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Brian Krueger
interviewed by Brian Hecht on October 3, 1995
"Aunt Mabel may play bridge with a hiring manager..."
Brian Krueger is a nationally syndicated career columnist and the author of the book, "College Grad Job Hunter."
Tripod: Tell me a little bit about your column and your expertise.
BK: I'm the author of the book "College Grad Job Hunter" and the author of the syndicated college newspaper column "Job Hunter." Both deal with the college grad, or college student job search. The book is written specifically for that market, and so all of the material is written to the specific needs of college students preparing to search for their first entry-level job.
My background as an author, I personally am a hiring manager at Keane, Inc., which is the largest IS consulting firm in the United States. And I'm personally responsible for hiring people both at the entry level and experienced, so I'm a hiring manager. And this is really my day job. I spend my evenings writing on the experiences that I've gained from my day job and trying to help people at the entry level.
Tripod: How difficult -- and important -- is the first job search?
BK: I've found that entering level job search is, number one, the most difficult type of job search, because it's most critical in anyone's career path. But at the same time, number two, people are very unprepared for that job search. They're unfamiliar with what the mechanics are. If they go out and buy a book, it might be a general book about job search and, frankly, there are different rules, there are different guidelines, there are different techniques and tactics that are used at the entering level that don't apply to the general job search market. So to me, it is the most important job search you'll ever conduct in your entire life.
Tripod: Lots of people come out of college saying "I have this liberal arts degree and no idea what I want to do with it." How do you advise someone like that to narrow down their interests?
BK: The person, foremost, to be successful in a job search, has to be focused. You can't approach the job market hoping that someone will find a niche for you. You have to know what your niche is. I think there's a fallacy attached to the liberal-arts degree, which is everyone's out there wanting to hire liberal arts people because they're so broad, and so general. The fact is at the entering level, what companies are looking for is people that are very targeted and focused on what they want to do. And so for somebody that does have a general broad liberal arts education, that's fine, as long as they have a specific direction in which they're going to apply it. They need to specialize, to have a focus, to be sharpened on what they want to do. It's not my job as the hiring manager to figure out what your vocation in life should be. That's your job. That's the job of the job-seeker. And a lot of job-seekers are in their senior year of college or, worse, graduate, and have absolutely no clue what they want to do with their job, their life, their career.
Tripod: Do you have any specific recommendations for how to help people find that focus?
BK: Absolutely. They need to go back, and at almost every large university, there's a campus career center. And there are qualified, competent, highly trained, and typically highly skilled counselors that can help people in the front-end part of the process. Because job search is the outcome after the person already knows what to do ... Unfortunately, a lot of people just skip the front-end work ... The ideal is somebody that's actually starting this process either in high school, or freshman or sophomore year in college. So that they can direct, not only their coursework, toward their intended career path, but so that they can also direct their vocational experience, so that they can pick up job-related experience. So that in effect what they're doing is not only product positioning, but also product preparation. They're in effect packaging the product in advance, knowing what will be saleable within the market, so that they have that advance prep time.
Tripod: Let me ask you about the job market. There's a certain sentiment, especially among people who are just entering the job market that there are simply no good jobs out there anymore for graduates. The whole MBAs with McJobs phenomenon. Is there any truth in this?
BK: There is a certain level of truth to it. And one of the dichotomies in the job market right now is that most of the country is enjoying a very high level of employment ... but at the same time, most college students are having a great deal of difficulty locating and landing their first jobs. There's a Michigan State University study which shows that entering-level hiring is actually still in the midst of a five-year slump. There are fewer jobs available than there are candidates who are graduating.
It's not that the jobs are not there. There's still outstanding, excellent jobs out there and available, but the methods for finding those jobs have changed. Back in the 70s and 80s, typically all you had to do was sign up at the career center, go through the three or five or ten on-campus interviews, and a parade of companies would just come to campus and sweep you off your feet into your wonderful job and career and life. But unfortunately, that's changed quite a bit. A lot of the larger US employers have either been low-growth, no-growth, or negative-growth. And the large employers are typically the ones that come to campus. They're the ones who typically came and hired two or five or ten graduates all from the same school. That is changing dramatically.
Where a lot of the job growth and creation is, in this country right now, is in the small-to medium-sized firms. Those are the companies that aren't coming to campus. Those are the companies that need to be approached directly. Those are the companies that you need a little bit of innovation to reach, that you need to be more creative in your approach. And it's not the kind of simple, easy job offer on the platter that a lot of students have just expected would be provided to them by virtue of getting a bachelor's degree.
Tripod: One way to find out about these less-obvious job opportunities is through personal connections. What do you think is the healthiest way to think about personal connections in the job search process? Should you be embarassed to take advantage of them?
BK: One of the sad things with most college students, they view networking quite often as that "thing that I'll do if I have to at the last chance opportunity." And really they're passing up one of the best opportunities for making direct connections with hiring companies. It starts very early in their final year, when many companies will come to campus, and they might not even be aware that the companies are there. Now the reason for this is many of the companies go through a pre-selection process. And they may be talking, believe it or not, with your professors. And those professors that you've been bad-mouthing for the last two, three years now are the ones making recommendations to the companies. And we do this consistently. We ask specific professors that teach the cornerstone classes in the senior year to make recommendations to us. And those are the people that we then pro-actively contact to interview.
So first and foremost, make sure that you're well-connected within your campus. That would include not only professors. It would also include counselors and advisors. It might include, for example, coaches. I think most people miss the fact that coaches are amazingly well-connected. So if you have involvement in extra-curricular activities. If you have any involvement in sports. Make those people aware of your job search. And again, it comes back to focus.
It's not enough to say "I will be looking for a a job after graduation." They need to be able to give what I call the 30-second elevator pitch. And what I mean by that is, you turn to somebody in the elevator, and they say, "So, what brings you to this office?" And you say, "Well, I was just here interviewing for a job." -- "Oh really? What kind of work are you looking for." Okay. The stopwatch starts. You have 30 seconds to tell this person what you are looking for -- not only what your background is -- and what you're looking for. You need to be very sharp, very succinct, and you'll find that 30-Second Elevator Pitch being used over and over ... And when you do have an interview with a hiring manager, you've got 30 seconds to sell me, or lose the sale.
One area that a lot of students miss, and I think it's a key area, are the students that graduated the year before. Here are people that have already completed the job search process. They probably have lots of notes, lots of information, know who the companies are who are hiring, who are not hiring -- they can pass on a lot of good information. They are what I call the "near alums." The next level is to contact any other alumni of the school -- graduates in the same line of work ...
Above and beyond those basic contacts that have a school connection, reach out to family members, to friends, to old friends, to high school friends, find out where they are and what they're doing. A lot of people feel, "Hey, I don't know anybody that's a hiring manager. All of my contacts are Aunt Mabel-type contacts." But Aunt Mabel may play bridge with somebody that is a hiring manager, or may play bridge with somebody who knows a hiring manager. And the point is that it's typically not your first-level network contact that will be the person that will hire you. It's usually second- and third-level ... You never know where the job is going to come from.
Tripod: Tell us about how we can see your work on the Web. And what are some other Web resources out there that you recommend?
BK: I'm the Webmaster for the College Grad Job Hunter Web Page. It is located at http://www.collegegrad.com. It is a hub page to all the very best sites for a college grad job search. All of the best places for a college student to look for jobs. And above and beyond that, we have a lot of job search information there for them, to help guide them in their job search. There's a lot of the book that's available within the Web site -- they can actually read the entire electronic search strategies chapter on-line -- and where I make reference to a site, it's already hotlinked.
The column is now appearing in about 32 different college newspapers around the country, and if any college newspaper is interested in picking up the column, they can call us at our Milwaukee office -- Quantum Leap Publishing's number is 414-377-8720. And if anybody is interested in the book, you can find it at most any Barnes & Noble or other large bookstore. Or you can order it through our toll-free number 800-879-4214.
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