Landing your first job sure fire ways to finding the right job successful interviewing and getting the offer by andrew goldsmith

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OneHourWiz™

Landing Your First Job
Sure Fire Ways to Finding the Right
Job, Successful Interviewing and
Getting the Offer

By
Andrew Goldsmith

Published by Aspatore Books, Inc.
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First Printing, November 2001
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Copyright © 2001 by Aspatore Books, Inc. All rights reserved. Printed in the
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Copyright Act, without prior written permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 1-58762-023-5
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Edited by Ben Lewis, Michele Mariani
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OneHourWiz: Landing Your First Job
By Andrew Goldsmith, ISBN: 1587620253
Are you a college senior terrified to graduate? Or a freshman with a lot of
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OneHourWiz™

Landing Your First Job

Sure Fire Ways to Finding the Right Job,
Successful Interviewing and Getting the Offer
Core Area 1: The 10 Most Important Principles

13

Core Area 2: The History

15

Core Area 3: The Focal Points

16

Decide What You Want
My Story
Determine Where Those Opportunities Exist
Unadvertised Jobs
Dotcoms
My Story Continued
Write Great Resumes
My Story Continued
Write Great Cover Letters
My Story Continued
Impress Your Interviewer
My Story Continued
Weigh Offers (and Negotiate Better Ones)
My Story Continued

Impress Your Coworkers
Repeat
My Story Continued

16
20
21
26
28
29
30
33
40
44
48
54
57
60
61
63
64


Core Area 4: Interviews With Industry Visionaries 65
The Interview With Sheila Curran, Director, Career Services,
Brown University
65
The Interview With Mark Friedman, National Director of
Recruiting, Assurance and Business Advisory Services
Division, PricewaterhouseCoopers

78

Core Area 5: Excerpts From Experienced Individuals 85
Elizabeth Karp, Senior Regional Manager, Health Care
Advisory Board
85
Lisa Hurwitz, Alliance Consultant, Razorfish
87
Zeno Baucus, Paralegal, Cooley Godward LLP
90
Katie Buck, Actress
91

Core Area 6: Worksheets
Deciding What You Want
Determining Where Those Opportunities Exist

Core Area 7: Resources for Further Research
On Deciding What You Want
On Determining Where Those Opportunities Exist
On Writing Great Resumes
On Writing Great Cover Letters
On Impressing Your Interviewer

Core Area 8: Glossary

94
94
97

100
100
102
106
107
108

110


CORE AREA

1

ONE HOUR WIZ
THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES

Core Area 1

The 10 Most Important Principles
If you’re reading this, you must be worried about what’s going to
happen when you run out of classes to take and you have to face
the real world. Despite that tightening knot in your stomach,
such worry is a good thing. Whether you’re three weeks or three
years away from graduation, it’s never too early to start thinking
about the future. It’s never really too late either, but the sooner
you start, the better chance you have of being happy with your
ultimate destination. How do you get from here to there? Follow
these 10 steps:
1. Read this book: Try to take at least a look at every section

before going on to the next step.
2. Decide what you want: You need a plan, even if it covers
only a year or two.
3. Determine where these opportunities exist: This is where
you actually search for jobs.
4. Write great resumes: The resume is the most basic part of
any job application. You simply can’t get a job without one.
5. Write great cover letters: No, you can’t just copy one out
of a book and sign your name on it.

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE 10 MOST IMPORTANT PRINCIPLES

6. Impress your interviewer: Despite what you may have
heard, job interviews do not take place in a dank,
underground cell lit by a single uncovered light bulb, with
scurrying rats providing the background noise.
7. Relax: Enjoy your senior year. Looking for a job does not
require every minute of every day.
8. Weigh offers (and negotiate better ones): After carefully
following the previous seven steps, you’ll be inundated with
job offers.
9. Impress your coworkers: And you thought the first day of

school made you nervous.
10. Repeat: Your first job is just that—your first job. You’ll
probably want at least a second one.
You aren’t the first person to look for a first job. I was doing it
myself not too long ago, as I got ready to graduate from college
in the spring of 1999. For each step listed above, I’ll give you
advice from the experts along with some real-life perspective
from my own experiences. In the back of this book you’ll find an
interview with the director of Career Services at my alma mater,
Brown University. After that I’ll tell you the stories of a few
other recent graduates. Good luck!

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CORE AREA

2

ONE HOUR WIZ
THE HISTORY

Core Area 2
The History

Fifty years ago, a young man graduating from college wanted a
job where he could dig in for life. If he was lucky, his father or a
friend could point him toward that first desk. Over the years he
would move to bigger and bigger desks in bigger and bigger
offices. When he retired he’d receive a watch as thanks for his

decades of service.
Your life will not look like his.
First of all, these days women work too. And if you’re in
the right industry, you may not even need a college degree – Bill
Gates didn’t, did he?
But those are only the superficial differences. You might
work full-time for a dozen companies before you take up
shuffleboard and pinochle. Or you may spend your life as a
freelancer and never work full-time for anyone. You may even
have three or four different careers in different fields.
These changes mean that the strategies you’ll use to find
your first job will be different from the ones your parents used
before you. You’ll look for jobs in different places and judge
their desirability with different standards. This book will teach
you how.

15


CORE AREA

3

ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

Core Area 3
The Focal Points

Decide What You Want

If you’re lucky, you can skip this chapter. But if you’re
like most people, deciding what you want to do is the hardest,
scariest, most time-consuming part of the job-search process.
The first thing you have to decide is how far ahead you
want to think. Are you prepared to say where you want to be 20
years from now and start heading for it, or do you simply want to
fill a year or two and see where you end up? Or are you
somewhere in between?
No book can answer these questions for you. But a book
can give you ways to consider them.
There are a few facts to keep in mind. In today’s
economy, no one entering the job market expects to spend 40
years working for the same company. The trend toward frequent
job changes is so strong that the federal government is creating a
new study, the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey
(JOLTS), to assess it. “Since some people change their careers so
many times,” says Sheila Curran, director of Career Services at
Brown University, “to say, ‘This is what I want to be doing five
years from now,’ I don’t think is very helpful. The whole world
can change within that period of time.” You should also
remember that almost no matter what you do, you could change
your mind later. These considerations suggest that you should
think only a few years at a time.

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

On the other hand, a lot of industries (journalism,
finance, law, and others) insist that workers stand for a good
long time on each step of the career ladder before moving up. If
you decide to attend graduate school, you often have to start the
application process at least a year before you plan to enroll.
(Should you decide a couple months too late, you’ll set yourself
back another full year.) Then there are the years of school
themselves. These factors mean that you probably shouldn’t
spend too long as a ski bum, or writing in your journal in a
Parisian café.
Once you have some idea of how much you want to
commit yourself, you can start thinking about your options. In a
desperate moment as a college student, I considered standing on
a busy street corner, asking passersby what they did for a living,
and making a list. I never actually did it, and you probably
shouldn’t either. You’ll be better off if you narrow your focus
just a bit.
How do you do that? Think about what you like to do,
and think about what you’re good at. (As any playground athlete
knows, these are not always the same.) Here are a few questions
to think about:
•
•
•
•
•

In which subjects do you receive good grades?
What type of schoolwork do you enjoy (e.g., reading,
writing, classroom debate, cutting up small animals)?
What type of extra-curricular activities do you enjoy?
Would you rather spend a day alone or spend it—every
second of it—with other people?
Do you communicate best in person, on the phone, or on
paper?

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

•
•
•
•

Would you rather do several things at once or do them one at
a time?
Would you rather complete a project in three months or three
days?
Would you rather spend all day in one room or move
constantly from one place to another?
Would you rather work with your hands or your head?
Are you better at working with your hands or your head?
Are you comfortable following someone else’s directions, or
do you need to be your own boss?
Do you like producing something you can hold in your hand,
or are you satisfied with more abstract results?
Do you prefer to work indoors or outdoors?
Do you like being the center of attention?
Would you rather follow a plan or improvise?
How many hours a week do you want to work?
How much money do you need?
How much money do you want?
Does repetition inspire comfort or boredom in you?

If you’re having trouble with these questions, ask friends
you can trust, how they see you. (Don’t ask your parents. They
think you’re brilliant and great at everything.) Your friends
won’t necessarily be right, but their answers will give you a
place to start.

Next, try to find some professions that might be a good
fit, based on your answers to those questions. If you’re really
drawn to an academic discipline, ask a professor about career
options in the field. If you’re dedicated to an extra-curricular

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

activity, try to figure out what the real-life version of that activity
is.
If you’re not quite sure what it means to work in
advertising, or publishing, or whatever else comes to mind, take
a
look
at
a
website
called
Experience.com
( The site, which targets young
people starting their careers, has articles and job and resume
databases. But perhaps its most useful feature is a collection of
industry profiles under the heading “Career Research.” The

profiles will tell you about the various branches of each industry,
its culture, and how to emphasize the right attributes when you
apply for jobs.
The
federal
Bureau
of
Labor
Statistics
( has similar profiles, which include detailed
salary information.
Then talk to some people in the profession. Actually,
talk to a lot of people in the profession—remember that no single
person knows everything. Do “informational interviews”, where
you ask people about their industries. Family, friends, friends’
families, alumni networks, and professors are all good sources. If
you think you might want to sell cars, walk into your local car
dealership and ask if anyone would be willing to talk to you
about the business.
When you talk to these people, ask them what they do.
“I’m a doctor,” is a bad answer. “I’m a pediatrician in private
practice,” is a better answer. “I talk to children about their
illnesses, I keep their parents calm, and I fill out a lot of
insurance-related paperwork,” is the kind of answer you’re
looking for. The goal is to find out how these people spend their
time, so that you can decide whether their jobs would be right for
you.

19

CORE AREA

3

ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

If something sounds appealing, try to get a part-time job
or an internship in the field. You can’t get a part-time job as a
physician, but you will be able to find a spot working in a
doctor’s office or a hospital. Even though you won’t be trying
out the job yourself, you’ll get a chance to see it up close. If
you’re reading this book as an underclassman, keep in mind that
spending your summers this way will help you find a full-time
job later. You’ll have a better idea of what you want, and you’ll
have some relevant experience. You’ll also make some contacts
in the industry.
If the descriptions of people’s jobs sound close to what
you want but aren’t quite there, tell them that. Explain that you
like the idea of working with children and parents, but that you
don’t want to fill out all those forms. The people you talk to will
probably know about other jobs in their industries. Maybe they’ll
tell you that if you work at a big hospital rather than in private
practice, someone else will do the paperwork for you.
You should also ask people how they reached their
current positions, and why they made the choices they did. Their
answers will show you the different stages of their careers and
might raise issues you hadn’t considered. Ask whether they can
recommend anyone else for you to speak with. And don’t forget

to ask them how to find job openings in the field.
Which brings us to the next section.
My Story
Sometime during my sophomore year of college, I
started to think that I wanted to be a journalist. I had worked on
my high school and college newspapers, and I realized that
through writing articles I had gotten the chance to learn about all
kinds of different things that I never would have otherwise.

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

Being a journalist seemed like a way to do something different
every day and always see something new.
The question, though, was what sort of journalist I
wanted to be. My experience with school newspapers had led me
to suspect that I might prefer magazines, where I would have the
chance to work on longer pieces. So the summer after my
sophomore year I interned at a business magazine called Fast
Company.
I was right—magazines were the place for me. The next
summer I interned at Fortune, and I thought about where I might
want to be in 20 years. I decided that I wanted to write long

feature stories and books on the side. Eventually, maybe I would
become an editor.
Quick Reference
Basic steps to deciding what you want:
•
•
•

•

Decide how far ahead you want to plan
Consider what you like to do and what you’re good at
Read industry profiles and talk to people working in the
fields that interest you
Create a list of possible job types (e.g., computer technician,
newspaper reporter, criminal defense lawyer)

Determine Where Those Opportunities Exist
Once you know what sort of work you want to do, you
can start looking for people who will pay you to do it. Once
again, though, you have to ask yourself some questions. You
want to apply only for jobs you actually want—that way you’ll

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

have a better chance of getting hired, as well as a better chance
of being happy once you do.
You need to figure out what sort of company you want
to work for. So,
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Do you want to be one of one thousand employees or one of
ten?
Do you want frequent contact with your supervisor or would
you rather work independently?
Do you want to work with other people your own age? (If so,
look for a company with a formal program for entry-level
hires.)
Do you want to work in a specific city or part of the country
or in a foreign country?

Is there a particular kind of compensation you want, such as
tuition reimbursement, childcare, or stock in your company?
How much money do you need?
How much money do you want?
Do you need flexible working hours? (We all want flexible
hours.)
Can you travel if your company requires you to?
Do you want to get to work right away or would you prefer
some kind of apprenticeship or training program first?
Do you want a multi-faceted company where you might have
a chance to transfer among divisions?
Do you want a company with offices in many places, where
you might have a chance to transfer among branches?
Can you advance in this first job, or will it be just a learning
experience?

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CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

With some of your criteria in hand, it’s time to start
looking for actual jobs.
For some industries, you can probably find thick books
of job listings in the same section of the bookstore where you

found this book. For others, trade magazines fill that role—both
in print and on the Internet. According to a study described in the
October 2000 issue of Monthly Labor Review, in 1998 half of all
jobseekers with online access at home used the Internet to look
for jobs. Yahoo has a great catalogue of industry-specific job
databases at:

/>_and_Work/Jobs/Career_Fields/.
These industry-specific sources will be far more useful
than massive, general job listings. They will have more of the
jobs you want, and they will be easier to use because they’re
smaller.
If you want to work in a particular city or state, check
out the websites of the area’s major newspapers. Many of the
larger papers have online job listings.
There are literally hundreds of general job-listing
databases online. Here are the best, according to Yahoo:
America's Job Bank ( –
Created in partnership with the U.S. Department of Labor, this
site claims to have more than 1.3 million job listings. Perhaps
not surprisingly, it is not the most slick-looking site on the net.
Its database is also fairly cumbersome and, of course, includes
the types of employers who are likely to register with the federal

23


CORE AREA

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ONE HOUR WIZ
THE FOCAL POINTS

government. You can also enter your resume into a database that
employers use.
CareerBuilder ( –
Formerly CareerPath.com, this site features an “On Campus”
section that includes articles about issues you might be
considering, such as how much you should get paid and how you
can repay your college loans. It also has job listings, which you
can search by location, salary, and the somewhat mysterious
criterion, “keyword.” You can also search specific newspapers’
listings via this site.
CareerWeb ( – This site is
one of the most straightforward, possibly because it’s on the
smaller side, with only tens of thousands of jobs, rather than
hundreds of thousands. Search by job type and/or location, and
post your resume.
Headhunter.net ( –
Formerly CareerMosaic, this site claims to have more than
250,000 jobs. It also claims to have a special section devoted to
college students, but I couldn’t figure out how to use it.
HotJobs.com ( – This site
recently created a college-oriented section. One handy feature
lets you specify both a field and a specific job that you want
within that field. For example, within “Marketing,” you can look
specifically for analyst, business development, or direct
marketing jobs, among other types.

24