone wins in these arrangements so don't infer that I'm being critical of them. Far from it. I think they're fabulous.

Ernst & Young, for example, has allowed some of its accountants to volunteer for weeks and even months for non-profits. The firm covers transportation, food, and hotel expenses and even keeps the employees on its payroll so they don't suffer any loss of income. What they get back are employees who are far better qualified to do far more complicated work. Which means that E&Y has made a wise investment as it has essentially invested the costs associated with allowing its employees to volunteer their time for the non-profits and will quickly recoup that investment by being able to bill those employees out at much higher hourly rates to its clients.

And don't forget about the benefits these volunteer programs have when it comes time to recruit the next class of college students searching for internships or recent graduates hunting for entry level jobs and other career opportunities. A 2006 study by brand strategy and communications agency Cone Inc. found that 79 percent of Gen Y'ers want to work for organizations which care about how they affect or contribute to society. If your organization allows, encourages, or even pays for its employees to work for non-profits in a volunteer capacity then your organization's brand will skyrocket as you'll be demonstrating that you care about how you affect and contribute to society.

Best job sites?

There was an interesting article in Fortune magazine last week about the 30 best web sites for job seekers. With over 40,000 sites currently online that offer job and career information, this list is hardly a thorough overview of the who's who of the job site world, but it is interesting to peruse the winners. The 'best of' lists are broken down into different industries, professions, and locations.

Do you have any sites for job seekers that you love that aren't listed?

Forums are back! And a WIKI? YAY or what???

Yes! We have Forums at 4 again! This year they start at 4:15 (gotta keep eveyobdy on their toes.....) and there is only one session thi syear. Topics are red hot and facilitators are ready to keep everybody talking!


During a facilitator session yesterday, I thought we might want to try an experiment this year.....anybody up for starting a wiki for the ideas generated from the forums? Each session could have a page on the wiki and things could be added after the session.

IF .....anyone comments on this and tells me it is a good idea...I'll run with it and set up the wiki. SILENCE......means no thank you!