...since I last posted anything on my blog. Seven months, in fact, or thereabouts. For someone who prides herself on staying on the radar of professionals interested in what's going on in the world of job search and career resilience, that's pretty damned unconscionable! So I hereby vow to post a new blog entry every week...as a way of sharing insights, news and information with readers, and as a way of disciplining myself. Let this be the first week of the rest of my blog life!
I'm very proud to say that I began a new chapter of my professional life this week: on Tuesday, 11/8, I began a part-time position at the Magner Center for Career Development and Internships, which is Brooklyn College's truly excellent Career Center, a position slated to last through February of 2012. BC is my alma mater, and I graduated from there in -- well, let's just say that I graduated from there long enough ago so that the current students could be my grandkids. And that's no exaggeration.
In many ways it's very much the same -- the main campus is still as beautiful as it was the first time I saw it, when I was about 5 or 6, and looked in through the main gate at Bedford Avenue. I was so struck by its loveliness that I told my mother, there and then, that this was the college I wanted to attend, and I've always been grateful for the excellent education I got there, and proud of being a graduate. I've also been doing volunteer work for the Magner Center for the past 2 or 3 years...but this opportunity to be a real part of the school again is very exciting for me, as a way of giving back what I was given.
In many ways, however, it's very different. One way is the truly amazing ethnic and cultural diversity of the student population. Another way -- and not, unfortunately, a good way -- is the incredible difficulty that so many students are having finding jobs after graduation. In this, the situation couldn't be more diametrically different from what it was when I graduated. Back then a degree in anything -- Basket Weaving, Folk Dance or Phys. Ed. -- could get you a job in the most prestigious of companies. Just so long as you had a degree. Any degree.
Now? Now it seems that companies are willing to hold out for astonishing lengths of time in order to find the absolutely exact individual with the absolutely specific knowledge and experience they're looking for, making "the perfect the enemy of the good," as the saying goes. How sad, and what a waste of talent among talented, educated, eager and perfectly acceptable candidates who simply need a little -- and often a very little -- time and training to become stars for the company intelligent enough to hire them.
Somewhere along the line, potential employers decided that training was a dirty word. I don't know why, when we've got so many people hungering for work. I only know that it's a sin and a crime, and that anyone who's got influence with senior management or boards of trustees of companies of any size should start trying to change hearts and minds. If we're going to stay the vibrant, successful "land of opportunity" that's set the model for what a nation could achieve, we've got to start putting our people -- young and not so young -- back to work. Waiting for the "perfect" person isn't the way to do that.
I don't know exactly when this came to seem like a good idea, or why; but these things don't happen without the consent of the folks at the top. To translate phrase I heard many years ago, when working for a non-U.S. bank, "the fish stinks from the head"...meaning that decisions are made from the top down, even the bad ones. We need to let corporate decision-makers know that they need to start changing their employment practices, start hiring, and stop burning out their current employees... those who are doing the work of 2, 3 or 4 other people while management waits for the "perfect" individual to come along.
Join me, if you can, in trying to make a difference for your friends, your family, your neighbors -- and maybe even yourselves!
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