Looking for Employment: Tips from A Recent Graduate

Students nearing graduation are wondering about employment. Some already have jobs lined but many do not. While it is good to start looking, best advice is to graduate first as finishing up after you have a job almost always creates a lot of stress and bother. Previous blogs have covered Finding a First Job in Planning, Tips on Gainful Unemployment for New Planners, and Defining the Planning Skill Set based on surveys of employers and graduates. Anna Read, a recent graduate from Cornell’s MRP program who found employment right away last year, has passed along these tips from her own experience:

2 minute read

March 7, 2010, 7:37 AM PST

By Ann Forsyth

Students nearing graduation are wondering about employment.
Some already have jobs lined but many do not. While it is good to start
looking, best advice is to graduate first as finishing up after you have a job
almost always creates a lot of stress and bother. Previous blogs have covered Finding
a First Job in Planning, Tips on Gainful Unemployment for New Planners, and Defining the Planning Skill Set based on surveys of employers and graduates. Anna
Read, a recent graduate from Cornell's MRP program who found employment right
away last year, has passed along these tips from her own experience:

"1) Don't
overlook unpaid internships. While paid internships are clearly
preferable, unpaid internships can offer good experience and are a lot more
likely to turn into an actual job that staying on campus for the summer
is. And there are funding opportunities available.

2) Keep a
spreadsheet with the jobs you have applied for, when you heard back, when phone
interviews/actual interviews are scheduled, and when you followed up.

3) Have someone
else proofread your cover letters (and don't model your cover letters too
closely on those provided by career services).

4) Remember
that offering you a job is a much smaller event in the life of the person
offering it to you than it is in your life. While it is important to be
persistent and follow-up, it is also important to be patient and realize they
have other things going on.

5) Don't overly
exaggerate experience (I had a friend who was applying for jobs and nearly
doubling the amount of time she held her current job in her cover letter,
though the dates were accurate on her resume, and this was causing her trouble
in her job search), but do be specific about the experience you have (the
USAJobs.gov site has good information on how to create a brief but detailed
resume)." I would add being specific about your role and being quite clear
about what work was done in a group.

Overall being organized about the job search has many
benefits. But finishing all the requirements for graduation should be a top
priority.

This is my February post, a little late.

Employment

Ann Forsyth

Trained in planning and architecture, Ann Forsyth is a professor of urban planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. From 2007-2012 she was a professor of city and regional planning at Cornell. She taught previously at at the University of Minnesota, directing the Metropolitan Design Center (2002-2007), Harvard (1999-2002), and the University of Massachusetts (1993-1999) where she was co-director of a small community design center, the Urban Places Project. She has held short-term positions at Columbia, Macquarie, and Sydney Universities.

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching. Mary G., Urban Planner

I love the variety of courses, many practical, and all richly illustrated. They have inspired many ideas that I've applied in practice, and in my own teaching.

Mary G., Urban Planner

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