In my last post I talked about the importance of getting on the radar screen with key people in your department’s food chain as the best method for erasing the “new guy” stigma. This is one place where determination and career success do actually go hand in hand.
In 1976 I had been working for Data Terminal Systems for a few months and my boss’s boss still thought I was an unnecessary piece of overhead.

One day I overheard a heated discussion between my boss’s boss and the plant manager. All overtime had been canceled on the factory floor and shipments were going to get backed up. They had this new tool that would dramatically speed up circuit board production, but no one knew how to use it and everyone was going home at 4:00 because overtime had been cancelled.

Perhaps the most dramatic day in your life is the day you begin the first serious job on your career track. Every bone in your body wants to start building a great career, but you’re completely clueless about what to do. The questions you ask, the people you trust, the work you take on, and results you deliver will determine your future career success.

The Employment Policy Foundation says about one-quarter of all new hires won’t make it through their first year. Leadership IQ, a training firm that studied 20,000 newly hired employees over three years, found that almost half (46 percent) of the rookies wash out in the first 18 months.

How well you manage the first new job of your chosen career is critical – so you just have to get it right. Life would be so simple if there was a direct correlation between determination and career success, but sadly there is not.

As I started to write today’s blog, I realized that I’ve been inadvertently introducing the 9 lessons of Career Secret Sauce – my upcoming book -- in my first few posts without putting it in the proper context.

I began writing Career Secret Sauce in 2005 after leaving a successful management career in Silicon Valley. My career didn’t start out successful, in fact it was a bit of a disaster. I thought that the best method for career management was to do whatever it took to win the next promotion and land a big raise.

In the late eighties I started doing my own research on job satisfaction and the morale of workers in the work place. From that came the nine proven methods for career management that are foundation for the book.

I found that career misery peaked around one’s 40th birthday. That’s when a person struggles the most with the question of how to balance work and family. At this point, the kids are getting into sports and other activities that demand a reduced work schedule, but you really needed to put in long hours at the office just to keep up.

My favorite part of writing my upcoming book Career Secret Sauce was getting to know the people I interviewed along the way.

One remarkable young woman I interviewed was Hayley St. Philip. She works at FOX Broadcasting and landed that job as a college internship.

Hayley gave me her etiquette for college internships and I think it’s great advice for everyone.

The Internship is The Interview – Never forget that your college internship is under a microscope. And it’s a very fast moving microscope – you’ll only have brief amount of time to make a great impression. It’s true that there will be a formal job interview before you get an offer for a fulltime job after graduation, but unless you impress as an intern, you’ll never get that far.

Make Lots of Friends -- Walk up to everyone, introduce yourself and shake their hand. Ask them about themselves and what they do. If they ask, tell them about yourself – but volunteer! Your goal is to make a positive, lasting impression. Show curiosity, ask them about themselves, their job, and how they got where they are.

There are lots of ways to find a college internship, but based on my experience they all fall into one of three categories:

College Internship Method #1 – Contact your college or university career office. They frequently have a listing of different companies in the area that hire interns. They can also tell you if they offer paid internships or not.

The advantage of this method is you don’t have to work very hard to land your college internship; the disadvantage is that you’re coming in the door as “a number.” You’re part of the program and you will be forgettable until you make a name for yourself.

College Internship Method #2 – Ask your parents, neighbors, or relatives for help. Chances are you know a lot of people who already work in your chosen field and they may even have job openings for college internships. This is certainly my favorite method for landing summer internships for college students, since unless you’re going to school near home, it’s unlikely that your college career office will have any good job openings for you’re to consider.

The advantage of this method is you’re likely to land a paid internship and someone will be watching out for you on the job. The disadvantage is that it smacks of privilege; your new coworkers may resent you and never give you a chance to prove yourself.

The best way to find a job you love after graduation is to already have the one you want and be working there part time.

As I have already outlined, paid internships for college students as well as unpaid are abundant and generally there for the asking. They may even be easier to land than a job at the local Starbucks. There is nothing better for your career search self confidence than having the luxury of having multiple offers to choose from. But that’s just one of the joys of being a college intern.

Suppose you’ve picked a field like “marketing,” but you’re still choosing careers within that vocation. You can do one college internship in public relations, another in marketing communications, and if you’re lucky, you may even try a sales job.

In my last post I talked about the pain of chasing down job openings as a college graduate without any real experience. It can be more than just painful; it can be a dead end street. After 4 years of college studying a curriculum that I thought would lead to an entry level job with an architect, I discovered I couldn’t find a job.

In December of 1975, 6 months after graduation, I gave up my dream and started chasing job openings with any company that might hire me. I was the painful new hire with no experience that no one wanted!

It doesn’t have to be like that for you. Simply by working a few college internships, you can transform yourself from a painful new fulltime hire to a joyous intern hire.

Why are interns such a joy to hiring employers?

Let’s take a closer look at college internships and the reason they’re the ideal avenue for identifying job openings after your graduate.
A lot of college students have unrealistic expectations about finding a job after they get out of school. After all, it costs a lot of money to go to college and why would anyone spend that kind of money if it didn’t guarantee a job at the end of the line?

News Flash – A college degree doesn’t guarantee a job after you graduate!

In my last series – “I need help deciding what career to choose,” I offered my thoughts on the nature of different types of employers and urged you to think about this when it comes to choosing careers. This advice applies to both seasoned workers as well as young people just beginning their career search. However, in the case of recent college grads it’s even more critical to select an employer that’s suits your nature. That’s one of driving reasons I keep pushing internships for college students.

Some people believe that the best college internships are the ones that lead to postgraduate job openings and I generally agree with this sentiment. However, landing a full time job in an organization that makes you miserable is of no value and may even damage your career. College internships that help you figure out that you hate working for a particular company or type of organization is of great value.

In my last post, I published a free career test to help struggling career builders with their career search. Today we’ll tell you what you answers mean and what to do about it.

First let’s score your answers:

Q1: True = 0, False = 3

Q2: a. = 2, b = 0, c = 3, d = 1

Q3: True = 0, False = 3

Q4: a = 2, b = 1, c = 3, d = 0

Q5: a = 1, b = 3, c = 0, d = 3

Analysis and Recommendation

From 0 to 3 Points – Seek employment in the Public Sector

Before moving on from my series entitled “I need help deciding what career to choose,” I thought I’d summarize by consolidating my advice for struggling career builders into the form of a free career test.

This is a good, simple tool for helping you with your career search.

Here goes:

1. True or False – I find comfort and security when I’m surrounded by people who have similar interests and opinions to my own. Whenever I am singled out I get nervous and anxious to fade back into the crowd.

2. What’s the most important reason for working:

a. Make lots of money to buy stuff

b. Provide food and shelter for my family

c. Doing something interesting that you truly love

d. The comradery of being on a great team with a common goal

3. True or False – Work is a necessary evil

4. What makes you the proudest: