Full Force

Oh no! I completely neglected this blog since it's creation...the end of my college career was extremely busy and exciting, and this sort of fell on the back burner. But I'm back...and armed with a degree, and I know how to use it.

I had an interview with Team Detroit last week for a traffic coordinator position (one of the coolest interiors of an office building i've ever seen...), I'll find out in the first couple of weeks of January what the hiring managers decided on that. I also might have something coming out of the woodwork in North Carolina with the marketing department at GMAC...my cousin works for them in their Michigan office, and knows some people down at their other headquarters in NC. We'll see where those two leads go, but those are the only ones.

So--I've started writing for a career services blog..it's run by a woman named Heather Huhman and she is a career advisor and founder of Come Recommended, and also publishes career help books and e-books. The blog, The Classroom to Cubicle Project, is basically a collection of pending grads and new grads (me!!!) from across the nation that write each week about a variety of topics that are intended to help out other students. We write what we know, and learn from each other. It has really helped to enhance my professional online writing style, and I'm enjoying reading what my peers have to say, and their success stories with their job search.

I'll be writing more frequently now, I'm going full force on the job search since school is over and I can give it my undivided attention...until then...

Cold calling makes my heart race...

And it's not necessarily "fun" or "exciting..."



So I've known for quite some time now that Baltimore would be one of my target cities post-grad. I lived there for two summers while I was babysitting in-house for family friends, and I loved the area and the young professional feel. What I did in the first phase of my search in Baltimore was to simply Google "Baltimore Advertising Agencies" and poke through the 20 something pages of companies that came up. I went to each website, and made a list. The list contained two headers originally: TO CALL and TO APPLY TO. I weeded out which agencies had information on how to contact them regarding employment, and the agencies that had nothing listed but a phone number as far as contact information. I've been putting off making all of those phone calls...until today.

17. The number of small agencies in Baltimore I called today. 14 of them gave me information on how / who to apply to, 1 of them was flat out not hiring because it was a one man agency, and 2 of them were incredibly rude (which I was prepared for). A lot of the people I spoke to seemed surprised that an almost grad from Michigan was calling their small agency in Baltimore, a call they probably don't get so often.

I'm not crazy I swear--my desire to work in a smaller agency stems from my internship over the summer at a full service agency run by less than 20 people: Motion Marketing and Media (tweet. tweet. @m3_group). My perspective changed because I was thrown into the industry and local projects so much so, that when I drove around I recognized the work that I had helped on. They do a lot of campaigns for various local Lansing initiatives, and have a real community impact. Lets be real and relevant to the US economy here though, if for some reason I get offered a job at a large corporate agency, I'll take it! I won't be short changing myself on this search by ONLY applying to small agencies, because it just isn't sensible.

Vocation Hunt?

The first time I heard the word vocation was during MSU's 2009 Creative Arts Gallery. A presenter from a local area business spoke about how stressful it is to find jobs in today's economy. It inspired me because he also spoke about the importance of finding a "vocation" instead of just a job. A vocation is defined as "a strong feeling of sustainability for a particular career or occupation. It is about finding something that you are passionate about and you love to do, instead of just having something to pay the bills. Waking up and going to work happy makes a huge difference in overall well being and happiness.

I'm currently taking on the incredibly stressful task of joining the thousands of graduates across the nation in the rat race to find a vocation. I am graduating from Michigan State University in December and I'm hoping to move back East. This blog will chronicle the difficulties of landing interviews, my strategies, and the sure stories that will accompany the search.



Setting up this blog is something I've wanted to do for awhile and I am glad I finally did. I am currently taking a class called New Media Driver's License and setting up a blog is an assignment that corresponds to the class topics. Using Blogger is extremely easy and I love that I could sign up using my Gmail account. The website is very streamlined and easy to use, and I love that I can customize the way it looks with colors and templates.