As the high season for job hunting kicks off for newly minted college graduates and they find college career centers are sadly not up to the task, Jane Horowitz, founder of Chicago-based MoreThanAResume.com and a career coach who specializes in helping college graduates land their first professional job, can offer important insights to improve their chances as well as plenty of real-life success stories.

Most parents won’t recognize Jane’s playbook from their own job searches years ago, but it reflects the new job search realities and the current economy, including:

The First Job Shouldn’t Necessarily Predicate a Career

The first job shouldn’t necessarily predicate a career. Take the first few years out of college to explore and experiment with work. All the thinking in the world and self-induced pressure, plus pressure from family and others, didn’t help Northwestern University art history major Jessy figure out her career path. Taking on several different professional jobs did. Jessy interned at a public relations agency, worked at an event production company and then at a brand communication firm. With each position, Jessy developed valuable skills and importantly, identified what she did and did not want from her career. Three years after graduation, Jessy launched her career in the political arena as a staff associate, Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, House of Foreign Affairs Committee.

Under-Employment Doesn’t Have to be Bad Employment

Many of today’s college graduates will work at jobs they are overqualified for or they will work part-time. While survival jobs meant to give recent grads a year or two of fun send a bad signal to prospective employers. Hannah patched together jobs at Apple and NikeTown stores that enabled her to develop valuable skills that enhanced her resume. The result? Hannah leveraged her BA in exercise and sports science, her work experience at leading retailers and her passion for sports to land a full-time job in the visual merchandising and marketing group for Sports Authority Inc.

Think Rifle Shot vs. Machine Gun

Landing a job is a numbers game, but more is not better. Instead of becoming lost among the thousands of resumes submitted for every opening posted on job boards, college grads need a much more strategic and targeted approach. Barbara, with a masters in special education from Miami University, focused on identifying just a handful of potential schools that met her criteria for employment, and then created a plan to maximize her exposure to those schools at a job fair. Barbara landed her dream job within three weeks.

A big thanks to Jane for writing this article. If you’d like to speak to Jane, please contact her at jane.morethanaresume@gmail.com.

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“I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.” – Red, “The Shawshank Redemption”

(The following diary takes creative license in formulating a coherent story from incoherent ramblings. The original diary was irreparably damaged by flagrant vomit and/or unmitigated piss. These ramblings were fueled by alcohol and the unexplainable high of becoming a 21-year old male in the United States.)

Monday, May 7th

(Roughly) 10:00 p.m: My friend Steeeve mixes drinks strong enough to kill a tee-ball team. Of course, he mixes my first drink of the night (Ketel-One/Seltzer/Rocks).

(Probably) 10:05: Drink number two (Ketel-One = Shot) comes from my friend T-Bone, high off the miracle Game 5 victory of the New York (Hockey) Rangers and looking to celebrate.

(Maybe) 10:20:The New York Mets are not to be outdone by that Kooky Kanadian Ksport. Their victory is cause for the first beer of the night.

Obviously, all intelligent moderation rules (Beer/Liquor/Never/Sicker) are obsolete for the next 24-48 hours.

(Feeling It) 10:40: The Girlfriend arrives to do girlfriend things. This list includes:

The morning after...

1) Hug
2) Peck Cheek
3) Wish me Happy Birthday
4) Complain about sloppiness of my room
5) Complain I should clean her room
6) Complain about day
7) Ask if I’m listening
8) Complain I’m not listening
9) Pout until badgered into believing I was listening
10) Repeat steps 4-9 until she has to text somebody
11) Inquire why I’m not drinking (I was listening to her)
12) Encourage my drinking because “It’s my birthday and you only turn 21 once and this is going to be the best birthday EVERRRR and you can’t YOLO like this everyday because this is your birthday HOORAY!”*

(*Quote Assumed/Amalgamated from conversations with The Girlfriend about birthdays)

(Ferociously Buzzed) 11:15: Fix the hair and flex the muscles, it’s mirror time BAYBEE! Does this look like a 20-year old boy? Or is this the face of a 21-year old man!?! Forty-Five minutes until I can legally do what I’ve illegally been doing in friends’ basements and college campuses for the past five years.

(Drunk) 11:45: After an excessive number of cheers to my virility/handsomeness/overall masculinity, The (sober) Girlfriend commandeers the S.S. Shitfaced On A Monday. The seven drunkest men on campus cram into the fearless vessel to give a bar their best Monday business since Memorial Day 2011.

(Red on the Zihuatanejo Beach) 11:55: The bouncer is making me wait the five minutes before the official coronation. The crown for the occasion will be a bar-stamp on my right hand.

(AHHHH!) 12:00: AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

• I remember my first beer: Age 16, Breezy Point, New York. My friend Bill stole a 6-pack of Budweiser Nips and we drank on a beach. I threw up a couple hours later from the spins.
• No matter when or where I smell beer, I always think of adults congregating around me when I was five-years old. The smell of beer was masculinity, adulthood, and forbiddance since I could form memories of my relatives. Now, I was being encouraged to legally drink my alcohol. Goodbye still-kind-of-a-teenager-but-not-really stage ANNNNNDDD hello maturity! HAVE A BEER!
• I was hoping for a rooftop to drink my first suds. Unfortunately, the Andy Dufresne special was too pricey for my pockets.
• (Raises Glass) Here’s to every opportunity I blew with a girl, every time I snuck past my parents while drunk, and every food I ate thanks to alcohol. I’ll miss doing this shit illegally almost as much as I’ll enjoy doing it legally.

Tuesday, May 8th

(WOOAHHHYEAHHHHALRIGGGHHHHT!) 12:05-12:25a.m. : I wish I could describe this feeling, but nirvana is best felt through experience. There were friends and friends of friends, each there to appreciate my being and existence. Everybody keeps congratulating me on making it to 21, which is odd. The tone behind each person’s kudos is so congratulatory that I begin to ponder if most of them didn’t think I would survive to this day….. BUT I DID BAYBEE!

(Immoratility!) 12:30: Shots!

(Mortality/Inevitable) 12:31: One shot too many results in my first destruction of a bar bathroom. I vomit hard enough to blast a hole through the wall. Luckily, the years have not been kind to this place, and it looks like someone emptied a Tommy Gun into this stall. The bouncers politely (“GET HIM THE FUCK OUT OF HERE!”) request my dismissal from their establishment, and I oblige.

(Incoherent Patient) 12:45-2:00ish: The Girlfriend is good. The Girlfriend is great. Sober to drive. Sober to carry me. Sober to rub my back while I throw up. Sober to watch me vomit. Sober to put a Gatorade next to my bed. Sober to prevent a John Bonham. Sober to care.

(Drunk Sleep) 2:00-8:30 a.m. : Wake up drunk. Take a picture of my pants covered in vomit. Twitpic that shit because that’s what drunk people do. Let everybody know I’m alive. Go to sleep fucked up. (This is what Wiz Khalifa sang about in “The Thrill,” right?)

(Blerrghhh) 11:15: Mind is willing, body is… not. I’ve had a Four Loko with caffeine on ice since “THE MAN!” took them off the shelves. Saved it for this occasion. Wanted to drink it. Had to drink it. Couldn’t drink it.

(Points to sky, asks God why) Noon: Sweaty Brow, no shirt, same underwear as last night, and surprisingly, a new pair of socks. Every pore on my body is open, and every orifice reeks of alcohol or shit.

(Contemplates sacrificing live animal to different God, fears power of current God, promises to go to church every single Sunday for the rest of eternity if I survive) 12:30 By the smell and look of my room, one would think I purged everything since my 17th birthday. Instead, I continue to vomit while T-Bone laughs and does the dishes. T-Bone is good that way, always doing the dishes. Thanks T-Bone!

(Convinced this is how Moses died) 12:45: Must. Stop. Vomiting.

(Cancel the birthday… Just cancel it) 12:50: Can’t. Stop. Vomiting.

(Making bulimics blush with envy) 1:00-2:30: My body was wrapped around a toilet for this entire time. I have friends who claim they “Vomit to feel better.” I call those friends liars.

(Resurrection) 2:45: I’ve had four people waiting for me at the same bar I vomited at last night. Time to shower, brush teeth and smile like it’s my 11th birthday.  The Girlfriend is good, and drives me to YOLO “so hard that motherf**kers are going to try to find me.”

(Opposite of Easter) 3:00-7:00: Attempting to nap in front of people eager to see you drunk will lead to 4 reactions:

1) “Stop being a bitch dude!”
2) “I remember when I turned 21, and lemme tell ya’, I know how ya’ feel…
3) “You’re still fucked up from last night, so I guess this is alright.”
4) “Since you’re not drinking, and you just came into some birthday money, want to buy me a beer or two?”

(Jesus rested for three days after he was crucified, so just give me a minute) 7:30-9:30: I return home to “sleep so hard motherfuckers won’t even bother to look for me.”*

*(Original “Ni**as in Paris” lyric )

(Compromised) 10:00 p.m. -1:00 a.m.:  “YO MAN, YOU GOTTA HIT UP KAROAKE AT KILDAIRE’S!” Tuesday is a big bar night at Delaware, but I had a case of punch-gut stomach, and couldn’t even force myself to commemorate the birthday properly. The only positive is one of the bouncers recognizes me from last night, so I am officially part of the cool kids club. (No more sitting at the kids’ table for OL’ GALLAGHER!) After a couple of beers and the 3rd and 4th drunkest versions of “Call Me Maybe” ever sung, I left the bar. The feeling of birthday euphoria began to subside, and 21 began to feel normal. Sadly, it started to feel adult.

Wednesday, May 9th

The Girlfriend bought tickets to the Mets/Phillies game for today because she is “…The best girlfriend in the world ever.”* My first legal alcohol purchase as a 21-year old was at the Mets/Phillies game. The beer smelled exactly as it did when I was five years old: crisp, carbonated, and too refined for my palette. I again imagined myself surrounded by my relatives and parents, each drinking to their best times while I stood knee-side in admiration. The beer was $7.75. It was icy cold. It was adult. It was normal.

(*Quote may possibly have been added to appease girlfriend.)

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By now, we all know what Facebook is, have Facebook accounts, and probably login to Facebook more times per day than we check our email. Without a doubt, Facebook is great for connecting with old friends, keeping in touch with current ones, and telling the world how drunk you were last night. However, it’s not the best venue for creating a professional network and finding a job. Enter, LinkedIn.

For those of you who haven’t heard of it, LinkedIn does for professional networks what Facebook does for social networks. Hands down it’s a great company and a great resource for professionals, even more so for college students and recent grads entering the workforce for the first time. However, because LinkedIn is meant to help further your career rather than your alcohol tolerance, we have a few suggestions and do’s and don’ts to ensure your profile is professional, up to par, and appropriate.

The Profile Picture

If you take anything from this article it’s this: use a professional picture on your LinkedIn profile. For 90% of college students, this means do not use your current Facebook picture. People are visual creatures and your profile picture will be one of the first things a viewer’s eye is drawn to. So don’t use a picture of you holding a beer, doing a keg stand, or (for the ladies) wearing anything that shows your stomach, ta-tas, panties… you get the picture. We know it sounds prudish but this picture isn’t meant to attract your next one-night stand, it’s meant to attract your future employer. Ideally, what you’re wearing in your picture should be something you could wear to work and not be sent home or fired for. A potential employer should see your picture and think “s/he would fit in at my office” not “isn’t s/he from Jersey Shore?” Get it? If you want examples, take a look at other people’s pictures. Except for a few outliers, you’ll notice a general trend of G rated, grandma-approved photos.

Public Profile & Twitter Links

We’re always astounded by the number of people who overlook the public profile link. The public profile link is just that: a link you give to other people to view your profile on LinkedIn. Although yes, it won’t destroy your LinkedIn profile if you ignore it, setting a public profile link can exponentially help prospective employers. For example, what’s easier to remember, a long link of random letters or “linkedin.com/yourname”? The answer is pretty obvious. Hint: use your real name in the public profile link rather than a nickname or default username.

If you have a Twitter account, we suggest linking it to your LinkedIn account if, and only if, your Twitter account is employer-friendly. This doesn’t mean that your account needs to be all about work or void of opinions, but it shouldn’t include rants about how you hate your job, links to inappropriate sites, or photo tags of you poll dancing in Vegas. If that’s the case, then it’s more beneficial to your LinkedIn profile to not add a Twitter account.

The Summary & Experience

When filling out the body of your LinkedIn profile, think of it as a resume… because it is! In the Summary section, you should list skills you have, products you’re proficient in, and industries/areas you’re interested or experienced in. You should not list your nicknames in the fraternity (and how you got them), how many times you’ve blacked out, or your favorite perverted quotes from your friends.

Equally, in the Experience section, you should list previous jobs, positions held in your chapter (it’s great to list that you were a two-term president or the treasurer who got your chapter out of debt), and any other experience that’s relevant such as internships, research, and volunteer activity. This section will be easy if you’ve already written a resume because most of the Experience information should come directly from your resume.

Both of these sections are expressly for selling your prospective employer on you as an excellent and best-fit hire. Therefore, we strongly encourage you to boast about your skills and experience (but not to the point of lying), and be very open about what interests you and where you hope to end up career-wise.

Recommendations

After you first create your LinkedIn profile, you probably won’t have any recommendations for a while. However, as you start to build your professional network, don’t forget about recommendations. The golden rule of recommendations on LinkedIn: treat them as references. Anyone giving you a recommendation on LinkedIn should also be someone you would use as a job reference. LinkedIn recommendations should be from people who know you in a professional capacity (possibly personal depending on the relationship), and who can (willingly) speak to your work ethic, skills and ability, intellect and/or personality. This could be an employer, volunteer supervisor, chapter advisor (yes, we’ve seen this before), or professor. Typically, this isn’t a fraternity brother, big sister, boyfriend/girlfriend or drunk bestie.

Always Edit & Update

Just like your resume, you should always edit and update your LinkedIn profile. If you win a new award, get a new job, or learn to use a new product, your professional network should know about it. You should also feel eager to update your profile. As your LinkedIn network grows and you see other profiles that catch your eye, take note and spruce up your own profile. There’s no rule against copying someone else’s format and there’s no rule that the first version of your profile has to be the final one.

There’s also no rule about leaving things blank. If you don’t have a Twitter account or company website, don’t panic. As a current student or recent graduate, no one expects you to have 10+ years of experience or tons of recommendations. Remember: just like your new career path, your LinkedIn profile is a work in progress.

This post was generously provided by ChapterBoard.

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College students are notoriously broke. Crippling student loans, limited work availability, and the tendency to go home for extended amounts of time make us less than ideal for most jobs. However, some positions will always be open to us. Positions like:

Delivery Person

If you have a car, you’re golden. This glamourous job entails driving out to the boonies to deliver pizzas to drunk-ass college students who are probably having way more fun than you, and whose tip will consist of $.35 and a stick of gum. Classy. Its not all bad though. You also get to navigate apartment complexes in the dark, and freeze your ass off waiting while a middle-aged man in a wife beater unlocks his 4 deadbolts that are protecting him from the frightening pizza menace.

Food Service

If you don’t have a car, you’re not completely out of luck. There’s plenty of other positions in this glorious culinary establishment. You’ve got dreams of becoming a chef? Then you’re sure to find fulfilling work flipping burgers and deep-frying potatoes until they’re not recognizable as food.

What about costumer service? You’ll definitely enjoy working as a server, where you’ll take the orders of people who believe they’re entitled to treat everyone like crap. You’ll get blamed for everything that goes wrong, including menu prices, beverage selection, and other things that are completely out of your control.

Barista

I’m putting this in a different category from food service because you’re dealing with an entirely different kind of beast. In food service, you have to deal with hungry people. In a coffee shop, you have to deal with addicts getting their fix. Since you’re a student, you undoubtedly get stuck with the worst shift: opening the store at 5:30 AM until just before 11:30 when you have to go to class. This means that you’ve got to rouse yourself at 5, force some coffee down your throat, and drag yourself to work. Then you get to deal with the smiling faces of everyone else who is up at that unholy hour. And God help you if you forget that the double mocha frappucino with chocolate chips, whip cream, and caramel was supposed to be with soy instead of non-fat milk.

Child Care

Ah, babysitting. It was your first job when you were 13, so you’ve had plenty of years of experience. Sure, it means you’ll have to give up your Friday, Saturday, or Sunday nights to take care of a screaming child, but just think how much better those blessed hours of silence will be after you put the kid to bed. To keep yourself amused, trying changing all the clocks in the house ahead an hour or two, and try to convince the little monster its bed time already. (extra points if the sun is still up). Don’t forget to raid the fridge and eat all the Poptarts, Fruit Roll Ups, and ice cream you wouldn’t let the child have earlier.

No matter what soulless job you choose, you’ll undoubtedly learn timeless lessons: the value of an honest day’s work, the real worth of a dollar, and how incredibly rude people are to each other. And maybe it’ll teach you to be nicer to your server.

The Four Awful Jobs You’ll Have in College The Campus Companion The Campus Companion - Helping students succeed academically, socially, financially, and spiritually.

My freshman year of college a gay friend  highlighted for me the single most effective way to get an A on ANY English paper. His secret was, ARGUE LATENT HOMOSEXUALITY. He tossed me a link to some resources on Queer Theory, and I was on my way to a much higher GPA.

I tried it out, and as expected I got an A.

From that point on literally every paper I wrote was geared towards proving that the author was a latent homosexual.  This works for a flotilla of reasons.

REASONS IT WORKS

• Homosexuality is a hot-button topic. Teachers don’t want to flunk someone who writes their paper on homosexuality.
• Many authors were / are latent homosexuals. This makes it really easy to write about.
• English teachers read into things way to much. The latent homosexuality thesis is a bottomless pit of analysis.
• English teachers can’t prove you wrong (Or at least, they can’t SAY you’re wrong).

Judging from the lack of red pen on every single paper I turned in from that point on, I’m sure every english teacher I had secretly just smacked an A on my paper and called it a night.

NOTE:

If you are going to attack me in the comment section below for writing about homosexuality, save yourself the time. I’m not a bigot. I’m simply highlighting an interesting / humorous way to get an A on an English paper. If writing a paper arguing that the author was latently Jewish got me an equal number of A’s (or made any sense)  that’s what this article would have been about.

ANOTHER NOTE:

I’m Jewish.

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This infographic from Course Hero breaks down how flashcards actually help you study. It shows how active recall and recognition based recall differ, it highlights the different situations in which studying with flashcards is effective, and goes into depth on the psychology of using flash cards.

Check out the infographic and head on over to Course Hero if you’re looking for some awesome flashcard resources.

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1) Sticking around after the ability to teach is long gone (due to tenure)

At some point in your college career, you’re likely to encounter a professor who really shouldn’t be teaching. Perhaps they are the only one qualified to teach a specific subject, or even worse, perhaps they’ve been relegated to teaching introductory classes (ex: Chem 111) because they have tenure but aren’t trusted to stay up-to-date for the more advanced courses. The college can’t actually get rid of them, so now you’re stuck trying to learn from them. Now what?

The best way to deal with this situation is to avoid it entirely. When signing up for classes, do your research. It’s often helpful to talk to several classmates –be sure to get a good idea of how the professor *actually* operates by asking both the straight-A students and the ones that failed out, because the truth is usually somewhere in-between, as they say. Alternatively, you can always check a web site like Rate My Professor, which is a great way to gauge what you’re getting yourself into.

Always remember to take RMP ratings with a grain of salt, however. If someone didn’t do well in a class, they may be negatively biased toward a professor who actually excels at teaching. (The issue in this situation is that the person was probably too lazy to pass. I’ve had this happen at least once before, where a professor with a bad rap ended up being one of the best one I’d had to date). Likewise, if someone found the class to be very easy, they may highly recommend a professor who, in reality, has a steep learning curve. Generally, the best advice is to gather a variety of opinions and go from there.

2) Failure to utilize technology

We’ve all encountered the teacher who starts off their class by spending40 minutes  setting up a Powerpoint presentation. First, they have trouble opening the presentation, then they spend 20 minutes getting the projector to start working, and finally they give up and call the school tech guy. This is a telltale sign of the teacher that doesn’t like (or know how) to use technology to enhance their teaching. It is likely that this teacher avoids technology at all costs. Unfortunately the decision to use technology is up to the teacher’s discretion.

Additionally, if your university has an online presence for specific courses (such as WebCT), the expectation is that professors will make use of it. However, some professors choose not to –like many things, the decision is up to them. Depending on the type of course, this can have a highly negative impact. Web sites provide obvious benefits such as the ability to post the course syllabus, class assignments, lecture notes and presentations, quizzes, and especially practice exams. Many sites allow students to chat with and email one another to ask questions, exchange information and form study groups. The possibilities are endless, but sometimes those possibilities aren’t fully realized.

Generally, if a professor chooses not to have a web page for this purpose, they probably have a personal reason for doing so (it could be anything from a lack of time to keep the page updated to an indifferent attitude about maintaining a web page due to technological ineptness). Regardless of what that reason may be, if you feel that a web page would benefit you and your classmates, suggest it to the professor. Even if the professor holds his or her ground, perhaps you can both work out an improved method of communication with students. What have you got to lose?

3) Being disorganized

If you can’t follow the lecture and you can’t even ask questions, or if the questions you pose are answered incorrectly and you know the answer when the instructor doesn’t, chances are you’re a victim of a poorly-organized professor. Sometimes, professors are hired more for their research ability than for their teaching ability, and this is often times at the expense of the students.

Unfortunately, if a professor has terrible handwriting and is difficult to follow when taking notes, you’re pretty much screwed. Find a tutor, teach yourself the material, or just switch classes. If the instructor is blatantly wrong on a regular basis and you’re past the point where you can switch classes, write a letter to (or contact) the department that the instructor works within and demand better instruction. You shouldn’t feel guilty about this, as you are the one paying for your education. Remember, you’re the one paying tuition! That makes you the customer!

I had to resort to this tactic once, unfortunately –let’s just say the “instructor” was a grad student who had no idea what the hell she was talking about. When you have someone teaching an introductory science lab claiming that “zero kelvin” has been reached experimentally (which it hasn’t, EVER, in the known universe,) you need to do something. So we did. And the department replaced her with someone who was a lot better. (And hotter for that matter.)

4) Failure to communicate with students

It’s always appreciated when a teacher provides their contact information and actively tries to communicate with their students. As a student you may not always take advantage of their availability and willingness to help, but when the time comes to ask them a question or get in contact with them outside of class you want to have the teacher that communicates well…. Not the one that has the following habits:

• Not responding to questions via email
• Side-stepping questions that are asked in class (no answer)
• Cryptic/bland rubrics combined with (convoluted) grading
• Failure to provide a phone number
• Failure to gather / organize student contact info

5) Inability to do their own problems

Yeah… I’m sure we’ve all experienced this at least once. Sometimes it’s funny, but most of the time it’s downright frustrating. You spend 20 minutes vigorously writing down a lengthy math or science problem, only to have the professor pause and say “wait… I don’t think that’s right…”

Even worse, from time to time a classmate might even correct a glaring error that the professor missed, leading to your ultimate anguish at having wasted 20 minutes of your life and several sheets of notebook paper.

You can tell a lot about a teacher by how they react to a student correcting them.

6) Avoiding responsibility for bad teaching methods

Sometimes there are teachers that completely flout their responsibilities, and then lay blame on the students.

I’m talking about the teacher that, when the entire class flunks, lays blame entirely on the students when, in fact, it was because they were unable to teach the material effectively.

I’m talking about the professor that misses more classes than most of the students because they have obligations that impinge on their ability to teach.

I’m talking about the teacher that puts on videos instead of actually teaching.

7) Antagonizing students

This is common, but every once in a while you will find a teacher that goes out of their way to antagonize students. Whether it is the occassional hurtful aside, or even aggressive taunting. Sometimes there are teachers that are just unhappy with their lives and take it out on their students.

You should try to avoid these types of teachers at all costs. They aren’t common, but they do exist. The poster child for this variety of teacher is Snape.

For some funny teacher reviews check out the following site…

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The stereotype of the starving college student isn’t exactly true for me because I was lucky enough to have parents who agreed to pay for me to go away to school. But I don’t have a ton excess spending money, so I’m always looking for fun things to do on the cheap. Living near the beach and having a campus in a forest means that the great outdoors is always an option, but when its raining (which is frequently), my roommates and I turn to the crowd favorite: movie night. With five computers between the four of us, and a fairly vast DVD collection, we can usually find something interesting to watch. And failing that, there’s always the internet for movies and TV shows.

Of course, torrenting or streaming movies is mostly definitely not legal, so I was very pleased to hear when my family got Netflix on demand two years ago. Finally, I could watch entire series online without my conscience nagging me about the money I was depriving the television industry of. I could even watch a fairly large selection of movies.

Having used it for year now, my reaction has tempered. The selection of movies is lackluster at best, and there is no guarantee of content from one day to the next. One of my friends put the conundrum of Netflix best: “I had an hour to kill in between classes. I turned on Netflix to find something to watch. I spent the entire hour just trying to find something that interested me.”

I know that the problem doesn’t lie with Netflix, but with the television and movie media giants who don’t want to sell the rights to their movies when they could charge more for DVDs, Blu-ray, or even individual on-demand services through cable providers. Their changing context isn’t because they like messing with their customers (I hope), but because licenses expire and studios change their policies regarding streaming services.

For the average Netflix user, myself included, that doesn’t really matter. I want to know that the shows I want are going to be available when I want to watch them. I don’t want to brag about an awesome movie I watched last week to my roommates, then find that its been removed when I go to watch it again. It feels deceitful, and like I’m being cheated out of a product I paid for.

People in the movie industry complain that piracy is encroaching on their profits, that home entertainment systems are decreasing box office revenues, and that the internet is the root of all evil. To a certain extent these things are true: I can say with almost complete confidence that any movie or TV show is available for streaming and downloading somewhere on the internet. The thing is, most people I know don’t mind going to an officially sponsored website to watch their TV shows. If Hulu had all the shows I wanted, I’d live there. I don’t mind sitting through some commercials to watch my shows. I think this applies in particular to most college students, who almost all have laptops, lots of free time, and limited spending money. I don’t want to download movies illegally, but if I can’t find it on Netflix, I’m not going to spend $10 to watch it once.

The solution to the standoff between consumers and producers isn’t to make it more difficult to share content. Its to make it easier. Look at services like Pandora or Spotify. Users do not have to own the context they listen to. They don’t even have to pay for it, if they don’t want to. Obviously, music costs much less to produce than movies or shows, but the fact remains, there doesn’t have to be a huge struggle between studios and viewers.

Until then, we’ll just have to fend for ourselves. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a new episode of Game of Thrones that I’m just dying to watch.

Why Netflix has the Makings of Greatness (And Why it Falls Short) The Campus Companion The Campus Companion - Helping students succeed academically, socially, financially, and spiritually.

We get a lot of requests at The Campus Companion to do press releases, but most of them are garbage. However, when Questia got in contact with us about their “Most Valuable Professor” Competition we thought it was a really cool way to give some credit to our nation’s educators.

They are notoriously underpaid and underappreciated, and we thought that this competition would be a phenomenal way to highlight the impact that a great teacher can have on a student.

The most exciting part about the competition is that at the end 3 scholarships for $2,500 will be awarded in the names of the winning professors!

Read below for specifics on the competition.

Questia’s “Most Valuable Professor” Competition

Questia,  a premier online research tool for students, just launched their “Questia’s Most Valuable Professor Competition”. This competition allows students to nominate their favorite professors for the impact they’ve had on them.

At the end of the promotion Questia will be creating multiple $2,500 scholarships in that professors name. You can learn more about the promotion here.

Questia will be taking nominations through April 18th in which students can honor the professors who have had lasting impressions on their education and lives.

To nominate your professor, visit Questia on Facebook;  and tell Questia why your professor deserves the Most Valuable Professor title. Following the nomination period, a jury of Questia’s researchers will select the top ten professors based on student testimonials.

Voting will then be open to the public to determine which of the top ten professors will ultimately receive Questia’s National Title of MVP.

Questia’s “Most Valuable Professor” Competition – Nominate Your Favorite Professor The Campus Companion The Campus Companion - Helping students succeed academically, socially, financially, and spiritually.

It’s hard out there for recent college graduates looking for jobs. In fact, I can say confidently that you probably won’t find a “real” job for a while. It’s an employers’ market and they have pick of the litter when it comes to applicants.

What it all comes down to is this…  You have 30 other people applying for the same position you are, and if one of them has a better resume than you they are going to get the job.

Here is a different job search strategy that will help you avoid wasting time, get you noticed, and hopefully land you a better position than you otherwise would have.

DITCH THE COVER LETTER

The cover letter is the single biggest “time suck” of the application process. If you intend on applying to a number of places, composing catered cover letters can be quite burdensome.  Here is a different approach.

Now, you CAN spend two hours perfecting a cover letter and making it shine, but chances are the employer will look at it for 2 seconds, glance at your resume, and move on. It’s that quick. DON’T invest 2 hours creating a cover letter if:

• You don’t think you have a good chance of getting the job
• You don’t really want the job
• You aren’t going to put time and effort into it
• You have poor writing skills

I know this goes against everything you’ve heard from every career counselor that has ever trudged this Earth, but they also grew up in a different economic environment.

NOW, I’m not saying you should ALWAYS ditch the cover letter. In fact, if it’s a job you think you have a good shot at landing you should unequivocally compose a flawless cover letter.  I sometimes spend upwards of 2 hours wordsmithing one if it’s a job I really want.

However, you are going to have to apply for a lot of jobs before you land something (or at least most Gen Y members will), and if you spend 2 hours on each cover letter you will hate yourself (I did).

Save your time an effort for the jobs that you care about, but at the same time apply to every job posting you can. Go for quantity over quality for the jobs you’re unsure of.

This leads to the next point.

CARPET BOMB YOUR RESUME

If you are unfamiliar with the term Carpet bombing this is what it is.

Each one of those bombs is a resume, and the tanks on the ground, possible employers. If you drop enough of those bad boys you are going to hit your mark. Like the video stated, “Carpet bombing is used for missions in which volume is needed, not precision”

I should note that tanks dread carpet bombers, as do employers, but guess what…. Gen Y didn’t create this mess, so they are going to have to deal with it.  All we want is a chance to work, can you hate us for that?

If you followed the next step in the process, seeding your resume is remarkably easy.

GET LINKEDIN PREMIUM

Lastly, and most importantly, spring the $30 it takes to acquire a LinkedIn premium membership. If you do, it is the equivalent of turning each of those bombs (or resumes) into a smart missile. You will automatically be bumped up to the top of the applicant pool and your resume will be the first one employers see.

All you have to do when you apply on LinkedIn is click the little yellow “Apply Now” button, upload your resume, upload a cover letter (OR NOT), and submit. You will be rocketed to the top of the applicant list, and all you have to do is play the waiting game.

Gen Y Job Search Strategy: LinkedIn Premium – Cover Letter + Carpet Bombing The Campus Companion The Campus Companion - Helping students succeed academically, socially, financially, and spiritually.