The Century of the Job Seeker

Graduates: Create Your Own Job

by Ron McGowan

The biggest mistake graduates make in their search for employment is putting all their eggs in the traditional job basket. Their assumption is that someone will offer them a job, and when that doesn’t happen, they end up unemployed, or underemployed. They don’t understand that if the only option they give employers is to offer them a traditional job, they’re making it hard to hire them.

To succeed in today’s workplace, graduates must:

• Learn how to operate as freelancers or contractors. It’s not enough to be willing to do this; you have to learn how to do it effectively. Here’s an example of the world of freelancing: http://www.elance.com
• Learn how to find hidden employment opportunities. The majority of employment opportunities today are never advertised.
• Learn how to market themselves effectively. Graduates are often uncomfortable with this but their discomfort is based on ignorance of what it is all about. The good news is anyone can learn how to do it; it’s mostly common sense.
• Learn how to create marketing tools beyond the the resume/CV that are focused on the needs of the employer they’re contacting.
• Understand the role of the Internet and Social Media tools in finding employment opportunities and in creating an online presence that will attract employers and recruiters. A good resource for this is: http://www.bradanddeb.com/works.htm.
• Create a LinkedIn account. Spend as much time doing this as you would creating your resume/CV. In today’s world, it’s just as important.

For graduates who are interested in starting a small business, thanks to the Internet and modern communications tools, it’s easier to do this than it ever has been. Today, you can operate a business from your Smartphone and it doesn’t matter if you’re doing it from your living room, or your local Starbucks.

So graduates, stop shortchanging yourselves by settling for low paying jobs in the service sector, or unpaid internships. Take a position that you’re going to find paid employment in your field, just like millions of your peers around the world are already doing. It’s largely a matter of believing in yourself and refusing to accept anything less.

Ron McGowan is the author of the international bestseller “How to Find WORK – In the 21st Century”, currently in use at hundreds of colleges and universities worldwide. The 2013 edition has just been released by Thames River Press.

Beyond Graduation: Education for the 21st Century

Should Universities find Jobs for their Graduates?

by Ron McGowan

This was the “Question of the day” CNN posed for its’ viewers on April 4, 2013. It’s a question that is increasingly being asked, in different ways, by graduates, their families, and the public. It’s a question we should have been asking at least twenty years ago. If we had, we would have significantly fewer unemployed/underemployed graduates today.

Universities have been shortchanging their graduates for years and the main culprits are the senior bureaucrats who are in charge of our education system and the senior administrators in charge of our post secondary institutes. These people have never missed a paycheque in their lives and their own work environment doesn’t look any different from what it did fifty years ago. They have no affinity whatever with the challenges their graduates are facing in trying to find meaningful employment in today’s workplace.

Here are a few examples of how universities/colleges can help their graduates:

In 2011, Tom Friedman, the bestselling author and New York Times columnist, was in India where he met Prem Kalra, the director of the Indian Institute of Technology in Rajasthan. He told Friedman that he tells recruiters for major companies to stay away from his campus. He wants his Indian students to think about inventing their first jobs, not applying for them.

In the U.K., the heads of five Further Education Colleges are working with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to help their graduates create their own jobs. Fintan Donohue, the head of North Hertfordshire College said: “Everyone is in favour of entrepreneurship, but we’re saying is that colleges like ours need to embrace an entrepreneurial culture. We need to be producing students who embrace self-employment and who are prepared to walk out and create their own businesses.

Bloomberg Businessweek reported in 2012 that six U.S. undergraduate business schools require students to attend classes that prepare them for the process of finding work. Most significantly, these classes are embedded in the curriculum and students must complete them, just like all their other classes, before they can graduate.


In World War II, the U.S. was facing a critical shortage of ships. Henry Kaiser, the famed industrialist, said he would solve the problem by building ships in six weeks. The experts in the shipbuilding industry said he was a fool; that this was impossible. But he did build his Liberty Ships in six weeks.

That’s the kind of bold, visionary initiative we need to help today’s graduates. It won’t come from the government or the education sector. Not from a politician. Not from a senior bureaucrat. Not from a senior educator: but from another Henry Kaiser.

Ron McGowan is the author of the international bestseller “How to Find WORK – In the 21st Century”. The 2013 edition has just been released by Thames River Press and is available from Amazon and other booksellers.

Writing for Publishing course in Roscommon successfully concludes

Press Statement issued by The Manuscript Publisher - provider of publishing solutions for the digital age: 

The inaugural Writing for Publishing course, which took place over eight weeks during April and May at Roscommon County Library, has recently come to the end of its successful run. 

Writing for Publishing is an Irish-based educational initiative organised by The Manuscript Publisher. It is aimed at authors and writers interested in writing to and for a public readership, and gaining an audience for their work.  

A healthy attendance was in evidence for each night of the course, with plenty of lively discussion too. It was the largest uptake for a course held in Roscommon Library for some time: over 60 people in total turned out and an average attendance of about 30 for each evening of the course. 

All of the most important and pertinent aspects of writing and publishing today were covered including:

• creative writing,
• presentation and design, 
• writing as a career, 
• overview of the publishing process, 
• self-publishing, 
• e-publishing and the rise of the e-book, 
• building and managing your web presence as an author, writer, independent publisher. 

Participants described the course as "most instructive and enjoyable" with, "anecdotes and diversions greatly helping in the assimilation of all that material." Participants also expressed appreciation for the fact that, despite the seemingly 'high tech' nature of some of the topics covered, lack of computer literacy did not present a barrier to understanding.  

According to the Course Director, Oscar Duggan, "With the completion of the Roscommon course, we will be taking a short break, but only to work out a programme of events for the autumn period (September to December)." 

Bookings and expressions of interest, from libraries, writers groups, literary organisations, other interested parties are most welcome. Anyone interested in organising a course in their area should get in touch with Writing for Publishing - contact details are available from their website, along with the full course outline, materials and how to book. 

New Year, New Beginning and a Time to Plan for the Road Ahead

January is that time of year when people like to make resolutions - to embark on new projects, fulfil a lifelong quest, learn new skills, adopt healthier lifestyles, make all-round self-improvements and so on. It goes back to the ancient Romans who began each year by making promises to the god Janus, for whom the month of January is named.

Those who find themselves in the frame of mind that ‘2013 will be The Year’ will find no more rewarding a read than Nuala Duignan’s just published Charting Your Life’s Roadmap in an Uncertain World: Choose Happiness Daily. It is a book that is filled with practical advice and tools to measure how your life is performing across different areas.

“New Year is an ideal time reflect on your achievements, celebrate your wins and consider your goals for the coming year and beyond ... a good time to start thinking about fresh starts, ... Time for a reality check.” according to Nuala Duignan. But for many people, the spirit of good intention that pervades at this time of year gets lost in the mists of reality, as the daily grind takes its toll. January becomes February and before we know it another year has passed. Although our lives have moved on, we remain in much the same quandary as we were before; uncertain about our future and where we are going, or what we should be doing.

This is where Life Coaching comes in. Resolutions become unstuck because people lose focus on their goals. What we need to do is to ‘check in’ periodically - not just in the New Year - and take time to consider our overall situation: where we are at with our lives; how far we have come and how much of the journey that we have set for ourselves remains.

“Our attitude is our window on the world and it is within our self-control.” Central to Nuala’s prescription is the idea that we should choose happiness daily. True happiness is not something we attain when our lives have reached a certain level of ‘perfection’. Rather, happiness is the comfort of knowing that we are in control of our lives, satisfied with what we are doing, solving various problems as we continue along our chosen path.

The book is interspersed with testimonials from people that Nuala has worked with in her capacity as a Life Coach. It also contains words of wisdom in the form of quotations from famous people and historical figures - Martin Luther King, Michael Caine, Theodore Roosevelt, Judy Garland, Henry Ford, George Elliot to name but a few.

Nuala Duignan is a qualified Life Coach whose expertise in this area is drawn as much from her own background and experiences, as from her professional training in this field. Born and raised on a farm in Co. Roscommon, she had a varied career, running her own Health and Gourmet catering business, working in the construction industry and the field of medicine (both general and psychiatric), before she took up Life Coaching. She says that it was her experience in the medical field that motivated her to pursue Life Coaching as a career.

She now uses her accumulated work experiences and coaching skills to help move individuals, from where they are currently to where they want to reach. Previous articles that she has contributed to The Job Seekers Blog are available to read here.

Charting Your Life’s Roadmap in an Uncertain World: Choose Happiness Daily by Nuala Duignan is published by The Manuscript Publisher and available now in all good bookshops. It can also be purchased online. RRP €12.99.

Nuala Duignan can be reached via her website - www.nualaduignanlifecoach.com. She is also on Facebook. 

YouTube CVs - the face of job seeking to come

Today's generation of job seekers have a greater range of options than ever to promote their various skills set - even if job opportunities have never been scarcer. Let's just hope that fortune favours the brave (not to mention the creative and the inventive).