So, the end of the semester is here and more importantly the end of my time in the IIT department at Bloomsburg University. This has been a couple of hectic weeks of interviewing and applying to jobs and internships, which is what I wanted to comment a little on.

First off, be careful of the CareerBuilder and Monster sites, or any job site. Insurance agents will bomb your email and start calling you to offer training as a sales rep. I've fended off five of them since posting my resume to CareerBuilder. I just tell them I'm looking for ID work, not sales, and offer to design some training for them - that usually gets them to stop bothering you.

Second, if your resume looks good - people with real jobs will contact you, so be prepared! If you see a listing and apply for the position, immediately follow up by going to the company's website! Do the research so you're not wrong footed if they call you, it's probably best to have a folder in your bookmarks with all the companies that you have applied to. This way you can easily access their info if they contact you.

Thirdly, manage your schedule well with the interviews. Usually they'll contact you by email first (but not always) and follow through with a phone call before inviting you to a face to face interview. This can become a juggling game if you don't have your schedule well blocked to accommodate the whole process. With end of school work due and other commitments you might be put in a bad spot, especially since you are trying to work around their busy schedules.

Forth, don't panic. If they don't get back to you, especially on a Monday - don't sweat it - they are probably catching up on emails and work related stuff that languished over the week-end. If they don't get back to you at all - don't lose heart and try to figure out if you did something wrong that offended them. You don't know what other candidates they are looking at - there's a good chance someone with a stellar resume applied after you and that just took you out of the race.

Fifth, It's nice to be a friend and good sport but your classmates and friends just became your competitors. They might be moping about complaining nobody is contacting them - that's not your problem. If you did the work and found a position that sounds good and would be a right fit for you - keep it to yourself. Your "best" friend just undercut you by applying to the position - and frankly, they might not be very generous to you in the future, even if you did give them leads on work.

Networking is good and dandy - don't take it to far by cutting yourself out of the running! Listen to what people say happened in their interviews, this will give you a heads up when going in for one yourself. Remember, companies seem to like playing good cop, bad cop - one person to stroke your ego in case they decide to offer you the position (and not offend you into rejecting them), and another to play the big, bad wicked HR person. Smile, relax and answer their questions - nobody knows the answer to everything, so if you can't give them a good one - tell them you'll get back to them on the subject, or that time is an area you need support and development on.

Most importantly, you're going to get some pretty informal emails from some people. Either they are to busy, or they just don't have time for anything but one liners. Don't follow suite! You are asking them for a job - keep being very polite and semi-formal, but don't sound like a windbag! You can probably drop the title after the first contact - unless they are continuing to be formal, but do not send an email with spelling mistakes or in a texting format!

Oh, and contracting work - well, as I said before - you might end up with far less friends then you started with if there is a contract on the line. Hey, you thought you were lining up a little support by recommending a friend, and then you ended up losing the contract!

Ok,

This was my little interviewing advice based on the last two week of my experience. I'll keep posting on this subject to let you all know how it turns out.