For youths who want to work this summer, the job market is strong, offering a wide range of employment opportunities. The bigger question seems to be, Who is going to take them? “
At Yellowstone, you could show up today and probably be in a dorm room and go to work tomorrow morning,” said Bill Berg, a founder of the job board Coolworks.com, which contracts with employers in the national parks and other travel destinations to promote job opportunities. “In many cases, you can write your own ticket now, particularly if you’re a cook or a chef.”
Other traditional jobs like lifeguards and hot-dog vendors at the ballpark also go wanting. “Not as many kids want to do that kind of work,” said Howard Feldstein, director for the Arlington Employment Center, which for the last 11 years has held a summer job fair for 13-to-23-year-olds in the Washington area. “I think the desire for summer jobs has changed a little bit; kids are looking not only for income, but what makes them look good for the next step in their life.”
Increasingly, students are seeking out internships, both paid and unpaid, or jobs that will provide training for a future career. In response, employers who rely on teenagers and college students are adapting their jobs to make them more attractive. Summer camps, for example, are creating internships and working with universities to allow students to earn college credits, said Ann Sheets, president of the American Camp Association.
“When you think of working at summer camp, you normally think of recreation activities,” she said. “But there are many other positions that have nothing to do with recreation.” For example, Ms. Sheets said, a student interested in nutrition could work as a dietitian with a camp.
A business major can help in purchasing and operations. “The camp directors I know have packaged opportunities so they apply to a number of types of students,” she said. Darcie Strohmaier, a 21-year-old psychology major at Ramapo College in New Jersey, will be working as a cabin counselor at Camp Echo in the Catskills, for college credits. Ms. Strohmaier wants to be a teacher after graduation.
She will be using the experience to do fieldwork with children. As part of the cooperative program offered by her college, she will live with and supervise a group of 8-year-old girls. She will write weekly journals on her experience, followed by a term paper at the end of the summer. Her focus will be conflict resolution and motivation in children. She pays the college $250 for each of four credits she will earn, but she will also be paid about $1,800 by the camp.
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Monday
Tuesday
How To Get An Ad Copywriting Job
I've already told you how to do my job. But first, you have to get my job. I get a lot of emails asking the question: 'copyranter, how can I get a job like yours that pays me a ridiculous amount of money for being stupid?' Why, even former Gawker intern and current stone cold stud-about-town Neel Shah was curious!
Even though the job title has "writing" in it, you really don't have to be much of a writer. Regular readers of this column already know that. You do have to have a portfolio of fake ads and ideas. But! You don't have to enroll at an expensive ad school to create one. Here's one possible bullet-pointed plan.
Take a single ad concept class as a continuing education student at an ad school (I went to the School of Visual Arts here in town.). All of these classes are basically taught the same way—each week you're simply given a product/service to do fake ads for.
Many ad classes are taught by working creative directors—so kiss major ass! Ask to see his or her portfolio. Tell him or her it's the single most creative thing you've ever seen in your entire life (but try and be more subtle).
Agencies hire teams. So you should find yourself a good art director (If you're lucky you'll find a great one who'll do most of the work, maybe because he/she is blindly ambitious, maybe because he/she thinks you're hot.) Look for homely lone art directors in the class, or ask the school for help finding homely lone art directors. Believe me, they know who they are.
By the end of the class, you'll have a pretty good idea if you're stupid-clever enough to work in this biz. If you don't get hired out of class like I did (the ASS I've kissed!), you should then drop off your portfolio to ad headhunters. Or you can think up you own clever ways to get your crap in front of creative directors' noses (Send them your portfolio in a box labeled THE BABY'S YOURS, etc.)
I've been working for the same small agency for 15 years, but the best way to make good money quickly is to keep updating your portfolio and switch agencies every six months or so. Such vagabond behavior is not frowned upon in advertising because it's understood that your bosses, creative directors, are a congress of douchebags.
A serious tip: Think visually about the product's benefit. Unusual visual representations beat wordplays every time. Plus, that means more work for your art director and less for you!
Lastly, forget everything you know and believe about logic and morality.
That's it. I cannot emphasize the final element enough.
Seriously.
Okay. Source
Even though the job title has "writing" in it, you really don't have to be much of a writer. Regular readers of this column already know that. You do have to have a portfolio of fake ads and ideas. But! You don't have to enroll at an expensive ad school to create one. Here's one possible bullet-pointed plan.
Take a single ad concept class as a continuing education student at an ad school (I went to the School of Visual Arts here in town.). All of these classes are basically taught the same way—each week you're simply given a product/service to do fake ads for.
Many ad classes are taught by working creative directors—so kiss major ass! Ask to see his or her portfolio. Tell him or her it's the single most creative thing you've ever seen in your entire life (but try and be more subtle).
Agencies hire teams. So you should find yourself a good art director (If you're lucky you'll find a great one who'll do most of the work, maybe because he/she is blindly ambitious, maybe because he/she thinks you're hot.) Look for homely lone art directors in the class, or ask the school for help finding homely lone art directors. Believe me, they know who they are.
By the end of the class, you'll have a pretty good idea if you're stupid-clever enough to work in this biz. If you don't get hired out of class like I did (the ASS I've kissed!), you should then drop off your portfolio to ad headhunters. Or you can think up you own clever ways to get your crap in front of creative directors' noses (Send them your portfolio in a box labeled THE BABY'S YOURS, etc.)
I've been working for the same small agency for 15 years, but the best way to make good money quickly is to keep updating your portfolio and switch agencies every six months or so. Such vagabond behavior is not frowned upon in advertising because it's understood that your bosses, creative directors, are a congress of douchebags.
A serious tip: Think visually about the product's benefit. Unusual visual representations beat wordplays every time. Plus, that means more work for your art director and less for you!
Lastly, forget everything you know and believe about logic and morality.
That's it. I cannot emphasize the final element enough.
Seriously.
Okay. Source
Sunday
More job-starved college grads are turning to trade schools
For all the college graduates whose degrees in Catholic studies or history of medicine haven't really attracted a lot of jobs-with-benefits offers, Amy Wolfe has a suggestion: Learn a trade.
That's what Wolfe, a 2003 Southern New Hampshire University graduate in sports management, is doing. Not happy in her first job out of school in retail sales — "I didn't hate it, but ... " she said — she left to train as an air traffic controller at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College. The 27-year-old will graduate in August, employable after just one year's study.
"I'd always had some interest in aviation," said Wolfe, of Eden Prairie. "This seems important and challenging, something not everyone can do. I know there can be times of crazy stress, but it's a satisfying stress, I think."
They're upending one role that community and technical colleges used to take. Community colleges were a place to study hard and try to get into a four-year university. Now students with four-year degrees are using them to get jobs.
"We have become the new graduate school," said Irene Kovala, interim vice president for academic affairs at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
What these grads find are one- and two-year programs that qualify them for living-wage jobs such as nursing, graphic arts, home remodeling and repairs, and IT and paralegal work.
Kovala estimated up to 20 percent of the school's students have four-year degrees.
"I'd say 60 to 70 percent of my students have a college degree," said Arlynne Wolf, coordinator of the two-semester Kitchen and Bath Design program at Century College at White Bear Lake, Minn. "I have one student with a Ph.D. It blows me away."
One likely appeal: Wolf estimates that nine of every 10 students have jobs by graduation day, with builders, remodelers or home-improvement stores.
Mike McCoy of Minneapolis has a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Ohio State University in Columbus.
A camera sales job did progress to darkroom work. But the new digital world displaced him, so McCoy trained in the Minneapolis Community and Technical College's Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Program. He graduated last May.
McCoy now works for a residential heating and air-conditioning company.
Starting wages are close to $20 an hour, he said, "and it would be pretty hard to outsource us."
When Stephanie Johnson of Apple Valley, Minn., decided to find work after six years at home with children, she surprised herself by choosing a community college.
Johnson, 37, will graduate May 18 from a two-year paralegal program at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
After earning a degree in political science at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., Johnson found only secretarial or receptionist jobs. Knowing they wouldn't pay enough to cover child care, she sought out the paralegal training.
Already doing contract work at a law firm, she hopes to earn around $45,000 within a couple of years.
Johnson's college degree was not wasted, said DeAnne Brooks, director of support staff placement at Esquire Group in Minneapolis, which specializes in placing people in legal careers. The legal world values education, Brooks said, and sees a college degree as a sign of accomplishment and maturity.
But it's the paralegal training that gives people such as Johnson the essential skills law firms look for.
"We get a lot of people fresh out of school, and they have no idea what they want to do with their English degree," Brooks said. "They see one of our ads and they call us up and say, 'I'd love to do that work.'
"Then we say, 'OK, if you don't have any legal experience, we recommend you check into one of the paralegal schools." read here
That's what Wolfe, a 2003 Southern New Hampshire University graduate in sports management, is doing. Not happy in her first job out of school in retail sales — "I didn't hate it, but ... " she said — she left to train as an air traffic controller at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College. The 27-year-old will graduate in August, employable after just one year's study.
"I'd always had some interest in aviation," said Wolfe, of Eden Prairie. "This seems important and challenging, something not everyone can do. I know there can be times of crazy stress, but it's a satisfying stress, I think."
They're upending one role that community and technical colleges used to take. Community colleges were a place to study hard and try to get into a four-year university. Now students with four-year degrees are using them to get jobs.
"We have become the new graduate school," said Irene Kovala, interim vice president for academic affairs at the Minneapolis Community and Technical College.
What these grads find are one- and two-year programs that qualify them for living-wage jobs such as nursing, graphic arts, home remodeling and repairs, and IT and paralegal work.
Kovala estimated up to 20 percent of the school's students have four-year degrees.
"I'd say 60 to 70 percent of my students have a college degree," said Arlynne Wolf, coordinator of the two-semester Kitchen and Bath Design program at Century College at White Bear Lake, Minn. "I have one student with a Ph.D. It blows me away."
One likely appeal: Wolf estimates that nine of every 10 students have jobs by graduation day, with builders, remodelers or home-improvement stores.
Mike McCoy of Minneapolis has a bachelor's degree in Spanish from Ohio State University in Columbus.
A camera sales job did progress to darkroom work. But the new digital world displaced him, so McCoy trained in the Minneapolis Community and Technical College's Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Program. He graduated last May.
McCoy now works for a residential heating and air-conditioning company.
Starting wages are close to $20 an hour, he said, "and it would be pretty hard to outsource us."
When Stephanie Johnson of Apple Valley, Minn., decided to find work after six years at home with children, she surprised herself by choosing a community college.
Johnson, 37, will graduate May 18 from a two-year paralegal program at Inver Hills Community College in Inver Grove Heights, Minn.
After earning a degree in political science at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore., Johnson found only secretarial or receptionist jobs. Knowing they wouldn't pay enough to cover child care, she sought out the paralegal training.
Already doing contract work at a law firm, she hopes to earn around $45,000 within a couple of years.
Johnson's college degree was not wasted, said DeAnne Brooks, director of support staff placement at Esquire Group in Minneapolis, which specializes in placing people in legal careers. The legal world values education, Brooks said, and sees a college degree as a sign of accomplishment and maturity.
But it's the paralegal training that gives people such as Johnson the essential skills law firms look for.
"We get a lot of people fresh out of school, and they have no idea what they want to do with their English degree," Brooks said. "They see one of our ads and they call us up and say, 'I'd love to do that work.'
"Then we say, 'OK, if you don't have any legal experience, we recommend you check into one of the paralegal schools." read here
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