Articles from The Balance Careers, written by Alison Doyle updated on February 13, 2020 and November 11, 2021.

What's the best outfit to wear to a job interview? The answer will vary depending on the type of job and company you're interviewing with. You always want to dress to make the best impression, but the outfit you choose depends on whether you're interviewing at a company with a formal dress code, at a casual startup, or for an informal summer job or internship.

If you wear a suit to an interview for a camp counselor, or a T-shirt to an interview at a bank, it'll send the message that you don't truly understand what's involved in the role. 

Find out what to wear (and what not to wear) for interviews at every type of company: 

Professional / Business Interview Attire

Generally, a job interview calls for you to wear professional, or business, attire.

For men, this might mean a suit jacket and slacks with a shirt and tie or a sweater and button-down. For women, a blouse and dress pants or a statement dress is appropriate. For gender neutral attire, click here. 

You can also incorporate some modern style trends into your outfit. All interviewees should consider color when selecting an interview outfit and avoid wearing anything too bright or flashy that will distract the hiring manager.

Interview Outfits for Women

The more important thing to consider when you're dressing for a job interview is that you should look professional and polished regardless of the type of position you're seeking.

Even though your interview attire depends on the role you're applying for, no matter what the position, you should go to the interview looking neat, tidy, and well-dressed. Here's how to make the best impression at every interview you go on.

Interview Outfits for Men

It can be challenging to put a professional interview outfit together. Here are some basic tips for men on how to dress for an interview, including what colors to wear, whether to wear a tie (and what kind), and more.

Gender Neutral Attire

If your day-to-day attire doesn’t conform to a traditional gender norm, your interview clothing doesn’t have to either.  

Non-Professional / Business Casual Interview Attire

If you have a job interview in a more informal work environment, you might wear a business casual outfit. Business casual outfits are less formal than a suit, but they are also more professional and polished than, say, a T-shirt and shorts or a sundress and sandals.

Of course, make sure you know the dress code before you assume that business casual is acceptable. If you aren’t sure, call the office and ask the administrative coordinator, or contact the person who scheduled the interview and ask them for advice.

Always dress a bit more professionally than the average employee at the company. If everyone is wearing shorts and T-shirts, for example, you might wear khakis and a Polo shirt or button-down.

Casual Interview Attire

If you have an interview at a startup company, nix the head-to-toe formal business attire. You want to look appropriate and professional, but not too formal.

Rather than showing up in a black suit and dress shoes, opt for something that is relaxed but still presentable: relaxed-fit khakis, dark-wash jeans, and a nice top, for example.

College Job Interview Attire

Make sure to dress professionally when interviewing for a professional job or internship as a college student. It'll show that you'll know how to behave in a professional manner if you're hired. 

Less formal attire is acceptable when interviewing for campus jobs and more informal workplace jobs. However, you still want to dress professionally for most positions, even if they are entry-level. Review these tips for college women and college men on what to wear to an interview, as well as what to wear for an interview for an internship. Gender-neutral attire tips may be found here.

Internship Interview Attire

Internships are an important part of career development, and as with any job, acing your interview is one part of getting the position you want. Making a great first impression–coming across as polished, professional, and attentive–is important when it comes to your internship search.

Here's what to wear for an internship interview based on whether the company environment is formal, casual, or somewhere in between.

Summer Job Interview Attire

Are you interviewing for a summer job? Typically, these jobs are more casual and do not require professional attire. You can skip the suit. However, you still want to look polished and professional.

Here are tips on what to wear to make the best impression, including interview attire for male and female applicants, what to bring with you, and how to dress for a casual interview.

Warm Weather Interview Attire

Do you have an interview in the hot summer months? There are a few things you can do to look professional but still feel cool in a job interview.

Review tips on what to wear for a warm-weather interview depending on the work environment and type of job.

How to Choose Interview Accessories

When wearing accessories to an interview, less is more. Choose accessories that will enhance your interview attire, not overwhelm it. 

Best Job Interview Hairstyles

There are lots of ways to style your hair for a job interview. While some options are trendy and others are more traditional, remember that your hairstyle should not distract the employer. You will want your hair to be professional and polished, like your entire outfit.

Here are the best job interview hairstyles for short, medium-length, and long hair. 

How to Do Your Makeup for a Job Interview

Like your hair, your makeup should not distract the interviewer. This is not the time for bold lipstick or a glittery eye shadow. Instead, keep makeup subtle and unobtrusive. 

Check out these interview makeup do's and don'ts before you get ready to interview.

What Not to Wear on an Interview

An unprofessional outfit can distract an interviewer from seeing your great qualities.

Here's what not to wear when you are interviewing for a new job.

In-demand college students seeking summer internships are reneging on offers as companies swoop in to offer better deals. Host J.R. Whalen is joined by Georgia Tech senior Najaah Chambliss, who walked away from an internship, and WSJ reporter Lindsay Ellis, who discusses the trend and how companies are responding.

If you are considering reneging on an internship or job offer, please connect with Jen Jones at jlh7b@virginia.edu.

Listen to the recording here with a WSJ subscription.

This transcript was prepared by a transcription service. This version may not be in its final form and may be updated.

J.R. Whalen: Here's Your Money Briefing for Friday, March 4th. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal. We've told you how the pandemic helped create a job seekers market with millions of workers leaving their jobs for better pay and companies struggling to fill open slots. But that's also happening among students who are trying to land summer internships. Competition for interns has gotten so fierce that some who've gotten and accepted offers are reneging on them to take a better deal elsewhere.

Lindsay Ellis: Just like a lot of job seekers, there is demand for people to come in the door. Companies look at their summer internship programs and they're not just thinking about that summer. They're thinking, "Who can we identify among this cohort of interns that a year from now we're going to want to bring back or we want to hire full-time after the program."

J.R. Whalen: On today's show, we'll discuss the growing leverage students have in the competitive world of summer internships with our reporter, Lindsay Ellis. Plus we'll hear from one student who reneged at an intern ship offer and see how it turned out. That's after the break. For college students, an offer for a summer internship can mean getting their foot in the door and launching a career track. But amid the tight labor market, more students are walking away from offers they've already accepted to take an even better one. In a moment, we'll hear from WSJ reporter Lindsay Ellis about this growing trend and the competition for entry level talent. But first let's bring in one of those in-demand interns for a firsthand account. I'm joined now by (Naja Shambliss). She's 21 and a senior at Georgia Tech University majoring in computer science. Last fall, she began applying for internships for this coming summer. Hey Naja, thanks for being here.

Naja Shambliss: I'm glad to be here.

J.R. Whalen: So Naja, back in October you landed a summer internship. Tell us about how that went.

Naja Shambliss: Yeah, so I was applying for internships and I had found this opportunity on, I believe LinkedIn. It was either LinkedIn or Handshake I believe. And so, yeah, I went ahead and applied and I figured I had a pretty good chance of getting this internship because I had previously interned with a defense company and so I thought getting this internship from this other defense company would be not too bad. And I also wanted to intern somewhere else other than this previous company, which is why I was applying for other companies. And so, yeah, I applied and it took a little while to get back to me, but I ended up interviewing with them once and then I heard back from them about a month later, I believe, saying that I received an offer.

J.R. Whalen: All right. But then earlier of this year, your plans changed. What happened there?

Naja Shambliss: Yeah. So at the end of November, my recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn also asking me to apply for a Microsoft internship and I had already accepted the defense internship, but I was like, it's Microsoft, I've applied for them before. I haven't been accepted previously, so this would just be an extra step for practice for when I apply again for the next recruiting season. So I filled out the application she sent me and then I went through the first round of interviews, which wasn't too bad, thank God. And then I got pushed to the final round and I received an offer after that.

J.R. Whalen: Oh, so what did Microsoft offer you?

Naja Shambliss: I'm not able to disclose the numbers, but let's say it was definitely double what the defense industry was offering me. And then they were also giving me a relocation, stipend and a stipend to help with my moving expenses and stuff like that. So it was a pretty great deal.

J.R. Whalen: So you eventually had to go tell the defense company that you had accepted a new opportunity. How'd that conversation go?

Naja Shambliss: So it's actually pretty funny. I sent out an email to, I believe she was my onboarding HR person and stating that I do apologize for having to do this to you guys so late in the game, but unfortunately I have to renege my offer, and I actually did not get a response for them. I had sent them an email and I never received an email back, but I did look at my portal and it had said that I was no longer being considered for the position. So I don't think they received that information in the best way, but yes, that's what happened.

J.R. Whalen: So when you first got the word from the recruiter that there was a Microsoft internship out there to try to go after, how did you feel about that process at that stage? I imagine you had firmed up the defense company internship and had signed some papers, right?

Naja Shambliss: Yeah. I thought this opportunity was different maybe because I had never had a recruiter directly from a company DM me, or specifically for Microsoft, I have never had a Microsoft recruiter DM me on LinkedIn asking me to apply for position. So I kind of had a good feeling about this process and that's kind of what made me be like, "Okay, even though I've already accepted this offer, this might turn out differently, so let's try it."

J.R. Whalen: All right. That's Naja Shambliss, a senior at Georgia Tech University with us. Naja, thank you so much for taking the time to chat.

Naja Shambliss: Thank you for having me. This is my first podcast experience, so I'm very grateful. Thank you so much for this opportunity.

J.R. Whalen: Oh, we really appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Naja Shambliss: No problem.

J.R. Whalen: So what's driving this cutthroat competition for interns and what are companies doing to keep potential interns interested? For more on that, I'm joined by WSJ reporter, Lindsay Ellis. She's been looking into it. Lindsay, thanks so much for being here.

Lindsay Ellis: Thank you so much for having me.

J.R. Whalen: So Lindsay, these bidding wars for interns like we just heard with Naja, is that something new?

Lindsay Ellis: So interns, especially in demand fields like computer science, engineering and the like, they've always had some competitive offers, but the level of competition that I heard from interns seemed just really striking. Campuses and companies are saying that they're seeing competition over interns in a way that feels different than prior years, especially the last two years, the first with the pandemic really sinking in and last year with everything in a much different hiring market than we are right now.

J.R. Whalen: So why do interns suddenly have this kind of leverage in the job market?

Lindsay Ellis: Just like a lot of job seekers, there is demand for people to come in the door. And I think that for interns emerges in a couple of ways, the first is, companies really want applicants and they want qualified applicants. And that inherently gives the people who are applying, who have strong resumes, who have the skills that they're looking for an edge. I think the other reason is companies look at their summer internship programs and they're not just thinking about that summer. They're thinking, "Who can we identify among this cohort of interns that a year from now we're going to want to bring back or we want to hire full time after the program." And so this is sort of a key pool for companies to look at their entry level workforce. And so there is more demand in hiring the right people when this could be my pipeline six months from now, a year from now.

J.R. Whalen: Is there ever any kind of a penalty if a student backs out of an internship that they've already accepted?

Lindsay Ellis: It can vary from campus to campus, but yes. Cornell's business school, if you're an MBA student and you accept an offer for the summer and then you go out and interview and accept a different one and back out of that first one, they say that they reserve the right to fine you up to $2,500.

J.R. Whalen: Wow. I mean, for a college student, that's a lot of money.

Lindsay Ellis: It is, yes. And for those two, those were specifically for business school students, so perhaps a little later in their career. But these are people that don't necessarily have income coming in every month and yet still might be on the hook. There are other penalties that are also significant. At the University of California Berkeley's business school, one of the possible sanctions is a 16 hour service project. So that can be a significant amount of money certainly and time if you're caught backing out from this.

J.R. Whalen: But a student might consider switching to a different internship that could better jumpstart their career, right? But is there a danger of them burning their bridges behind them?

Lindsay Ellis: Colleges say that there is. I mean, they are quick to remind students that it's a small world and a small job market in a lot of ways. Recruiters move from company to company. Someone who you interact with when you're 22, you might encounter in a totally different field a few years down the line. They also sort of put in place their own regulations that could hamper a student's trajectory as they continue through their education. Some schools at the undergraduate level will restrict the use of a platform called Handshake where a lot of jobs are listed for students who are caught backing out. I think students who I talked to who have considered this or who have done this look at the name on the resume, they look at the salary that they could be bringing in and importantly, they look at the experience that they think that they're going to get at these preferred internship programs. And in a lot of cases, that's a very strong counterweight to a more nebulous idea of possible ramifications. There's another side to that coin as well, which is the relationship between the college and the company, and many campus career offices are really cognizant of that relationship and don't want to do anything to stress it or damage it. Their fear is that if a number of students back out from opportunities that they've already accepted, might that influence whether a company wants to come back next semester or next year and knock on their door and recruit future classes. And so one aspect of could this be hurtful, is thinking about what is the next student who comes around, what's going to be their experience, and colleges really have that front of mind.

J.R. Whalen: Now, there's usually several months between the time somebody lands an internship and when they actually start. So what are companies doing to prevent people from backing out?

Lindsay Ellis: There usually are several months between these dates and one thing that really surprised me in reporting this is that in some cases there are many more months than I had anticipated. People were telling me that they were interviewing for these summer internships while they were doing a different summer internship. So companies need to keep students warm is what they say, make sure that they're front of mind for these candidates that they've worked hard to recruit. Liberty Mutual told me about their keep in touch campaign, including interns in get togethers that are held virtually, some coffee chats and the like to keep them engaged with what's going on. One logistics company that I talked to mentioned sending holiday e-cards to the students who had accepted. So there are different tactics, some with video engagement and when possible in-person engagement, but others just really leaning into the messaging.

J.R. Whalen: And so how are the companies responding to this trend of interns backing out of offers and how are they thinking about their internship programs more broadly to keep people interested?

Lindsay Ellis: So some of them are looking at pay benchmarks and making sure that this very basic aspect of it, this critical aspect of it is competitive of with other organizations and external benchmarks. Some of them begrudge the trend and you kind of throw your hands up in the air and it's a little bit of a "kids these days" reaction. But the thing that I think most stood out to me on this was a real focus on what can we do as an organization to prepare for the summer, just kind of accepting that this might take place. So a few companies, including General Mills told me and have mentioned that they plan to overhire, basically extending a few more offers than they typical would and hoping that a few more candidates than they want to accept accept, expecting that a few of them are maybe going to back out between now and the summer. And I think they're also thinking about how they recruit and how they build relationships with students. One common refrain I heard from recruiters was, "In this virtual environment maybe students feel less of a strong connection with us as a company and with the recruiters and the team overall. How can we build that up and keep them feeling close?" And so that sort of speaks to some of the strategies, the keeping in touch efforts and the like.

J.R. Whalen: All right. That's Wall Street Journal reporter, Lindsay Ellis with us. Lindsay, thanks so much for being with us.

Lindsay Ellis: Thank you for having me.

J.R. Whalen: And that's Your Money Briefing. I'm J.R. Whalen for The Wall Street Journal.

By: Victorio Duran III at Firsthand

It isn’t easy to stand out at in-person job fairs, and leaving a lasting impression with employers at virtual job fairs can be just as challenging. However, if you follow the eight tips below, you’ll have no difficulty making meaningful professional connections and differentiating yourself from other candidates.

1. Update your profile and resume

Your resume and professional profiles, especially your LinkedIn profile, need to be up to date. Ensure that your resume is as comprehensive as possible. Don’t skimp on information—and certainly make sure to include key words and quantifiable achievements. Also, make sure your polished, error-free resume is available in both PDF and Word files, and available on your desktop so you can access it and upload it easily. All of this is important during fairs because employers use the information on your resume and profile to see if you match their requirements.

2. Do your research

For employers you’re interested in, go the extra mile while researching them. Find out about the opportunities they offer and their cultures. This allows you to better determine if they might be good fits for you, and to customize your resume and profile to their requirements. In addition, doing your research shows recruiters at the career fair that you did your homework and are interested in working for them. The more you know about a company’s products, employee culture, social media presence, standing in the market, etc., the more topics you’ll have to talk about—and the more likely you are to make a lasting impression.

3. Prepare to ask questions       

Answering questions is so passé. To stand out from the competition, you need to ask questions—and you have every right to do so. Show off the research you’ve done and prepare a list of questions for recruiters. You might ask about company culture, retention rate, growth plans, how a company is managing in these difficult times, and how a company’s work environment has changed in the wake of Covid-19. Also, with everyone working from home, you might have legitimate concerns about starting a job remotely. So, ask about the communication tools the company uses to facilitate work from home, and whether they prefer Glip, Discord, or another collaboration software app.

4. Plan your day

You don’t want your lack of planning and organization getting in the way of making strong connections at virtual fairs. So, if you have trouble getting organized, there are many online productivity tools that can help. It also helps if you proceed step by step through each virtual fair. So, decide head of time which virtual stands you’d like to stop at, and decide the questions you’ll be asking at each stop. In addition, familiarize yourself with the platform hosting the fair so you know how to go about it.

It’s extremely important to spend your time efficiently. You want to attend the career clinics and webinars but also make time for meeting with recruiters on a one-to-one basis. You don’t want to have all the information and knowledge on how to land a job but not get enough time to talk to the people actually offering one.

5. Draft an elevator pitch

It’s important to prepare an elevator pitch you can give to recruiters you meet at fairs. Time is of the essence, as there are typically hundreds of other candidates vying for recruiters’ attention. Making an impression with few words isn’t something most people can do on the spot and off the top of their heads. So, ahead of each fair, draft an elevator pitch thoughtfully, considering how you’ll approach each employer and what would you’d like to say.

It’s probable that instead of talking, you’ll have to text your pitch, so have your pitch ready to be copied and pasted. A little knowledge of the principles of copywriting wouldn’t go amiss to make an immediate impression and be able to sell yourself. And think short and sharp—briefly outline your academic and work background, and mention why you’d like to be part of an employer’s team.

6. Be professional

Even when you’re attending a virtual fair, you should dress to impress. Recruiters will be able see you. Be as sharply dressed as you would for an in-person interview. This shows seriousness and will create a great first impression. Avoid clothing with patterns, and keep your background plain, simple, and clutter-free.  

Of course, don’t be late for the fair. Show up on time so you have a better chance of doing everything you want to do during the fair. If you’ve set prior appointments for personal meetings with recruiters, be there before they are. Doing so will make you come off as eager, well prepared, and someone who respects others’ busy schedules.

In addition, be professional in all your communication. A joke or two can be acceptable during conversations to lighten the mood, but too many jokes can make you seem not very serious and create the wrong impression. While it’s good to have things to talk about, limit your conversation to the company, the job, and the matter at hand.

7. Be real

To come off as your authentic self, especially on a virtual platform, isn’t easy. However, the best advice is to be yourself. Let your personality shine through, and don’t let your nerves get in the way. There’s no need to be nervous or worried that one single job fair will make or break your career—there will be many other fairs. Also, remember that genuine candidates stand out—they’re the recruiters will remember.

So, if you’re authentic as possible while also acting confidently and professionally, you’ll create a great first impression. Give honest answers to questions, relating answers to your personal life and struggles to give employers a quick idea of who you are. Of course, be cool-headed at all times, especially in response to tricky interview questions you didn’t anticipate. 

8. Close thoughtfully

If you want to make a truly lasting impression, you need to connect with employers after career fairs. So, make sure you ask for their contact information during the fair, and send them a formal email immediately afterward. You could also send them a LinkedIn request with a personalized message, thanking them for their time and summarizing the conversation you had. Mention the position you’re interested in, and remind them again why you’re a good fit. Keep it short, and ask to be informed of the next steps in the hiring process.

https://firsthand.co/blogs/networking/how-to-stand-out-at-virtual-career-fairs?utm_medium=email&utm_source=adestra&eid=564591&utm_campaign=08_11_2021_Caree

Quick Job Search Tips and Just a Few Events!

As 2023 draws to a close we wish to share with you some highlights!

Women in Economics:

In March, we became founding members of Women in Economics across the Nation, a consortium of universities brought together by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s 2023 February women’s symposium. As founding members, we are shaping programs both at UVA and in local communities to expose girls and women to career opportunities aligned with an economics degree and to demonstrate the flexibility of the degree in the labor market. Our next program was held in October when we co-hosted a virtual panel of 30 alumni from universities across the nation. In November we continued the conversation here on Grounds with six professionals who spoke on their career trajectories and challenges and opportunities for women in the labor market  While we received great feedback, one comment in particular stood out…
 

I really liked the luncheon opportunity to speak directly with the panelists. One unexpected aspect that I enjoyed was the presence of Econ grad student attendees and undergrads younger than me. My conversations ultimately felt more like intergenerational women in economics sharing as I gave a few second years advice on classes, the grad students counseled me on grad school, and the panelist spoke with the grad students about industry—all at the same table. This was a super cool experience...” 

Economics Undergraduate Economics Career Forum:

Our ECO Student Advisory Board planned and welcomed 8 UVA alumni back to Grounds for 36 hours of engaging and informative career programming reaching more than 100 student participants and 10 faculty partners. 

Economics Resume and Cover Letter Guide:

We completed the publication of this guide to assist students in conceiving of and designing their professional materials for fields and job functions our majors pursue, with real resumes and cover letters of students and alumni who landed jobs in these fields.

Major to Major Career Coaching Fair:

We paired up fourth-years returning from summer internships with lower-level students to share opportunities and take advantage of our students’ very recent internship experiences. Strategies and advice were shared among more than 300 participants!

Advising:

We provided individual advising for more than 300 students and served 700 students through our workshops and other programs.

Outcomes Reports

We completed our analysis of the Class of 2022 and where they launched after graduation. We use this data in our advising, workshops, and to share with students as they consider declaring the major.

Alumni:

More than 50 alumni donated their time and expertise to our students through professional development programs, like conducting resume reviews, sitting on panels, and hosting information sessions representing their employers.

We listened to students in Econ 3010, who are on the way to declaring the major and established drop-in career advising opportunities for prospective majors.

Co-curricular Career Programming

The ECO continues our partnership with Econ 3010 whereby all students in Intermediate Micro economics, the gateway class to declare the major. participate in several professional development activities including writing and practicing their elevator pitch, building a LinkedIn profile, designing a personal strategic career plan, and attending career-related programming.

Outreach

We sent 30 weekly newsletters and more than 50 job and event announcements to students reaching more than 75% of our students as demonstrated by click-through rates.

The ECO builds community, provides career education, and encourages new networks for our students, alumni, faculty, and friends.

Click here to make a gift to the ECO. Every gift of all sizes makes a difference in our work. Thank you for your support.

It is a yearly tradition for current Econ graduate students to meet, greet, and challenge the incoming class to a friendly soccer game. Current students include Hunda 'Hazard' Kebede, Abiy 'The Ankle Breaker' Teshome and Joaquin 'El Matatopos' Saldain, among other stars. After this first dust-up, new students are invited to join the Econ Grad soccer mailing list and team. Though you couldn't tell from this picture, this 2018 game was a co-ed event, and we hope that in future years, more female students will participate!

’Tis the Season to Advance Your Career: Networking Over the Holidays

Article from Career Attraction

Networking is the single most important thing you can do to support your job search, and the holidays were made for networking. Take advantage of the holiday season to expand your network and to reconnect with contacts.

Below are a few tips for how you can mix a bit of business into the season’s festivities.

MAKE NETWORKING A PRIORITY

Many managers have a bit of breathing room around the holidays if their job doesn’t require significant year-end activity. Their phones ring less often, they receive fewer emails and they’re in fewer meetings since many colleagues and customers take time off.

Take advantage of this opportunity to significantly ramp up your networking. Identify contacts in your target employers. Reach out to them and ask to meet over a cup of coffee. They’re more likely to take the meeting when things are quiet. This is an outstanding opportunity to make more connections in a short period of time. Use the opportunity to make key connections at the companies you’re most interested in.

Set networking goals for yourself each week, and hold yourself accountable. Find alumni or LinkedIn connections at your target companies and schedule yourself a series of networking discussions over the holiday months.

CONSIDER LOW-HANGING FRUIT

Not everyone enjoys networking, but it’s critical to career success. Take advantage of the many social events during the holidays to network in a friendly and safe environment.

The holidays bring low-hanging fruit: family gatherings, celebrations with friends, social events with professional associations and even the office holiday party. With little effort, you can meet a large number of interesting people over the holidays. Be very clear with family and friends about what you’re looking for and what companies you’re most interested in; they may have valuable connections they can introduce you to. Simply ask new contacts what they do, and it will often spark an interesting conversation. You can always ask to follow up for more details.

PREPARE FOR OPPORTUNITIES

The key advantage of all this year-end networking is that employers often have new positions approved with the start of the new year. Perhaps the person you met with will have a need and will remember the positive impression you made. Maybe the position is in another part of the organization, but your contact can forward your resume with a note of recommendation. Or there’s a chance you’ll even be given a heads-up about a position that will be opening soon.

While the formal hiring process may slow down a bit with key players on vacation, it’s a critical time to move your search forward with some strategic networking.

So, what are some do’s and don’ts for networking during the holiday season?

HOLIDAY NETWORKING DOS

• Be focused and strategic. Target the companies you’re most interested in and seek contacts in those organizations, particularly people in positions you can learn from.
• Set goals. Identify a target and monitor your progress for a set number of networking meetings each week or month.
• Be well-prepared. Research the company and the individual in advance. Have questions prepared.
• Keep the conversation going. Ask open-ended questions to gather more information.
• Be an active, engaged listener. Listen carefully to the advice and information the person is sharing, and take notes as appropriate.
• Prepare to share. Think about your personal elevator pitch.
• Follow-up is key. Ask who else they think you should speak to and if they would refer you, as well as if they have any professional associations they’d recommend.
• Add value for the other person. Find a way to assist them with information or a connection to keep the relationship mutual.
• Always send a thank you note. It can make a lasting impression.
• Stay in touch periodically. A holiday card with a personal note or even a New Year’s card would be a nice touch.

HOLIDAY NETWORKING DON’TS

• Don’t ask for a job. This is about building a relationship, not asking a favor.
• Don’t do all the talking. Do more listening than speaking; you want to learn about the company and the functional area of interest.
• Don’t be arrogant or disrespectful. This should go without saying!
• Don’t stalk the person. If they don’t respond after three attempts, take them off your list.
• Don’t monopolize their time. Steer clear of taking more time than specified without asking if they can spare a few more minutes.
• Don’t waste their time. If it’s something you could have learned on their website, don’t ask.
• Don’t over-imbibe at events. Stay focused on the networking. Eat prior to attending the event so you won’t be starving. Don’t try to balance both food and drink; always have your right hand available to shake hands. Never indulge in more than one drink. Keep your wits about you and put your best foot forward.

Let’s say you’ve stepped out of your comfort zone and made some great connections over the holidays. Now, how can you capitalize on these new relationships and keep them going once the holidays are over? Here are a few final tips for keeping your momentum with the job search as you enter the new year:

•  When you see a position of interest at a target company after the first of the year, reach out to your contact.
• Use your contacts to gather insider information about the position and the team.
• Ask your contact to share your resume with the hiring manager — get in the short pile the manager will review instead of the mountain of online resumes.
• Follow up with relevant information or a new contact for your connection to continue to add value.
• Keep your contact posted on your progress.

With a little common sense and a bit of perseverance, you can make this holiday season a memorable one when it comes to advancing your career. Network the right way, and you just may set yourself up for success come January 1st!

Hello Majors,

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving as you take a break from classes. It has been a pleasure serving our majors back on the grounds this semester, and I've been grateful for the opportunity to be here in-person with all of you.

Take some time after your Tgiving meal to think about how you'd like to spend your Winter Break. Just a little research now will pay dividends later. Here is a timeline of activities for our majors and some resources you may want to look at before your finals begin.

Planning for Winter Break. It will take no more than 10 minutes of your time to review the links below. In addition to JTerm classes, you may gain knowledge and experience through micro-internships and skill-building courses. Think about winter break as an opportunity to build your skills and experience through projects, work, online courses, or case competitions. Check out Coursera for short classes on dozens of business subjects and technical skills. Pick a short-term project posted by our awesome alumni through the Virginia Alumni Mentor network here. Real short-term projects have included:

1. Research, analyze, and create reports of high net worth donors for equity programs
2. Literature review for a gamification project
3. Waste and Social Equity Mapping Project for a NYC group
4. Design and Create Marketing Materials for a UVA Scholarship

Try out a micro-internship through ParkerDewey, (often paid) which is a hub for short-term experiences. Case competitions offer experience, contacts, and often a monetary reward. Check them out in Handshake and through MindSumo for an ever-changing array of opportunities.

Another route for winter break experience is to apply for seasonal/holiday work with an employer to get your foot in the door. Then, apply for full-time work once you are in the system and have a track record of solid performance. The ECO subscribes to flexjobs.com for our majors, which offers a wide array of flexible, remote, and part-time jobs across industries. Let me know if you'd like to use the subscription. And here are more! (Not all jobs relate to our majors' interests or skills.)

The ECO will be closed 11/18-11/28 for Thanksgiving. Appointments resume 12/1. You may sign up on Handshake now.

Best wishes!

The ECO hosted 4 UVA alumni back to grounds for the 2024 Public Policy and Service Career Panel, moderated by Economics professor Lee Lockwood. In the panel, alumni shared with current undergraduate students how they entered the industry, what their day-to-day looks like, and answered students' questions! Directly following the panel, the ECO hosted a luncheon for students, alumni, and faculty to enjoy. 

Is it possible to have a Tech career with a Liberal arts degree? Yes it is!

Location: Monroe Hall, 120

Register for the panel here:

https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1574464

Register for the Luncheon here:

https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1614185

The Department of Economics welcomes back esteemed alumni with diverse backgrounds in international commerce, development, finance, and more. This career panel will be moderated by Helen Hwang, a distinguished Economics BA and Foreign Affairs MA graduate who, recently retired from the U.S. Department of Commerce.

During her career as a diplomat, Ms. Hwang focused on international trade and investment, working both at Commerce Department headquarters and in the Commercial Sections of U.S. Embassies and Consulates in Seoul (twice), London, Taipei, and Osaka-Kobe.

We hope you will join us to gain insights from, and connect with, our distinguished alumni. 

"Tough interview questions are supposed to challenge job candidates and make them think on their feet.

This could make the typical job interview "the most harrowing forty-five minutes of your life," writes Vicky Oliver in her book "301 Smart Answers to Tough Interview Questions."

But you can be prepared ahead of time. We've compiled some of the toughest interview questions from Oliver's book — and how to answer them."-Vivian Giang and Alexandra Mondalek

Click here to read the rest of the article.

In June, 2019, Diego Legal-Cañisá presented his paper "Unemployment Insurance with Consumer Bankruptcy" at the North American Meeting of the Econometric Society in Seattle, Washington. The data shows that Chapter 7 bankruptcy rates across counties and Unemployment Insurance (UI) generosity are negatively correlated. This fact suggests that Chapter 7 bankruptcy and UI are substitute programs and raises the question of about the implications of consumer bankruptcy for optimal UI. Diego constructed a model matching main statistics regarding the U.S. unsecured credit and labor markets, including the main features of Chapter 7 Bankruptcy and UI. The model successfully accounts for the negative relationship between bankruptcy rate and UI generosity observed in the data. In the model, for low levels of UI, a more generous UI reduces bankruptcy and allows more debt. As UI keep increasing, employment falls and lenders react by contracting credit supply. From an ex-ante welfare perspective, an increase in the replacement rate from 50% to 60% is welfare reducing when bankruptcy is allowed but would be welfare increasing without bankruptcy. The conference allowed Diego to get valuable feedback on his research and meet with prominent researchers in the field. It also resulted in an invitation to Diego to present his research at the Economics seminar series at VCU School of Business.

"You've heard it before: The best way to land a new job is through networking and making connections. But many people are stumped as to what that means and how it plays out in reality, unless you're lucky enough to have been offered positions throughout your career. What exactly does making those connections look like, and how should you approach it?

Does Your Resume Have a Perfect Sales Pitch?

No matter your field, there's plenty of selling in the job search, with prospective employers as buyers for the products, which are the applicants themselves. As a result, sales skills matter, and they get a lot of attention. But they're mostly thought of as the skills you need to bring to the interview, a place where your performance is akin to a sales pitch. That perspective is far too limited, however, because knowing how to sell is critical to many other parts of the search. Nowhere is that more true than in the way you handle your resume.

That seemingly cut-and-dried piece of paper can actually be a powerful sales tool if you give it half a chance. To do that, though, you have to understand something that the best salespeople, the true pros, know, and you have to be willing to apply that knowledge to your resume. With that, your resume can really do its job. In Martin Scorsese's 2013 film "The Wolf of Wall Street," Leonardo DiCaprio, as stock-promoter Jordan Belfort, issues a similar challenge to his would-be associates in boiler-room shenanigans: "Sell me this pen!"

Editor's note: You can find the clip here. We'd embed it, but it, like much of the rest of the movie, is NSFW. 

The point of the exercise is to show them, despite the high opinions they hold of their own sales skills, that they don't really know how to sell. They make all the rookie mistakes. They talk about how wonderful the pen is. They extol its beauty. They focus on its features. 

We don't need to detail all the ways they get it wrong. We don't even need to elaborate on what it means to get it right, because getting it right comes down to one very simple principle: Start with the customer, not the pen. 

In other words, a good salesman needs to know who's buying what he wants to sell. Features are nice, but they may be completely irrelevant to a given customer. Benefits, as the word itself suggests, are things worth getting, but we don't all seek the same benefits. Before selling benefits, you need to know your prospect and the benefits that actually matter. 

That's the method – call it the "buyer-first approach" – and it's often pressed into service as a good way to manage the job interview for sales and non-sales jobs alike. In that context, it works, and it does so because it's invariably helpful to know your interviewer. 

Without that knowledge, you're liable to rattle off accomplishments and experiences that don't really matter. With it, you can target the things that do, the ones the interviewer sees as important. What is she looking for from an applicant? What is this job about? What qualities suit that job, and, it follows, what qualities should you emphasize? Which of your accomplishments translate well to this new position? Which won't matter at all? What does she want to see, and how can you make her see it in you? 

The buyer-first approach is really just a matter of learning to see things through the other party's eyes, and the interview is the most obvious use case for its implementation. After all, it's the one place you might be called on to sell an actual pen to that actual person on the other side of the desk. It happens in real life, not just in the movies. 

However, if the interview is the obvious place for the buyer-first approach, it's not the only place. In fact, the approach can be profitably applied throughout the job search. 

Take resumes, for example. You may have put a lot of effort into crafting a resume that looks great. It conveys loads of positive information in a beautifully organized and highly readable form, and that's quite an accomplishment. It's as close to perfect as can be, and it should make a wonderful impression on anyone who receives it. The world trembles in anticipation. 

Before you unleash this creature on that trembling world, take a step back. There's every chance that the document you've created, beautiful though it may be, is a document that, first and foremost, looks good to you. That's to be expected, but now it's time to apply the buyer-first approach. It's time to look at it through the eyes of the people who'll be on the receiving end.

First of all, those people are not all the same. Even in the same industry, or in the same field within that industry, different companies and different jobs call for different qualities. Sometimes, those qualities are spelled out in a job posting, and the applicant needs to simply hit the marks explicitly laid out. At other times, you have to dig deeper to find what's on a hiring manager's mind. You have to interpret what the "buyer" wants, using any clues you can find. Again, you need to see things through his eyes.

To complicate matters, it may be that no human eyes are involved at all. Then, it's not a hiring manager you need to impress. Instead, it's an algorithm, an automated system that scans your resume for the right keywords. Without those keywords, no hiring manager will ever know how good you could have been. You can still use the buyer-first approach here by looking through the system's eyes and giving it the keywords it wants to find. 

There's a catch, of course, to adopting the buyer-first approach, but it's a catch worth tolerating if you want your resume to have maximum impact. 

Simply put, the catch is that there's more work to do. You have to tailor your resume to the needs of a particular employer. You have to highlight the achievements that really seem to matter to this company. You have to spell out the skills that matter in this specific job. You may have to emphasize experience or education in slightly different ways. In essence, you sell the pen differently to different buyers, and that means revising the resume you worked so hard to perfect. 

In the end, though, it's worth it. When you're in the job market, you're the pen, and putting extra effort into your sales pitch will seem like a small price to have paid if it helped you make this one very big sale.

Paul Freiberger is President of Shimmering Resumes and author of When Can You Start? Ace the Job Interview and Get Hired. For career help and resume writing and LinkedIn profiles, contact him at Paul@ShimmeringResumes.com.

Article written by Caroline Castrillon from Forbes.

Chances are you’ve come across books or articles describing the process of “finding” yourself. But a more accurate description is that we as humans “create” ourselves—including our careers. A career you love isn’t waiting to be discovered under a rock or deep in a wooded forest. The process is much more intentional. It requires courage, self-knowledge, and a willingness to disassociate yourself from the outcome. These are just a few insights that emerged following my conversation with Sharon Price John, President and CEO of Build-A-Bear Workshop and author of Stories & Heart.

One thing is certain; John doesn't run from adversity. She embraces it. But that’s not all that makes her an exceptional leader. In Stories & Heart, John uses her gift of storytelling to share personal experiences that provide a roadmap for anyone who wants to create a life and career they love. Here are just a few of the biggest takeaways.

Clarify your goals

Life is a journey; to create a career you love, you need to know where you’re going. That means identifying your goals. Once you’ve pinpointed them, John suggests writing them down and visualizing them as if they are already a part of your life. There is something powerful about writing down your goals, and there is research to back it up. Dr. Gail Matthews, a psychology professor at Dominican University in California, conducted a study on goal setting and found that participants were 42% more likely to achieve their goals just by writing them down. Finally, you must have the "gumption" to stick with your goals. Gumption, according to John, "is a mix of drive, passion, and creativity—not just sheer will.”

Define your values

Ultimately, people are happier when their value system aligns with their job or career. So to create a career you love, think about what is most important to you. These values could range from flexibility to a corporate environment that embraces teamwork and transparency. John adds, “by clarifying who you are deep down and the type of person you aspire to become, you will more easily recognize what really matters to you—so future decisions can be made more quickly with greater clarity, less stress, more conviction, and little regret.”

Take action

In the book, John explains why people don't take action. They either don't really believe achieving their goal is possible, or they are afraid of failure. One approach is to ask yourself, “What’s the worst that could happen?” Another tactic is to relabel the fear as something more positive, like excitement. Relabeling the feeling makes it much easier to manage. At that point, you can work on breaking your bigger goal down into smaller, more manageable steps.

Embrace planned serendipity

While learning to set and achieve goals is part of creating a career you love, it’s not usually a straight path. In fact, a few unexpected turns may be just what you need to reach your destination—a concept called planned serendipity. Planned serendipity is the idea of putting yourself in unfamiliar situations to be exposed to previously unknown people and experiences. It could be as simple as breaking your routine by taking a new route to work or sitting at a different table in the cafeteria. By altering your surroundings, you are opening yourself up to new ways of thinking. John points out, “I have found in my life that if I opened my mind to possibilities and then put myself in unfamiliar environments, it is a mechanism for awakening yourself to ideas.”

Redefine failure

Failure isn't a deterrent to success; it is part of being successful. It is much more empowering to think of failure as a stepping stone rather than an undesirable event. By labeling it as a learning experience, you turn failure into something positive. “The key to overcoming failure is to entirely redefine the concept, writes John. “When you can do this, you can also redefine your life.”

Trust your instincts

Albert Einstein once said, “the intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” When creating a career you love, you’ll want to gather as much data as possible and then balance that data with intuition. Just remember that intuition doesn’t usually present itself as a sudden “aha” moment in the form of a thunderbolt. As John points out, “instincts often do not yell and scream. They whisper. If your world, your mind, your life is too loud, they will be drowned out. You have to learn to be quiet and listen to them first.”

In the end, John reminds us that the whole point of creating a career you love is to find fulfillment. “Humans are meant to do something with their lives, she says. “That something is meant to create value, and that value is meant to help fulfill you. That's the great circle of it all."

These are the ECO's comments written by Jen Jones, Director, Edwin T. Burton Economics Career Office

Yes, this is about right. I take about 30 seconds for a first pass at a resume, before screening the finer details. If I'm familiar with an employer and job description, my thorough review (before comments to the student) will be about 2 minutes, and if I'm unfamiliar with the employer/job description my review may take 3-4 minutes as I toggle between the job posting and the employer. I use the analogy of selling a house and staging a home.  The exterior of the house and the property is curb appeal and most recruiters are seeking curb appeal before they get deeper. So, the top 1/3 of the resume needs to draw attention for super competitive industries/employers. The curb appeal definitely consists of key words from the job posting, relevant experience/skills, industry/job function industry language, and demonstrating excellence. (For students the latter includes GPA, test scores, honors awards, and leadership.) Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) make this process trickier because we don't know the algorithms that are used, but keywords remain a best practice.

Forget the Professional Statement

Yes, especially for students. It's unnecessary and squanders the most valuable real estate. I discourage using a profile or objective statement entirely, even in cases when a student is pivoting away from their major in their job search. The college resume is already structured to highlight relevant experience that diverges from one's major using Relevant Coursework as a category for example, and others. I could be persuaded against this, but likely this would be only for a non-traditional student, i.e. for someone who had military service or worked for several years before pursuing their undergraduate degree.

As for replacing the professional statement with a list of skills - not for everyone. For our students, Education should be listed first to be clear that they are seeking entry-level employment. If a student has worked full-time before attending college or has military service experience, this will come in their experience section, or in a skills section immediately after their education. This is where I've seen and encouraged the most significant formatting changes in recent years - including the Skills section before Experience. When a student has very strong, unusual, or relevant technical skills it may be worthwhile including those in the top 1/3 of the resume rather than lower.

Don't Be a Jack of All Trades

I agree on principle, but for students applying for their first internship or micro-internship, a thematic resume may be more difficult to create. Recruiters understand this. But, often, we can find a thread of interest to convey on the resume. By fourth-year students should be more successful in customizing their resumes for a couple of different job functions or industries/conveying their experience with a clear theme that is relevant to the job at hand. If not, that's an important conversation to have with a career advisor.

Use Numbers

Yes, Yes, Yes! I spend a good deal of time quantifying students' accomplishments with them. Think beyond responsibilities and include results and achievements. With finance-related roles or summer internships that led to easily recognizable quantifiable outcomes, this is easy. But this is more challenging for second and third-years especially, who are coming from less professional roles. Simply changing their ice cream shop experience from "served customers ice cream" to "served 75 customers an hour and upsold toppings by ~50% increasing nightly revenue by 30%" reveals a lot of info about the pace, volume, understanding of profit and the market, and likely can lead to great conversation about profitability and running a business.

Make Your LinkedIn Profile the Priority

I disagree with this, but only for students. For more experienced job-seekers this makes sense, and for recently-graduated students. If students are applying for their jobs through LinkedIn, then their profile ought to be solid and descriptive. I also do not like the "Open to Work" tag because I'm not sure that the signal is perceived the same by everyone. We have a wonderful AI tool in Handshake called Aspire, which helps students build a great LinkedIn profile. 

I do recommend that every job-seeking/graduate school-seeking student should have a LinkedIn account to conduct research and network. 

"It’s terrifying to know that the person you’re speaking to is weighing your every word—and could hold the power to change your future. This is why interviews can be so stressful, and why sometimes it can be hard not to blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. No matter how long you prep for the interview, it’s actual practice that gets one better at interviewing. And while there are many things you should say in a job interview, it can be harder to focus on the things not to say. We’ve got the seven things to steer clear of mentioning if you really want that job." -Kristina Rudic

Click here to read the rest of the article 

Graduate students Tyler Wake and Mrithyunjayan (MJ) Nilayamgode attended the Midwest Macro Conference at Utah State University in Logan, Utah on May 20 and 21, 2022. They presented original research co-authored with their advisor Ana Fostel, “Collateral Expansion: Pricing Spillovers from Financial Innovation,” and attended a variety of talks, including two keynote speeches from Ayşegül Şahin and Tom Sargent. Other UVA Economics PhD graduates in attendance included Joaquin Saldain (Bank of Canada) and Ia Vardishvili (Auburn University).The Midwest Macroeconomics Conference began meeting in 1994 and is one of the longest- running dedicated macroeconomics conferences in the United States. Its next meeting will be in Fall 2022 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

"Receiving an invitation for a job interview can be an exciting time – especially after you’ve been job-searching for a while.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to kill off all your chances of getting a job by saying just a few wrong words during your job interview.

To make sure your job interview leads to the next round or a job offer, here’s a list of words which you should aim to avoid."-Steven McConnell

Click here to read the rest of the article

How Oracle plans to recruit for its East Bank campus, the No. 1 trait that makes someone an attractive hire

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By Adam Sichko  –  Senior Reporter, Nashville Business Journal

Aug 19, 2021, 1:53pm EDT

Steve Miranda wants to hire smart people to work with him at Oracle Corp.

Obvious, right? But Miranda's explanation of what he means by that is one of several insights into how Oracle will aim to staff its $1.2 billion waterfront tech campus coming to Nashville, which could have 8,500 jobs or more within a decade.

Miranda, speaking downtown at the annual meeting of the Greater Nashville Technology Council, opened a window into Oracle's recruiting strategy while revealing that software coding skills aren't necessarily his most-desired characteristic of a successful hire or employee.

"There's this perception of, 'We need to learn about databases and learn about Java and things that Oracle traditionally uses.' Not from my perspective, actually. I just want smart people, because at the rate of change that we see in technology … a given skill set, in our world, doesn’t last very long," said Miranda, executive vice president of Oracle Applications product development and a direct report to co-founder Larry Ellison.

"You can teach them something right now, some programming language, and in three years or four years — in a short period of time — it's probably going to be obsolete," Miranda said. "We’re looking for more people who are quick to adapt … willing to learn new things and willing to adapt and willing to change quickly."

ADAM SICHKO

When asked about his advice for people looking to make a career change and get into technology, Miranda replied: "I wouldn't feel that intimidated. You've got to know that for everybody in the industry, most of the things we're working on are kind of new — so you're not that far off."

Recruiting, early and often

The area's college campuses will be fertile ground for Oracle's recruiters. Miranda said the company already is pursuing partnerships with Tennessee State University and Vanderbilt University, among others.

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Oracle won't wait until students are upperclassmen. Oracle prefers to offer summer internships following a student's freshman year or their sophomore year. At the end of that first summer, Oracle likes to offer for an internship in the following summer on the spot.

"As they come into their senior year, if they like us and we like them, we're issuing full-time job offers for the subsequent year, before they graduate," Miranda said. "The reason we're doing that is, again, there's this battle for talent. It's a good way for us to find talent early."

The jobs available at Oracle's Nashville campus will represent the spread of opportunities within the company, Miranda said, from software developers and sales to human resources and finance. Internally, employees are able to shift from consulting to development to sales.

The pandemic-induced shift to remote work likely will enhance the variety of jobs available in Nashville.

"Now, there are no limits to what job can be done in what area, and I think the last 18 months have shown us all that," Miranda said. "The opportunities are broad. … Oracle's a big place."

Oracle also will be importing people to Nashville to take some of its jobs, whether they're new recruits or existing employees wanting to transfer. Miranda said he's seen entire teams decide to move to Oracle's Austin campus, now designated as its corporate headquarters, for work-life balance or because it puts them closer to family.

"We've already gotten demand from existing staff: 'When is the [Nashville] building going to open and when can we move?' " he said.

 https://www.bizjournals.com/nashville/news/2021/08/19/oracle-recruiting-...

"The deal is the toast of the season globally. But do you know who advised Facebook? The logical answers would be Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS, and DeutscheBank, etc. Surprisingly, it’s a firm called Allen & Company." -Avadhut Nigudkar

Click here to read the rest of the article

Article written by Marlo Lyons for Harvard Business Review.

Recent layoffs aren’t just the result of an uncertain economy. They’re also the result of jobs changing more quickly than employees can upskill to meet business needs. With rapid changes in technology, including digitization and automation, the World Economic Forum projects that 50% of all jobs will require a change in skillsets by 2027. Therefore, it’s critical to own your upskilling to ensure you’ll be able to adapt to dynamic business needs. Without continuously growing your skills, you could become obsolete quicker than you realize.

There are plenty of ways to educate yourself and upskill without going back for a traditional undergraduate or graduate degree. Here are five ways to upskill without going back to school:

Certifications

Many careers offer certifications to prove you have both a baseline understanding of what’s required in a job or a mastery of best practices in a certain field. For example, the Project Management Institute is globally recognized for its courses and PMP certification for project managers. Product School offers product management courses and certifications. SHRM and HRCI offer courses and exams to earn HR certifications. There are dozens of certifications for other jobs as well, such as business analytics, business processes, inbound marketing, and leadership.

Certifications show you have knowledge and capabilities in a certain field, which make them especially important if you’re transitioning careers and don’t have a lot of work experience in the new field. For example, when I was transitioning to my first human resources job, I had some transferrable skills that could be considered HR experience, but I had never worked in a traditional HR function. To prove I had the knowledge and understood the language of HR, I studied and passed the SPHR and GPRH certification exams. Having those certifications as part of my credentials helped me break through any hiring manager and recruiter assumptions that I had no HR skills and capabilities.

Online Learning Courses

There’s a wealth of learning platforms out there. LinkedIn Learning is one of the most recognized, but there are many others with courses that can take your functional and leadership skills to the next level. Coursera, edX, Open Culture, and Khan Academy are just a few online resources that offer free courses. You’ll also find free courses from some of the top schools in the United States, including MIT, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford.

While taking individual classes may not seem comparable to a four-year degree, showing you’re continuously learning and growing your skills is an attractive quality in an employee. The best way to showcase your relevant coursework is to add a “Continuous Learning” or “Continuous Education” section to your resume after your formal education.

Internships, Rotations, and Volunteering

Most internships, even paid ones, require that you be attending school. To qualify for many internships, you can register for a class at a local community college that would provide valuable knowledge in your field or the one you want to move into.

If you already have a full-time job, consider whether your boss would allow for a rotation in another area of the organization. When one of my employees was in night MBA school, she found her passion: data science. She was frustrated that she couldn’t intern like her classmates because was working in her current job to support her family. While I gave her as many analytics projects as I could muster, it still wasn’t true data-science experience. So, I offered that if she could secure an internship in our company’s data science department, I would cover her work for six weeks. She received an internship offer and on the day she went upstairs, I told her, “Don’t come back. There are four openings in that department, and I expect you to prove you deserve one of them.” She not only interned for that department, she landed a full-time job there immediately at the end of her internship.

This type of arrangement isn’t going to be feasible for every boss or company. Therefore, you may have to seek training on your own time. For example, if you want to move into accounting, consider joining a school board or nonprofit board, volunteering at your child’s school as treasurer, or setting up your own small company and taking on clients separate from your day job. Another way to gain experience is to find a small business or family friend who can provide you an opportunity to help with one of their work projects, which will allow you to gain practical skills in areas such as analytics, customer acquisition, social media, or marketing. Being paid is not a barometer for gaining new or higher-level skills when those skills allow you to contribute more toward advancing a company’s goals.

Stretch Assignments

If you have the bandwidth, ask for work from another department at your organization. You’ll not only bring value to the company, you’ll also enhance your visibility. Stretch assignments teach you new or higher-level skills while also challenging you to demonstrate those skills to the people who gave you the opportunity. So even if the project itself isn’t highly visible, at least one person will know what you can achieve.

Importantly, this type of stretch assignment cannot interfere with your day job. And while you may be raising your eyebrow at doing extra work on the side, remember that the goal is to continue to uplevel your skills so you can be considered for the next opportunity — or be so valuable that the company can’t imagine functioning without you.

Mentorship

Mentors can provide so much more than a listening ear. The right mentor outside of your direct leadership or function will provide new perspectives on your work and how to uplevel your skills and challenge you to think differently.

When we’re heads down in our work, we don’t always realize the larger objective of assignments. If you find a mentor who is a senior leader in your organization, they’ll have deeper knowledge of the company’s growth trajectory and what capabilities will be needed as the company grows or shifts strategy. Even if your mentor isn’t sure of what hard skills are needed, mastering “soft” skills like cross-functional communication, complex problem-solving, stakeholder alignment, and inclusive leadership is what advances employees to higher levels. Having different perspectives on issues improves your thought leadership, which is critical in all jobs and will make you a viable candidate for future opportunities.

. . .

Whether you want to change jobs or prepare for the next-level role, the most important thing to know about upskilling is that every employee needs to be doing it all the time. Jobs are changing as business demands change, and employees are expected to prove their value with increasingly higher expectations. Don’t be caught behind when you can uplevel your skills to move ahead.

Conversations with Employers: CIA and World Bank

While many of you have been attending employer information sessions and meeting up with alumni for informational interviews, I've had some great conversations with employers that want to hire our majors. At the bottom of this blog, I've included some questions I ask when meeting with employers to learn about their internship and full-time opportunities. I've been thinking about how to get the information that I gather to you, and then it struck me that I could reach you all right here on our blog. If we see some traffic to this blog page, I'll use this method again to convey notes to you.  

Below I've included a few notes about both employers and how you may follow up for more information. These notes are specifically based on recruiting economics majors. The CIA is recruiting other majors for other positions, and I encourage you to check out their website for more technical and engineering opportunities.

1 - CIA - they are recruiting for financial analysts and political analysts. They do hire economic analysts but don't have an active posting right now. US citizenship is required. Second languages are useful but not required. There is great opportunity for promotion, advancement, and diversity of opportunity. 
These jobs require a security clearance, which can take some time to receive so connecting with the recruiter about interest early is helpful. I can connect you directly with the UVA recruiter. Send me an email to get started. 

As a Political Analyst at the CIA, you’ll support policymakers by producing and delivering written and oral assessments of the domestic politics, foreign policy, stability, and social issues of foreign governments and entities. Analysts examine actors’ goals and motivations, culture, values, history, society, decision-making processes, and ideologies in the context of how those elements affect U.S. interests and national security.

As a Finance Resource Officer Undergraduate Intern for the CIA, you will work with an accomplished and diverse team, providing a full range of financial support for mission requirements. Finance Resource Officers serve as one of the most trusted and financially accountable officers within the Agency and are responsible for the analysis and processing of financial transactions to ensure the financial integrity of the Agency’s funds. (taken from cia.gov)

Opportunities exist for foreign and domestic travel, language training, and analytic tradecraft and management training. You will have an opportunity to develop deep substantive expertise and participate in broadening assignments with other offices in the Agency and across the U.S. Government. (taken from cia.gov/careers) 

The paid time off sounds very generous. Other perks are continuous training and career development along with federal retirement and insurance.

To speak with their recruiter now, please contact me and I'll connect you.

Visit them:
9/8 on Grounds at the Finance Careers Night
9/22 at Intelligence and Security Networking Night

2 - World Bank

I spoke with economist Collette Wheeler, who works on the biannual Global Economic Prospects report. The World Bank has Short Term Consultant (STC) opportunities for imminent/recent graduates, who are interested in macro-economics. Topics researched and reported on include: Macroeconomics and Economic Growth, International Trade and Economics, Financial Sector Development. 

Taken from the January 2021 report: "The world economy is experiencing a very strong but uneven recovery, with many emerging market and developing economies facing obstacles to vaccination. The global outlook remains uncertain, with major risks around the path of the pandemic and the possibility of financial stress amid large debt loads. Policy makers face a difficult balancing act as they seek to nurture the recovery while safeguarding price stability and fiscal sustainability. A comprehensive set of policies will be required to promote a strong recovery that mitigates inequality and enhances environmental sustainability, ultimately putting economies on a path of green, resilient, and inclusive development. Prominently among the necessary policies are efforts to lower trade costs so that trade can once again become a robust engine of growth. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Global Economic Prospects. The Global Economic Prospects is a World Bank Group Flagship Report that examines global economic developments and prospects, with a special focus on emerging market and developing economies." 

STCs may work for 150 days of the year and contracts may be renewed in subsequent years. These STC roles often lead to full-time employment with the bank either in the analyst track or the economist track. As I understood, the economist track requires stronger writing skills. The work involves data scraping and cleaning information from more than 160 countries in order for the bank to write its biannual reports. STCs will gather data from databases such as Bloomberg and create visualizations of their data using Excel, Matlab, and STATA. Familiarity with any of these tools will be helpful in the recruitment process. Ms. Wheeler works on Chapters 1 and 2 of the report. The research covers more than 200 commodities. The majority of Research Assistants at the WB, began as STCs, which means the STC job opens the door for future career prospects.

The application involves submitting a cover letter and resume. Then you may be contacted for a screening call, an Excel test, and a behavioral interview.  You may be asked macro-based questions in an interview and likely will be interviewed by multiple staff and scholars.

If these topics sound interesting to you, I encourage you to reach out to Collette Wheeler for an introductory call. Please contact me to connect with Ms. Wheeler.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Some Questions I Ask Employers
Often I conduct research before my employer meetings and may have answers to some of the questions below, in which case I either don't ask the question, or I confirm through the conversation.

• What industry is your organization in and who are its clients?
• Who are the competitors in this space?
• What internship and entry-level positions are available now/typically?
• What skills and knowledge are you seeking?
• What makes a competitive candidate? (similar to the question above)
• Are there other backgrounds you are seeking for your hiring needs? 
• Talk about diversity initiatives you have in place for recruiting and inside the organization.
• Are there mentorship opportunities for new employees?
• What are the steps of the interview process?
• How many students are you hiring?
• At what other schools do you recruit and where do you see your best applicants and why? (Less important now with virtual recruiting)
• How have our majors compared in the past to other UVA students/students at other schools?
• What is the career trajectory?
• What do employees typically do when they leave/why do they leave?
• What is the compensation?
• Who are the UVA alumni you work with at the organization (if any)?
• How would you like to be involved with the department?
• What kind of skill-building programs do you have in place to potentially share with our students?
• How has Covid-19 affected your hiring/the work environment/on-boarding/start-dates?
   

When it comes to writing or updating your resume, you know you should include your relevant work history, education, and technical skills.

But what about your volunteer experience? Will hiring managers even care about the time you spent building homes in Central America or organizing that charity walk? 

I’ll make this one easy for you: yes!

You should absolutely include volunteer experience on your resume. It’ll help you 

BY ALISON DOYLE

Updated on November 09, 2021

In today's job market, it's not uncommon to submit applications for many positions. That involves lots of time, and it's a lot to keep track of. You don't want to squander those precious hours by missing important application deadlines, garbling companies and positions, confusing interview times, or forgetting to follow up.  

Accordingly, properly organizing and managing your job search is just as important as identifying job opportunities and submitting your application.

Here are ten ways to get organized, keep track of your job applications, and stay on top of the job search process.

Create a Job Application Spreadsheet

If you're familiar with Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, or a similar program, creating a spreadsheet is a simple and effective way to keep track of your job applications.

You can use a spreadsheet to keep track of which companies you applied to, when you submitted your application, what materials you submitted, and other important factors in the application process.

It doesn't have to be fancy, and it's up to you how detailed you want to get. But, here are the key columns to include:

• Company Name - The name of the organization you're applying to.
• Contact - Your point of contact at the company; probably who you addressed your cover letter to, such as a Director of Human Resources or Office Manager.
• Email - The email of your point of contact, or, if preferred, a phone number.
• Date Applied - When you submitted your application.
• Application Summary - What you submitted: a cover letter, resume, and any additional materials, like a portfolio or reference list.
• Interview - When your interview is scheduled.
• Follow-Up - Did you send a thank you email or letter? If so, indicate here.
• Status - If you were rejected, offered the job, asked in for a second interview, etc.

Create a Job Application Table in Word

If Excel isn't quite your cup of tea, don't fret. You can create a simple table in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, or a similar word processor.

Use your word processing program to create a table to keep track of important information, dates, and deadlines relevant to your job search.

Just insert a table and choose the number of columns based on how many categories you want to keep track of  (company name, contact information, date applied, and so on) and the number of rows relative to how many positions you're applying for.

In addition to the basic categories listed above, if you're feeling especially ambitious, here are some other points you might want to include:

• Application deadline
• Potential start date
• Where you found the job listing
• Company information, like its location, number of employees, size, recent developments, etc.
• Names and contact information of any network connections at the company
• Estimated likelihood of getting the job
• Your relative preference for the position compared to other jobs

Use Google Drive and Calendar

If you like to stay organized online, Google is a great way to go. If you have a Gmail account, you can use Google Drive, through which you can create, save, and export spreadsheets, in addition to written documents, like your cover letter and resume. You can also link up with Google calendar to make sure you stay on top of important dates. 

Set Up Job Alerts

Most job sites have job alert systems that notify you when there are new job openings that match your interests. Once you sign up, the system will send you job listings via email so you can check for job openings in your field without having to mine through every job search engine.

When you decide to apply for one of the job listings you receive, you’ll be able to use the information in the message as a starting point for keeping track of your application.

Use a Job Search Organizer Website

There are a variety of websites that offer free or reasonably priced job search management tools that are specifically designed for job hunters who need assistance in managing their applications.

For example, JibberJobber is perhaps the most well-known option​ and is an excellent resource for staying organized.

While Huntr provides a centralized place to organize your job search. It helps you keep track of opportunities, tasks, notes, events, and contacts relevant to your search. The chrome extension makes it easy to save jobs from any job search site in one click, and the mobile application allows you to track your search on the go.

Use Your Favorite Job Search Site

Do some digging in your favorite job search site - you'll probably find a built-in way to keep track of potential job interests and your submitted applications.

Many job search sites like Monster, CareerBuilder, and LinkedIn offer built-in tools to keep track of your applications. Although the downfall to using a site-specific method is that you may have to keep track of various lists on different sites, if you have a favorite job search site you're sticking to, it's not a bad option.

Use an App

If you spend more time on your phone or tablet than you do on your computer, consider using a mobile app to organize your job search. Download a mobile app (or two) to organize your job search on your smart phone or tablet.

Here's a list of some of the best job search management apps available for smartphones and tablets.

Use Your Smartphone

For a do-it-yourself method of organization, consider using your smartphone" as is" - for example, use your notes or download a spreadsheet app and keep track of your information there. You can also use alarms, alerts, and your calendar to stay on top of impending deadlines, interviews, and other important dates and times.

Use a Notebook

If you're a pen-in-hand type who likes to keep it old school, buy a notebook and dedicate it to your job search. Keeping track the old-fashioned way, still works well for many people.

Sometimes, technology can be cumbersome, so if you want a more tangible method of organizing your job search, use a notebook. In addition to keeping track of your applications, you can also use it to jot down a cover letter draft, take notes during interviews, and record anything else that comes up while you're looking for jobs, networking, and interviewing.

Simplify Your Search

Clearly, there are plenty of ways to keep track of your job search, but there are also ways to cut down on the mental overhead to begin with. Making an effort to simplify your job search will pay off.

Focus on quality, not quantity: only apply to legitimate positions that you're qualified for, and make each application count, personalizing each cover letter and updating and proofreading your resume.​

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/organize-your-job-search-2060710

A Must-Read for Job Seekers from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE)

Article written by Deborah Acosta for The Wall Street Journal

You have put time and effort into your job application, perhaps polishing up your résumé and crafting a well-constructed cover letter, earning you a coveted interview. Now is your chance to show why you are a great candidate and how you would fit in with your potential team. If you do your homework, you will be prepared for anything the interviewer throws at you.

1. Study the job description.

Get into the right mind-set by reminding yourself what the job entails and reading the employer’s mission statement, if it has one. Make a list of reasons why this job may be the right fit for your career journey, such as the skills, experience and network you would gain. Focusing on how this job will help you achieve your career goals is a good way to get excited about the role—even if it is not your dream job. This will help you to express why you want the job and to convey enthusiasm during the interview. 

Think about what makes you the best candidate for this job. Look at your résumé, and pick out which parts of it align with the job requirements. Write down examples of how you tackled particular projects or problems in your previous experience at work, school or elsewhere in your life that demonstrate you have the skills the employer is looking for. As you work through the job description and mission statement, make a list of your proudest accomplishments that could be used as examples. If you are suffering from imposter syndrome, this can also help you recognize why you are the right person for the job. 

2. Prepare to address gaps in your background.

Make a list of anything in your background or résumé that makes you feel nervous and prepare explanations for gaps you may have in your experience. “If there’s something that freaks you out, sit down and…think about how you’re going to present it in the best possible way,” says Pamela Skillings, chief executive of BigInterview.com, an interview training website. 

If there is a gap of time in your résumé when you weren’t employed, think about what you gained during that time. Perhaps you learned important life skills or experienced personal growth, which you can present as assets. For example:

• If you were traveling, you could talk about what you learned from exploring new cultures, and how you would bring those insights into your job. 
• If you were caring for a child or a loved one, you could discuss how the experience shaped you and gave you fresh perspectives.

Prepare to address any gaps in your knowledge or experience. If the job description mentions anything that you are not fully familiar with, read up on the subject until you are comfortable discussing it at length. If there are requirements in the job description you don’t have direct professional experience with, think about what you have done at work or elsewhere in your life that demonstrates you have the skills required. If a job requires previous management experience and you have never been a manager in title, perhaps you have led a project, mentored and trained colleagues or filled in for your boss while they were away.  

If, after carefully considering your work experience, you still have a gap you can’t fill, acknowledge it and prepare to talk about how you would learn this skill on the job.

“Redirect and reframe. Bring up some of the positives that will ease any concerns,” Ms. Skillings says. 

3. Practice your interview question responses ahead of time. 

Study some of the top interview questions that may be asked of you.

“Practicing is key,” Ms. Skillings says. “A lot of smart people don’t do it because it feels awkward, but it makes such a huge difference.” Practicing talking about yourself is important at any level of your career. Even senior executives who are “great communicators” sometimes struggle to talk about themselves, she says.

You have already compiled a list of all of the reasons you are a great fit for the role. Now it is time to synthesize and communicate them. If you can’t find someone to practice with, do it in front of a mirror or record a video of yourself. If you don’t like to talk up your own accomplishments, focus on communicating, clearly and efficiently, why your skills and experience meet each requirement of the role. Practicing helps you to identify anything that might distract from the substance of what you have to say. 

Top tip: Observe the way you present yourself. If there is anything you are not fully comfortable with, now is the time to address it. If it is your posture, practice sitting up straight. If you notice a distracting habit, like playing with your hair or fidgeting, be aware of it and try to avoid it. Find an alternative place for your hands, such as on the table. 

Be authentic. A May 2020 study found that people who behave authentically during a job interview do better overall than those who try to cater to an interviewer’s interests and expectations. This is because it takes a lot of mental energy to try to be someone you are not, which ultimately increases anxiety and could ruin your efforts to create a positive, authentic connection with your interviewer.

4. Make your final job interview preparations.

Write down some thoughtful questions, and be prepared to ask them during or at the end of your interview.

Plan how you are going to show up to the interview. Keep your outfit classic, clean and comfortable so the focus remains on what you are saying, not what you are wearing.

To help combat nerves, visualize a successful interview. Many top athletes use this technique before a big game to focus and reaffirm their positive outlook. Some CEOs have also credited the technique with helping them achieve their goals.

5. Keep the conversation going after the interview.

Sending a thank-you email after the interview can set you apart from other candidates. It is also your opportunity to reiterate why you would be a great fit for the role.

If your interviewer agrees and you receive a job offer, first congratulations! Next, pause and consider whether the offer meets your expectations. Do your research, know what is important to you—from salary to vacation time to other benefits—and counter the offer. Use our guide on the do’s and don’ts for a successful negotiation.

Resources

• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success In this book, Carol S. Dweck describes the power of mind-set in unlocking success in work, school and life.
• Biginterview.com This website offers video training and AI-driven virtual interview practice tools. 

What to read next

• How to Be More Productive at Work
• How to Succeed on Your First Day on a New Job
• How to Work From Home Effectively
• How to Improve Your Time Management Skills and Succeed in the Workplace
• How to Create a Work Schedule That Helps You Succeed
• How to Build Positive Relationships at Work
• How to Manage Up at Work
• 10 Performance Review Preparation Tips
• How to Deal With Stress at Work
• How to Prevent and Recover With Job Burnout
• How to Improve Your Work-Life Balance
• How to Have a Successful Side Hustle

Below the ECO is sharing the 10 Best Jobs for Introverts as written by The Muse. Our majors may be particularly interested in numbers 1, 5, 9, and 10. But they are all worth a glance!

Not every job is the right fit for every person—so it makes sense that you’d be looking to find a job and career path that feels well-suited to your personality.

While some folks might thrive in a role where they’re interacting with people all day, for others—particularly introverts—that might be completely draining.

So if you’re an introvert, you might wonder how to find a job that plays to your strengths, feels true to who you are, and leaves you feeling energized and excited at the end of the day. Rest assured, there are plenty of options.

What, Exactly, Is an Introvert?

Before we jump into the perfect jobs for introverts, let’s take a minute to define what an introvert actually is.

An introvert “gets their energy from solitude,” says Stephanie Thoma, leadership coach and author of Confident Introvert, a professional networking book for introverts. So while an introverted person can definitely hold their own in social situations, the experience can feel exhausting—and after extended periods of social interaction, they typically need alone time to rest and recharge.

One major misconception about introverts is that they’re shy. But that’s not necessarily true. While introverts can be shy (just like anyone can be shy!), introversion is not the same thing as shyness. “Deriving your energy from solitude doesn’t exclude you from feeling confident and comfortable in the presence of others,” Thoma says. “It just means you may need to take more care to preserve and conserve your energy when socializing.”

What Makes Certain Jobs Better for Introverts—and What Should Introverts Look for in a Role?

Because introverts get their energy from solitude, jobs that allow for independent working time are typically a better fit for introverts.

For example, “An introvert may thrive as a CPA, crunching numbers with precision and in-flow, formulaic repetition; a market research analyst who gets to pore over detailed qualitative or quantitative data; or a professor who has gotten to create materials about a specific subject matter to then share with purpose and passion with pupils,” Thoma says. The best jobs for introverts, she says, “have structure and clear expectations with an opportunity for creativity, and allow for focus.”

So introverts should look for jobs where some amount of solo work is built in—allowing them regular opportunities to focus on their own work—rather than roles that require constant engagement with coworkers, clients, or customers.

But pretty much every job requires at least some level of interaction, collaboration, and socializing. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, even if you consider yourself a more introverted person. Again, introverts can still enjoy working with other people and be successful doing it. It does mean, though, that you should also look for a company that prioritizes work-life balance and self-care—and allows you the opportunity to recharge when you need it.

“Self-care is an emerging priority for many companies who know that when employees are able to take walking breaks or lunch away from their computers,” Thoma says, or take care of themselves however they see fit, they “are more likely to thrive—and provide quality work to match. Since introverts may need more downtime outside of meeting rooms, this is an important consideration.”

Are you a proud introvert—and ready to find a job that plays to your strengths? Here are 10 roles to consider, plus salary information from the compensation resource PayScale (just keep in mind that PayScale’s database is updated nightly; the figures below reflect the latest information as of March 2021):

1. 

Software Engineer

Average salary: $86,803

Software engineers are responsible for engineering or developing different types of software (which is why they’re also called software developers). They are problem solvers at heart; they need to identify what problem the user is having—and then design, test, and develop software that solves that problem.

A career as a software engineer could be a great fit for an introvert because a large chunk of the job is writing code, testing, and fixing bugs—all of which involve independent work—though they should also be prepared to collaborate with their teams.

While some companies require a specific degree, many rely on technical interviews to assess candidate coding skills—so if you’ve got the coding chops, you can get your foot in the door as a software engineer.

Find software engineer and software developer jobs on The Muse

2. 

Content Marketing Manager

Average salary: $68,395

Content marketing managers are responsible for the development and execution of a marketing team’s content strategies. Depending on the company, a content marketing manager may oversee one or multiple content verticals, including print, digital, video, social media, and audio.

Content marketing managers may work with a variety of other people, including content strategists, writers, and creators; marketing colleagues; and folks on sales and other teams. Ultimately, their goal is to understand their target audience and drive awareness and engagement with their brands, products, and services. Depending on the size of the company, content marketing managers may also manage other people. But this role could still be a great fit for an introvert because it’s usually pretty evenly split between independent and collaborative work—giving introverts plenty of time to recharge.

While some companies require their content marketing managers to have a degree, many are more interested in candidates with a background in content development and promotion—so if you’re well-versed in all things content, you should be able to get your foot in the door.

Find content marketing manager and other content marketing jobs on The Muse

3. 

Editor

Average salary: $53,313

Editors are responsible for taking a piece of writing from the “just an idea” phase to the “working draft” phase to the “ready for publication” phase. This includes making suggestions to writers on ways the writing could be improved (for example, pointing out sections that are unclear or helping the writer define their voice and tone) as well as correcting any spelling or grammatical errors. While editors may work for newspapers, magazines, digital media companies, or book publishers, they may also be employed by businesses to support their content efforts—editing blog posts, ebooks, website copy, and more.

Editors do partner with writers (and often have to walk them through their edits) and other content or editorial team members to brainstorm and strategize—but the bulk of the actual editing process is a solitary activity, making it an ideal fit for introverts.

In order to succeed as an editor, you need to know the ins and outs of writing, including grammar, structure, style, and narrative. As such, many editors are writers themselves—and most have a degree in journalism, English, communications, or a related field. Editors who work for newspapers, magazines, and digital publications also need a solid grasp of reporting and fact-checking.

Find editor jobs on The Muse

4. 

Graphic Designer

Average salary: $46,010

Graphic designers are responsible for developing visual assets for a company. Depending on the company’s needs, this may include branding assets (like logos), marketing materials, product packaging, and digital assets. Many graphic designers are well-versed in a variety of design styles and techniques, though some specialize in certain areas (like logo design, packaging design, or infographic design). Graphic designers may work directly for a company, for an agency or design studio that works with clients to deliver on any design needs, or as freelancers or independent contractors.

While graphic designers will need to collaborate with supervisors, clients, or other stakeholders to get clear direction and feedback on their design assignments, during the designing phase, they’re free to work on their own—making this a great role for introverts.

In order to succeed as a graphic designer, you’ll need creativity and working knowledge of a variety of design programs—which many get through degree programs (though there are plenty of online learning platforms that can help you get up to speed if pursuing a degree isn’t the right fit).

Find graphic designer jobs on The Muse

5. 

Accountant

Average salary: $51,639

Accountants handle financial tasks, which can include budgets, forecasts, financial reports, payroll, taxes, and audits. They may work for a company in house or for an accounting firm that provides accounting services to external clients.

A huge part of accounting is crunching numbers—a task that’s mostly done solo—making accounting a great field for introverts.

In order to land an accounting role, candidates will need to have a degree in accounting or a related field—and public accounting firms will typically only hire Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) or recent accounting graduates with plans to take their CPA exam.

Find accountant jobs on The Muse

6. 

Mechanical Engineer

Average salary: $71,538

Mechanical engineers are responsible for designing (or engineering), developing, building, and testing machines and other products. Mechanical engineering is, at the core, a problem-solving role; mechanical engineers need to not only be able to identify problems and build solutions, but also identify and solve mechanical issues as they build and iterate.

Mechanical engineers are highly technical critical thinkers and although they typically work in teams and need to be comfortable collaborating and managing projects, they also spend a lot of their time working independently—a great setup for an introvert.

To get hired as a mechanical engineer, you’ll need at least a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering—although many companies want their mechanical engineers to pursue advanced degrees.

Find mechanical engineer jobs on The Muse

7. 

IT Specialist

Average salary: $57,872

Information technology specialists (a.k.a., IT Specialists) are responsible for maintaining and managing a company’s internal IT processes and products. This can include managing IT requests, troubleshooting IT issues, installing and upgrading company hardware and software, and ensuring that all IT operations are running smoothly.

As an IT specialist, you’ll have to work with leadership and employees to field requests, identify IT issues, and answer IT-related questions—but the job also requires plenty of independent work time to manage IT systems and fix problems, so introverts will get the time they need to recharge.

While some companies require their IT specialists to have a degree in information technology or a related field, many will hire based on skill alone—so if you have an in-depth knowledge of IT systems, you should be able to get your foot in the door without a degree.

Find IT specialist and other information technology jobs on The Muse

8. 

Data Scientist

Average salary: $96,420

Data scientists are responsible for creating the frameworks that help their companies leverage data to make better business decisions. This can include everything from running data tests and experiments, implementing statistical models and algorithms, developing data products, and continually tweaking and optimizing their frameworks for more effective data analysis (and better business outcomes as a result).

While there is a certain level of collaboration necessary to succeed as a data scientist (for example, with data analysts or key business stakeholders as well as other data scientists or machine learning engineers), a good portion of a data scientist’s work is in framework development—a solo job great for an introvert.

A bachelor’s degree in computer science, math, statistics, engineering, or a related field is generally a must to pursue a career in data science—and some companies want their data scientists to hold advanced degrees.

Find data scientist and other data science jobs on The Muse

9. 

SEO Manager

Average salary: $70,244

SEO (which stands for search engine optimization) managers are responsible for making sure that when someone searches a relevant term, their company ranks at the top (or as close to the top as possible) of the results pages. The goal is to help increase the company’s visibility and drive new users or customers to their website. SEO managers develop and implement the SEO strategy, determining which technical and content-based search engine optimization strategies are going to drive the best results—and then continually adjust that strategy to improve their rankings.

SEO managers do collaborate with colleagues on other teams—including content and engineering. But they also spend a good deal of their time analyzing data, developing suggestions, and implementing optimizations—making this an ideal role for an introvert.

There’s no specific degree required to get into SEO, but in order to land an SEO manager position, you need to know the ins and outs of search engine optimization—and be able to stay on top of SEO practices, which are always changing and evolving.

Find SEO manager and other SEO jobs on The Muse

10. 

Actuary

Average salary: $96,032

Actuaries typically work in the insurance industry and are responsible for evaluating risk factors and determining whether the insurance company should issue a policy to a specific person or business and, if so, what the premium for that policy should be.

This role is almost entirely focused on digging deep into math, data, and statistics, which is an inherently independent task—and a great fit for introverts (at least, for introverts who geek out on all things numbers).

Actuaries need to have a deep working knowledge of data and statistics—and a degree in actuarial science or a related field (like statistics or math) is often a requirement to get your foot in the door. You’ll also need to complete a series of exams given by the Society of Actuaries or Casualty Actuarial Society to earn your certification.

Find actuary jobs on The Muse

Deanna deBara is a freelance writer living in Portland, OR. When she's not busy building her business or typing away at her keyboard, she enjoys spending time hiking in the Pacific Northwest, traveling with her soon-to-be husband, or doting on her dog, Bennett. You can follow her on Twitter (she's a newbie!) at @Deanna_deBara.

Hello Majors,
I hope you've had a chance to relax over the winter break. It's a new year with opportunities and possibilities ahead of you. Below I've curated some resources to help you launch your semester's activities, many of which were requested by our majors through our end-of-semester check-in survey. To that end, the winners of the survey drawing will be contacted this week! Thank you for sharing your experiences and ideas.

WHERE TO FIND INFORMATION ABOUT:
Research and Self Assessment Tools (What May I Like to Do?)
What Can I Do with this Major?
PathwayU (Specific job titles are given along with your personality assessment, work culture preferences, and values)
ECO Self-Assessment  and More (Scroll to Self-Discovery)
Candid Career Videos (Short Videos with Alum Interviews)
ECO YouTube Channel (Career Videos of Alumni Panels)
ECO Alum Spotlights
What Do Econ Majors Do after Graduation? (Outcomes)
Virginia Alumni Mentor Network Database for Informational Interviewing

Job Search Guides:
Hoos Career Guide
Picture Your Career 
How to Use Handshake Effectively 
How to Maximize Your Use of Handshake( (There's a lot in there!)
     Tip: Update Your Handshake Profile at the Start of Each Semester and Update Your Resume
CareerShift (Inside Handshake "Resources)
Vault Career Guides (For Exploration, inside Econ Career Office Collab)
Job Boards for Econ Majors
ECO's Job Board 

Undergraduate Research Resources

Part-Time Work 
UVA Part-time Jobs Fair
Handshake - search by part-time filter and on campus
QuadJobs
Charlottesville part-time listings
Center for Non Profit Excellence in Charlottesville

Gaining Experience/Internships/Micro-Internships 
Catalyst (New from the College of A&S! The Catalyst program will help you apply the power of your UVA education to your job, your life, and your community. It will teach you how to utilize and describe the capabilities you’ve developed at UVA – including clear analysis, astute synthesis, effective communication, ethical judgment, complex problem-solving and more. You’ll also develop your capacities for leadership and collaboration, as well as in-demand skills tailored to your particular career interests.
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Internship Placement Program
Parker Dewey (Micro-Internships)
Case Competitions with MindSumo (Win money and build a network.)
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iLab at UVA (Entrepreneur skills-training and experience)
LinkedIn Learning (A LInkedIn account is required for access.)
Forge - Career Accelerator with Skills-Based Learning and Embedded Internships
Propel - Project-Based Learning at UVA
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Virginia Alumni Mentor Bridges Projects (Micro-Internships)

Pre-doctoral Preparation Resources
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If you're planning to interview with one of the Big 4 professional firms—Deloitte, EY, KPMG, PwC—you likely know that you'll have to answer questions about your strengths and weaknesses, as well as field a number of so-called behavioral questions.

These behavioral questions typically begin with the phrase "Tell me about a time ..." and most often cover your ability to lead, deal with conflict, work on teams, work within tight time constraints, and deal with failure. And so, to nail any Big 4 interview, you'll most certainly need airtight answers to these questions.

In addition, you'll now need airtight answers to a host of other "Tell me about a time ..." questions.

Recently, we surveyed several thousand Big 4 professionals, asking them about life at their firms. One question we asked had to do with interview questions. And below are 11 new behavioral questions that Big 4 professionals told us their firms are now asking their interviewees.

1. Tell me about a time you set a goal in one of your previous positions and the steps you took to achieve it.

2. Tell me about a time when you had to manage conflicting priorities and still exceed someone's expectations.

3. Tell me about a time you used technology to effectively complete a task or analysis.

4. Tell me about a time you had to be a problem solver and the methods you used to solve the issue.

5. Tell me about a time you were proactive in soliciting performance feedback from a mentor or client.

6. Tell me about a time you enthusiastically led a work team through a major change initiative.

7. Tell me about a time you had to analyze data and present it to a group. How did you get the data, analyze it, and what was the outcome?

8. Tell me about a time you had to adapt to real change in your life.

9. Tell me about a time you had to influence others' opinions on a project or work situation.

10. Tell me about a time you went out of your way to learn.

11. Tell me about a time when you had to think on your feet. What was the outcome?

Of course, chances are slim that you'll receive all of these questions in one Big 4 interview. Still, it's going to be a good idea, if you are interviewing with a Big 4 firm, to make sure you prepare answers for each of these questions.

Here's how to go about dointg that: First, take a few minutes to think about a real time that you experienced each situation (never make up your answer; always base it on fact). Second, take a few minutes to collect your thoughts about what you honestly did in each circumstance (visualize yourself in that situation and try to recall all the details involved, what happened, what you did, the outcome, etc.). Third, take a few minutes to practice your response to each question (you can do this aloud or in your head).

Finally, remember that it's always better to over-prepare than under-prepare. And that this is especially true when it comes to interviewing.

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New UVA Programs with iXperience to Offer Liberal Arts Credit, Skills Development, and Practical Experience in Africa and Europe

A unique education abroad collaboration between the University of Virginia (College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences and the International Studies Office) and iXperience, a global educational company founded by two Yale University graduates, will offer undergraduate students from UVA and other universities the opportunity to combine liberal arts study, critical skills development, and practical work experience in Cape Town, South Africa; Berlin, Germany; and Lisbon, Portugal. The new summer programs will debut in May 2019.

Students enrolled in the programs earn from 6 to 10 credits from UVA. The program in Cape Town, called iX Immerse, is composed of two parts – a liberal arts component led by UVA faculty designed to provide students with a deep understanding of the South African context; and a “boot camp-style” practicum that immerses students in topics such as data science, product management, or digital design. The program combines an introduction to a 21st century knowledge and skill area, practical application with a South African company or non-profit, and critical reflection. The programs in Berlin and Lisbon, called iX Accelerate, offer a 6-credit liberal arts seminar with a boot camp focus on a topic (such as full stack coding) informed by liberal arts coursework and hands-on experience.

iXperience Campus, Cape Town, South Africa

The University of Virginia / iXperience relationship comes at a time when UVA’s College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences has been working to build on its reputation for academic excellence by advancing itself as an international leader in undergraduate education and global public engagement. With UVA as the academic sponsor, iXperience can offer programs with one of the world’s elite public universities while expanding the professional training opportunities for liberal arts students seeking a rewarding study abroad experience. Participants meet degree requirements, navigate and reflect on life in another country, and prepare for the workplace.

“The collaboration with iXperience has the potential to serve as a new model for higher education,” said Ian Baucom, the University of Virginia’s Buckner W. Clay Dean of Arts & Sciences. “This is a compelling way to integrate the liberal arts with skills-based learning and hands-on internship experiences in a global context, and we’re excited to offer this opportunity not only for students, but also for our faculty seeking research and teaching opportunities in Africa and Europe.”

Over the last three years, more than 150 UVA students have independently traveled to Cape Town and iXperience’s other international campuses during the summer to take non-credit iXperience courses rooted in technology, management consulting and other fields. Through the new collaboration between the University and iXperience, students in the iX Immerse program will have the added benefit of taking of UVA liberal arts coursework built on four key themes; history and politics, environment and sustainability, health and society, and arts and music. The course will be followed by iXperience’s blend of internships and “boot camp” skills training.

This unique educational experience empowers students to face the challenges of the future.""The world is changing at an increasingly rapid rate and in response our vision at iXperience is to bridge the gap between traditional education and futuristic skills development” said Aaron Fuchs, iXperience’s founder and CEO. “In collaboration with UVA, one of the preeminent public universities in the world, we are designing the future of learning by combining the liberal arts with progressive skills development in an international setting. This unique educational experience empowers students to face the challenges of the future."

Since its founding in South Africa in 2013, iXperience has grown globally with more than 1,000 students enrolled in its classes and internships in Cape Town, Berlin, and Lisbon.

iXperience students in Lisbon, Portugal

For more information about the new UVA / iXperience programs and the pilot courses debuting in summer 2019, visit the iXperience website.

UVA students interested in these programs must apply through the iXperience website and also secure institutional approval by submitting a UVA Education Abroad application (click on the program(s) of interest to get started).  

"Hiring managers rarely have the time or resources to look at each résumé closely, and they typically spend about six seconds on their initial fit/no fit decision. If you want to pass that test, you need to have some solid qualifications — and the perfect resume to highlight them."-Tayyiba Iram

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How to Write a College Resume That’ll Get You Hired (Plus an Example!)

by Meredith Pepin at The Muse

James Woodson/Getty Images

When you’re in college, a strong resume is one of the first things that helps you land an internship or part-time job. It represents you to employers when you can’t be in the room (yet!) and is essential to convincing them to call you for an interview based on your previous experiences and current skills. Whether you have a resume you used for college applications or are starting completely from scratch, putting effort into your resume now gives you a higher likelihood of success and sets a solid foundation, making it a breeze to update in the future as you—and it—evolve.

If you feel like you have nothing to put on your resume, don’t worry. After advising hundreds of students on these documents, I know you have more to offer than you think! I frequently meet first-year college students who believe they can’t include many of the things they did before college on a resume. You absolutely can—and you should—until those get outranked by all the other awesome things you’ll accumulate over the course of your college career. Even if you’re a freshly minted high school graduate, you have valuable skills and experiences employers want, and this guide can help you showcase them.

Read on to learn about what goes on your resume, how to format it, and what else you can do to ensure it makes you shine—and to see our college resume example.

What Goes on a College Resume

In setting up your resume, you should use a few core sections to help you easily lay out all the information a recruiter is looking for when they make quick decisions about whether or not to interview you. (And yes, recruiters do skim, reportedly spending an average of 7.4 seconds making their first pass on a resume, so you want to make a good impression fast).

Contact Info

It’s traditional to start with your basic contact information at the top of your document including your name, email, phone, and the city and state where you live. Use your full name (and maybe bump up the font a point or two because you’re a big deal!), and if you have a nickname you prefer, you can include it in parentheses.

Use your college email as it’s typically professional and establishes your educational brand. Now is also a good time to check that your phone’s voicemail greeting is up-to-date. In case a recruiter calls while you’re busy—or you don’t recognize the number and swipe it to voicemail—this greeting could be their first impression of you. Even recording something as simple as, “Hello, you’ve reached Christine. Please leave a message and I will return your call as soon as possible,” can help them feel confident they reached the right person and that you’re able to present yourself professionally.

Your physical location can be based either on your school’s address or your permanent home address. If you’re targeting opportunities in one location or the other, include the most local address so they know you’re familiar with the area (and likely won’t have a problem finding housing).

Pro tip: Save space by listing your email, phone, and location all on one line. If you have a LinkedIn profile, you can add that in your contact information section as well. The result might look like this:

Karla Perez
Stillwater, MN ∙ (000) 765-4321 ∙ karla.r.perez@university.edu ∙ www.linkedin.com/krperez

Education

For college students, education should be right below the contact information on your resume. This immediately orients your reader to the fact that you’re a current student and conveys important information, like what you’re studying. What you include in your education section can also demonstrate that you’re a good match for the opportunity you’re targeting, increasing your chances of a recruiter call.

The basics you should always include are:

• Your school’s name
• Your expected graduation date
• The type of degree you’re pursuing: For example, you might write “Bachelor of Arts” or “Associate’s Degree.”
• Any majors, minors, or concentrations: If you’re applying to opportunities in these areas, this will help an employer see you already have some knowledge and a motivation for working with them.

Depending on your personal strengths and what jobs you’re applying for, you might also want to include:

• Your GPA: But only if it’s strong. (It’s usually good to include 3.5 and above.) If you stumbled through some of the general requirements you had to take but nailed all the courses in your major, consider adding two GPAs—your cumulative GPA and your major GPA—to show you have stronger grades in your chosen discipline.
• Standardized test scores: If you’re applying to opportunities in quantitative fields, like finance or consulting, you might consider listing standardized test scores like the SAT or ACT.
• Relevant coursework: Selecting and highlighting three to five classes that match closely with the specific opportunity you’re applying to is a really fast way to tailor your resume and make you a more attractive match. For example, if you’re targeting an internship in computer science, you can list your “Introduction to Python” and “Introduction to Algorithms” classes.
• Other colleges or universities you’ve attended: If you’re a transfer student or you studied abroad at another university, adding these schools can signal that you have other strengths, such as cultural awareness or language skills, or give you a chance to highlight key classes you took elsewhere.
• Your high school: If you’re shooting for an opportunity local to your high school or went somewhere well-known, then you may want to keep that as your last entry for educational experience. Otherwise, high school is the first entry to cut when you’re short on space. It has gotten you to where you need to be, but the focus should now be on the higher-level degree you’re working on and you should dedicate as much space as you need to boast about all of your amazing college accomplishments!

Here is an example of what a completed “Education” section might look like:

EDUCATION

Candidate for Bachelor of Arts degree, St. Olaf College, Northfield, MN
Double Major: Political Science and Economics ∙ Expected Graduation: May 2023 ∙ GPA: 3.7
Relevant Coursework: Introduction to Political Theory, Politics and Human Rights, Global Interdependence

Experience

The experience section is where the real substance of your resume lives. This is the chance to show a snapshot of the jobs and internships you’ve had (if any), the work you did, the skills you used, and your accomplishments. Let’s talk about what experience you can include, how to pull out skills and demonstrate your value, and what it should look like on the page.

Experience can cover a lot of things. It can be full-time jobs, part-time jobs, internships, or research. Unpaid work—like volunteer and community roles—counts too! Don’t discount the value these other kinds of experiences can add to your resume just because you didn’t earn money. You can leverage all of your experiences on a resume by pulling out transferable skills, or broader talents you’ve developed that will be beneficial even if you aren’t applying to the same type of role.

Take a significant class project, for example. That can be built out as experience as long as you’re clear it was for a class. If you worked on a group project, you probably collaborated on a team, organized, worked under deadlines, completed some independent tasks, presented your work to others, and had some kind of outcome. Even if you were doing something that might not seem widely applicable, like designing a rocket, many of those skills can transfer over to another role. Say you had to do cost comparisons for the materials you selected for your rocket, those same analysis skills could be useful to a business role or for a part-time job where you have to order supplies for a restaurant.

You can also create targeted headers for your Experience section(s) if there are themes that correlate with the internship or part-time job you want. Specific headers—such as “Research Experience,” “Marketing Experience,” or “Software Engineering Experience”—can immediately help your reader see that you’re aligned with the needs they have for their open role.

If you don’t have something that specific, it’s OK. You can still shift your experiences into categories like “Relevant Experience” and “Additional Experience.” For example, if you’re applying to research roles, you’d want to put any research related work under “Relevant Experience,” and your cashier job and website building side hustle would go under “Additional Experience.” These two headers are great for allowing you to bump the best of your experiences up toward the top of your resume.

Once you decide which headers to use, make sure each entry includes basic information—the title of your role, the organization’s name, the location, and the dates you worked there—along with bullet points describing what you accomplished. For example:

Intern, Minnesota State Senate, St. Paul, MN
June 2019–August 2019

• Researched prior legislation and current bills, summarized content, and identified alternate actions
• Coordinated the schedule for Senator Harriet Maxwell and kept accurate minutes for all meetings
• Drafted memos for important interoffice updates outside of normal meeting schedule

Skills

A skills section is a great way to make your most valuable knowledge and expertise stand out—and be easily spotted by a recruiter. Which skills belong in your own skill section depend on the jobs you’re applying for, so be sure to read the job description carefully to figure out what skills are most relevant for each particular role.

Skills that might appear in this section include (but are definitely not limited to): technical skills; software or other tools you know well; languages you can speak, read, or write; other job-specific skills like using a POS system or cash register; and, for some jobs, even your ability to drive different vehicles.

From this range, you can see why it’s important to change things up based on what job you’re applying to! Some skills—for example, being fluent or conversational in a second language—might be relatively permanent fixtures on a college resume. If you’re looking for a part-time job waiting tables, you might add the fact that you can bartend, whereas you might list your mastery in JavaScript instead when going after that software engineering internship you have your eye on.

Once you’ve decided which skills are most important for this role, you can simply list them on your resume. If you have a few different types of skills, you can separate them into categories. For instance:

SKILLS

Languages: Spanish (Fluent); Russian (Basic)
Software: JavaScript, Python, CSS

Note that just listing your skills in a separate section isn’t always enough. You also want to make sure to describe how you’ve used key technical and job skills elsewhere on your resume (usually in the bullet points of your experience section).

Other Optional Sections

There are some other sections you can consider adding depending on your experiences and what your target employer might be looking for. For example, a consumer product firm might be looking for examples of design work. In that case you could add a section called “Design Projects,” which might include significant assignments from some of your academic classes or independent projects that you’ve developed in your spare time. Don’t be afraid to include links to your work if you’re submitting your resume online! (Just avoid hyperlinking out from important words, as this could trip up the online systems that scan most resumes.)

Another popular section is “Leadership Experience” where roles like being the vice president for one of your student organizations or being a co-captain for your athletic team would be a good fit. Employers love to see leadership themes on resumes, as it demonstrates the transferable soft skills they’re looking for like communication, collaboration, and initiative.

An “Activities” section can also demonstrate skills. If you dedicate time to learning more about consulting cases with your consulting club, you likely increased your analytical skills in a team setting, which is valuable for many business roles. If you’re an athlete, you can showcase your ability to manage your time, create or be part of a cohesive team, or organize and motivate teammates during practices. These skills gained as an athlete can be ideal if you’re applying for a heavily collaborative role. Additionally, if the activities that you’re involved in are directly applicable to the job, these are powerful to include as it demonstrates interest and dedication. So if you’re majoring in healthcare administration, adding that you’re a member of the Healthcare Society on your campus can be a major plus for an employer.

Any optional sections like these will usually need to be set up similar to your experience entries. Include the organization (or class), your role, the location, the dates you participated, and your key achievements. Here is an example of an entry you might put under a “Leadership” heading:

LEADERSHIP

Head Delegate, Model United Nations, Northfield, MN
September 2019–April 2020

• Researched global topics such as human rights and sustainable energy and developed persuasive positions
• Represented Chile as a delegate in an education simulation at a conference with 2,000+ participants; negotiated with others and collaborated on common goals to deliver resolutions on political issues
• Liaised between the delegation and the Secretariat, serving as a first point of contact and resolving issues

6 Tips for Writing a Successful College Resume

From formatting to crafting strong descriptions, attention to detail can pay off when tackling your resume. Here are six tips to help you develop a great resume:

1. Choose the Right Resume Format for You

Your parents or other family members might share their resume and have you copy it because it has worked for them. But they’re at a different place in their career and their format may not be the best one for you.

There are three main types of resume formats for laying out your experiences, skills, and education—the functional resume, the combination/hybrid resume, and the chronological resume. The chronological format is almost always the best fit for college students.

With a chronological resume, you’ll list your experiences within each category/section in reverse chronological order (most recent to least recent, based on end date). Since this is the most traditional and common resume format, recruiters are familiar with it and can quickly see what you have to offer.

2. Be Clear and Consistent

In terms of resume formatting, there are a lot of small choices to make about things like font, style, and spacing. Whatever you decide, make sure it is easily readable, consistent, and not overly fancy. You could have the greatest content in the world, but if it’s too difficult or annoying to read, a recruiter is going to move on.

In order to make a document easy to scan, use clear headers for your sections. Maybe they’re bold and in all caps, or maybe they’re a couple font sizes larger, but they should be the same throughout your resume. The rest of your content should be consistent as well. For example, all your organization or previous employer names might be in italics, your dates all right aligned, your locations in plain text, and the titles of your roles in bold. Keeping things uniform helps the recruiter easily absorb all the relevant information you want them to have.

3. Make Sure It Can Pass Through an Application Tracking System (ATS)

Formatting is also important because your resume will likely pass through something called an applicant tracking system (ATS), a type of software that helps recruiters organize incoming candidate applications. Recruiters can apply filters or search for keywords, and the ATS will show candidates matching the desired criteria, making it easier to identify good candidates in large applicant pools.

In order for your resume to pass this first round and make it to the human who has the power to get you to an interview, the ATS needs to see you’re a good match. But there are formatting choices that can confuse an ATS—for example, some won’t read the content inside tables, text boxes, or graphics. And if the ATS can’t read your materials, your resume might be filtered out. (Read more about formatting your resume for an ATS here.)

This all means that using one of the fancy resume templates you see online isn’t necessarily the best move. Most basic formatting can be achieved with bolding, italics, and spacing, and you will still end up with a good-looking resume—meaning that starting with a blank document can actually be a better bet. (If you still want to use a template, we’ve curated 41 free ATS-friendly templates here.)

4. Create Impactful Descriptions

Give the descriptions you use for your experiences some TLC, as this is what recruiters will focus on once you’ve caught their attention. I often discover students undersell—or simply forget—all the things they’ve done that might be interesting and of value to an employer (including those transferable skills).

Here’s an exercise that can help. Reflect on an experience (such as an internship you had or volunteer work you completed) and quickly jot down what you did. You don’t need to have much structure for this—try it as a brainstorm. Think about answering some of these questions:

• What was your role?
• What were the goals for that position or experience?
• What tasks did you specifically do?
• What projects did you work on?
• Were there any side projects or tasks you completed?
• Who did you work with?
• What did you contribute?
• What did you accomplish? (Or what did/do you intend to accomplish? This can be a useful way to think about things especially when considering research or longer term projects that are still in progress!)
• Can it be quantified? Numbers can paint a clear and impressive picture of your accomplishments to someone reading your resume. You might write that you fundraised as part of the Student Government Association, and that will generally get your point across, but if you can say you increased SGA fundraising by 30% and were able to create two new social events attended by 100+ students each, that will make more of an impact. Look for ways to quantify your accomplishments wherever possible.

Once you have a good brainstorm, take the information you gathered and try crafting several statements using this formula:

Action Verb + Subject + Outcome/Purpose/Result (i.e. Accomplishment)

So you might say:

Organized a fundraiser event for 70 participants resulting in $1,000 in donations to a local hospital

Your descriptions are most valuable when leading with an action verb that reflects specific skills. For example, swap “Worked on” for “Collaborated on” and “Responsible for” with “Oversaw.” Other verbs I often recommend students use include:

• Analyzed
• Communicated
• Created
• Facilitated
• Improved
• Initiated
• Led
• Organized
• Presented
• Researched

5. Tailor Your Resume for Each Opportunity

Always tailor your resume to each specific job you apply to. Making it easy for the recruiter to connect your skills to what they are looking for can increase your chances of success. The job description is your blueprint and key to doing this. A couple of these exercises could help you identify what you’ll want to highlight.

• Activity 1: Take the job description and go through and underline everything you’ve had some experience in. This might be specific tasks, software/programs/tools, or qualities. Write a quick note in the margin to highlight when you’ve done that. Underline things where you have transferable skills too. For example, if you’ve used a software that is similar to a software they’re looking for, underline it. A recruiter should be able to see on your resume that you used similar skills and would be a quick study.
• Activity 2: If you aren’t sure which skills to emphasize, take the entire job description and pop it into a simple online word cloud generator, like TagCrowd. It automatically shows you the words most used in the description, which are likely of highest importance to the company or role. If you have those skills, make sure you mention them in your descriptions and mirror the language as exactly as possible (our friend the ATS will be looking for precise keywords!).

These activities can help you identify the right action verbs, keywords, and tools—like software—to weave into your descriptions. They can also help you decide what past experiences to include or which of your college courses are relevant to this role and which direct and transferable skills to highlight to make your resume a stronger fit for your target job.

6. Keep a Few Other Tried-and-True Tips in Mind

Here are a few other parting tips to keep in mind as you build your document:

• Avoid writing in first person (“I,” “we,” “our,” and “my” statements).
• Bullet points will make your document more readable—usually two to three per entry works well. But it doesn’t have to be even: Give more description space to the most relevant entries.
• Attention to detail matters. Proofread—not just for typos, but to make sure formatting is consistent (like date dashes). Employers will use your resume to make assumptions about how detail-oriented you are.
• Review any headers you put in all caps. Some spell checkers are programmed to assume that they’re acronyms and skip them.
• Ditch jargon and acronyms wherever possible. Don’t assume the reader always knows what you’re talking about. Sometimes the first person reading your document is a general recruiter and not familiar with the technical side of a role.
• Be aware of tenses. If you’ve completed an experience, those descriptions will be in past tense, and current roles can be described in present tense. (If you’re still actively involved in a role you can list the role through “Present,” and if more than one entry has the same end date, make a strategic decision to put the most relevant experience first.)
• Acceptable margins are usually between one and 0.7 inches.
• Pick a readable font, like Arial, Calibri, or Times New Roman, and try not to go below font size 11.
• As a college student, stick to a one-page resume. However, you should consider keeping a longer version (called a master resume) for your own personal use. That’s where you keep a full record of your experiences to make it easier to pull out the relevant ones each time you tailor your resume for a specific job.

What Does a College Resume Look Like?

A college resume should showcase your education, experiences, and skills (direct and transferable!) in a clear way, while keeping in mind what is most relevant to your target employer. The resume below shows a student highlighting their relevant education and experiences specifically for internship opportunities in government and politics.

https://www.themuse.com/advice/how-to-write-college-resume-example

"Managers and employees don’t always see eye to eye. Fast Companyuncovered a wide gap in the way each group thinks about business cultureand their radically different ideas about work-life balance."-Lydia Dishman

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Some would argue that it’s easier to write a novel than it is to craft an effective cover letter opening. In a cover letter, so much hinges on one paragraph: your intro needs to successfully hook the viewer and compel them to keep reading, market you as a brilliant hire right off the bat, and be original enough to make you stand out. And yet, you only have a few lines to achieve all of this, and you know little about the addressee and what appeals to them.

It’s no wonder that the mere mention of the task tends to paralyze job seekers. But we’re here to help you out of your frozen state. Below are our eight tips for writing a cover letter opening that’ll definitely get you noticed.

1. Avoid generic introductions

Whatever you do, don’t open your cover letter with a line like, “I’m writing to apply for the position of [job title], which I saw advertised on [job board name] on [date]”. It’s dull, it’s uninspiring, and every recruiter has already seen it far too many times. Yes, it’s important to cover key details, like the position you’re interested in and the company name, at the start of your letter, but try do so in a more original way. You could even consider putting these basics in the subject line of your email (if you’re applying digitally) or in a “RE:” header (if you’re sending a hard copy) so you can use your introductory element to get straight to the meaty details that’ll win recruiters over.

2. Let your personality shine through

Naturally, you want to come across as a professional, but don’t open your letter in a manner that’s so excessively formal and dry that you sound robotic. Right from the get-go, you should give hiring managers a sense of who you are—after all, the point is to convince them that you’re a person worth meeting. So, use the first person “I”, inject charisma, showcase your quirks (if appropriate), and generally make it clear that there’s a unique human being behind the words.

3. Express enthusiasm

Enthusiasm is a good predictor of a strong work ethic, so recruiters will be looking for signs of it from sentence one. For this reason, you can’t go wrong if you start your letter by communicating your passion for the field and/or your affection for this company, above all others. Just make sure your declaration of love sounds genuine. You could, for example, include an anecdote (more below) that captures your long-standing devotion to the industry or reference a recent development at the company (like a ground-breaking study they just published) that reaffirms your desire to work for them.

4. Tell a story

Stories tend to make a much bigger impression on people than dry facts do. To make your cover letter opening memorable, start with a short narrative that ties into your love for the subject area or relationship with the brand. For instance, maybe you liked the company’s advertising jingle so much as a child that you once performed it in your school’s talent show. Or perhaps you’re so passionate about sport that you used to fall asleep with a football in your hands when you were young. Or maybe there’s a story worth telling around how you first came across the company as a customer. Whatever the tale, tell it as succinctly and authentically as you can, and it should also help you achieve points 2 and 3 above.

5. Be bold (but first, know your audience)

The best way to make your opening paragraph stand out? Do or say something no one else is doing or saying. Of course, getting a little creative with your opening can be a risky move, so first consider the kind of business you’re dealing with, research the company culture, and take note of the tone of voice used in the job ad. If you’re applying for a job at a startup that’s turning tradition on its head, then there’s room for you to be a bit daring and irreverent, to prove that you, too, can think outside the box. If, however, you’re expressing interest in a position at a large corporate company, like a banking firm, and the job posting uses formal language, then it’s probably safer to go the more conventional route.

6. Lead with an impressive skill or accomplishment

If you possess a relevant ability that few others do or have a major career accomplishment under your belt, then absolutely do open your cover letter with a mention of this fact. Details like these set you apart from other candidates, so you want hiring managers to be aware of them from the outset.

7. Name a mutual contact

One sure way to grab attention in your first paragraph is to mention the name of a common acquaintance, especially if this person recommended that you apply for the role. By associating yourself with someone who’s respected at the company, you automatically improve your chances of getting an interview.

8. Keep it short, sharp, and clean

The job of a cover letter is to sell you and your skills to a prospective employer. So, approach your introduction like an advertiser would approach ad copy—keep it concise, get straight to the point, and try to capture readers in as few words as possible. One tight paragraph will do – after all, the whole letter should be no longer than a page. Also make sure that it’s free of spelling and grammatical errors—typos are the enemy of a successful cover letter opening.

Since 2005, LiveCareer has been helping job seekers create resumes and cover letters via its free resume builder and cover letter builder tools. Also available are collections of free, professionally written resume templates and cover letter templates, all of which are organized by industry and job title.

Investment Banking - How to Win Deals 

Event: Investment Banking - How to Win Deals

Date: Thursday, November 9th

Time: 12:00pm-1:30pm

Location: Commonwealth Room at Newcomb Hall

Register for the event using this link.

“Since 2022 was one of the most dynamic and volatile years in the history of M&A globally, Deloitte is extremely proud to have closed more deals than any other M&A advisor in the world,” says Phil Colaco, Deloitte Global Corporate Finance leader and CEO of Deloitte Corporate Finance LLC. “Our results are a testament to the perseverance, resilience and quality of Deloitte’s clients, professionals and industry ecosystem members.”

Phil recently retired from the role of CEO of Deloitte Corporate Finance LLC (DCF) in the U.S and served as the Global Leader of Deloitte Corporate Finance. Here he managed the IB business, which in 2022 completed more transactions than any other firm in this space. Prior to joining DCF, he served as a Managing Director and co-founding Partner at McColl Partners, a middle market IB fIrm. Phil is a proud Wahoo and serves on a Regional Board of Trustees for the College of Arts and Sciences and has held leadership positions on the board of Make-a-Wish foundation. Phil holds a BA in Economics from UVA and an MBA focused on Finance and Accounting from University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

Meet Phil; learn about his career in finance; and receive tips about building your career!

https://spinellaconsultingacquisitions.com/news/deloittes-head-of-investment-banking-reads-the-private-equity-tea-leaves/

https://www.deloitte.com/global/en/about/press-room/deloitte-recognized-by-Mergermarket.html

On October 6, at the 74th Midwest International Trade Conference at Vanderbilt University,  I presented my job market paper, “Learning, Externalities, and Export Dynamics,” in a 25-minute talk to an audience of economists studying international trade. In November, I presented my job market paper twice at different venues in Washington D.C.  First, at the 88th Southern Economic Association annual meeting, where I received constructive feedback on a condensed 15-minute version of my talk from students and professors of varied concentrations. Next, at the second Mid-Atlantic International Trade Workshop, hosted by the Federal Reserve Board, I gave a longer, 40-minute version of my talk and benefited from helpful comments and discussion with other trade economists.  Having the opportunity to present my talk in a variety of formats, receive questions from audiences unfamiliar with me and my work, and network with many people in my field was a valuable experience, particularly as I prepare to go on the job market during the next few months.  

by Kate Ashford at The Muse

Are you applying for a position as a financial analyst? Interviewing for a job can be stressful, but being prepared for the experience can go a long way toward making you feel confident and on top of your game. That means being ready to answer common interview questions and those that are likely to come up specifically for a financial analyst role.

Financial analysts evaluate their company’s and other organizations’ past and present financial data and might give guidance to people and companies as they make decisions about stocks, bonds, and other kinds of investments. Typical job responsibilities might include assessing financial data, preparing written reports and giving presentations, studying business trends, appraising a business’s financial statements, and potentially meeting with company management to determine how the firm is doing and to evaluate their leadership team. A financial analyst might work at a bank, an insurance company, a pension fund, or another type of business in any industry.

What Are Recruiters Looking for in Financial Analysts?

Recruiters are typically looking for candidates with business acumen, planning skills, and the ability to deal with financial models and handle the complex numbers involved. Here are some of the qualities interviewers will be searching for:

• Analytical skills: A candidate must be able to think logically and critically about a variety of financial information, from a company’s financial statements to industry news.
• Communication skills: It will be essential that you’re able to communicate effectively with top brass at the company and with your coworkers, both to collaborate on projects and to explain your analyses upon request.
• Problem-solving skills: In this role, you may have to help close a gap, solve a debt issue, or make a part of the company more profitable. So you need to be able to approach your analysis with a larger goal in mind. Plus, interviewers will want to see that you can be resourceful and try to solve problems on your own before turning to your boss every time you get stuck (but also that you know when to ask for help or escalate a problem).
• Attention to detail: Financial analysis is extremely precise, so attention to detail is a crucial attribute for any financial analyst candidate. In fact, some job descriptions for this role describe it as “microscopic attention to detail.”
• Technical skills: There are a variety of tools—from software to programming languages—you may need to use to accomplish day-to-day tasks, such as Microsoft Excel, SQL, QuickBooks, and SAP. You may also have to learn new software in the course of your job—so interviewers aren’t just looking to hear about what you already know, they want to see that you can pick up new tools if needed.

Beyond the skills necessary for the position, firms will also be looking for a candidate who’ll be a good addition to their organization and culture. “There’s a person/job fit and a person/organization fit, some of which has nothing to do with the skills and abilities of the person,” says Cabot Jaffee, president and CEO of hiring and recruiting systems firm AlignMark, who’s helped many companies hire for financial analyst roles. “Do their work history and work ethic match up with what we expect as a company? There are different interview questions that would get at that.”

Although the questions in finance analyst interviews may vary, these 11 questions are a representative sample of the kinds of questions you might get:

1. Why Do You Want to Be a Financial Analyst?
2. Why Do You Want to Work for Our Company?
3. Have You Considered or Are You Already Pursuing Licenses, Credentials, and Certifications? How Do They Help You in a Professional Context?
4. Do You Prefer to Work Alone or in a Team Environment?
5. Tell Me About a Time When You Had to Present Financial Data.
6. Give Me an Example of an Analysis Gone Wrong. What Could You Have Done Differently to Avoid the Problem, and What Did You Learn?
7. What Processes Do You Use to Create Financial Analysis Reports?
8. If You Could Only Pick One Financial Statement to Make a Decision on a Company, What Would You Pick?
9. What Do You Think Is the Single Best Evaluation Metric for Analyzing a Company's Stock?
10. Which Profitability Model Would You Use to Determine if a Project Will Be Profitable?
11. What is EBITDA?
12. How Are the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement Related?

1. Why Do You Want to Be a Financial Analyst?

Expect to get this question for any entry-level financial analyst role. The interviewer wants to know what your passions are from a professional standpoint, why you’re interested in the role, what led you to finance, what you’re hoping to gain from the experience, and where you see your financial career going.

How to Answer

Talk about what led you to finance as a major, minor, or interest as well as what you’re interested in doing in your first job and what career path you’re hoping to follow in the long term. “I’d encourage anyone at any level to talk about how their background and experience and strengths align with the requirements of the role,” says Steve Saah, executive director for Robert Half Finance & Accounting. What about your background and experience led you to consider a financial path? What things have you done and what skills do you have that lead you to believe that financial analysis will be a good place for you—and that you will be a good analyst?

One answer to this question might be:

“I decided to major in finance because I have long had an interest in understanding how businesses are structured—how they make money and how they’re profitable. Even in high school, I was always reading biographies and memoirs of entrepreneurs and business leaders to glean how their businesses started and continued making money and how they navigated moments of crisis or transformation. I’ve enjoyed the analysis I’ve been able to do in my classes and internships—I love digging into the numbers and details—and I’d like to continue that work and further my experience with this position.”

2. Why Do You Want to Work for Our Company?

The company wants to know why you want to work for them specifically—in this industry, for this type of organization, and at this particular company. There’s a broad range of roles for financial analysts, who hold positions at banks, pension funds, mutual funds, security firms, insurance companies, nonprofits with large endowments, and corporations, and your interviewer wants to know why you’re excited about this opportunity over all the other options.

How to Answer

You should be able to make the case for why you want to be a financial analyst in the industry and type of company you’re pursuing as well as why you’re excited about this particular organization. Why do you want to work for a nonprofit versus a bank? What drew you to a tech startup versus working within the financial industry? And why this particular nonprofit or tech startup? Research the organization and make sure you can talk about what makes it unique and why those qualities appeal to you. That said, don’t be tempted to criticize other companies or your current employer—it’s not a good look.

One answer to this question might be:

“When I think of a bank, I think of an institution that provides capital to entrepreneurs or large institutions, which basically fuels economic growth. I like the idea of being a part of the national and global economy and being able to contribute in that kind of way. I’m also very interested in working with entertainment and media companies, and I know this firm has a strong practice in media and telecom.”

3. Have You Considered or Are You Already Pursuing Licenses, Credentials, and Certifications? How Do They Help You in a Professional Context?

As a financial analyst, there are a variety of certifications and designations you can earn, including Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Certified Fund Specialist (CFS), and Chartered Financial Consultant (ChFC).

While a recruiter can look at your resume or LinkedIn profile to see what certifications you have, this kind of question is meant to help them understand what compelled you to get additional training and how you’re utilizing it on a day-to-day basis. Organizations are trying to see how dedicated you are to furthering your education and skills, what you’ve gotten from your education, and how you apply it. Getting your CFA, for instance, shows a company that you have the discipline to go through the rigorous work required to understand the business, says Charles Sachs, a CFA and Certified Financial Planner with Kaufman Rossman Wealth in Miami.

If you’re an entry-level candidate, don’t panic if you don’t already have these. In this case, the interviewer probably wants to hear that you’ve given this career path long-term consideration. So if you’re planning to pursue a certification or have already begun to take steps toward one, talk about why you decided to do so and how you plan to achieve this goal.  

How to Answer

Don’t just list your certifications. Give context around your thought process in getting each certification, how much time and effort you’ve put into studying for your exams (if you’re still in progress), how you’ve utilized the credential, and how it’s made you a better analyst.

An answer to this question might look like this:

“I’m currently pursuing my Chartered Financial Analyst certification from the CFA Institute in order to further my knowledge of financial analysis beyond what I learned in school. It’s a deep dive into financial instruments, valuations, regulatory concepts and accounting, which I think will be valuable to me in my next position.”

4. Do You Prefer to Work Alone or in a Team Environment?

There are many financial analyst positions in which collaboration is integral to the job. For instance, you might be building sales models for a company, while another employee builds vendor models, and the two of you regularly must combine data to create an overall business model for the chief financial officer of the company.

So this is a question that speaks to fit, both with the company and with the position. If the company is super collaborative and you prefer to be a lone wolf, you may not be the best candidate for the position—and vice versa. “They could be the best financial analyst in the world, and it’ll still be a bad hire,” Jaffee says.

How to Answer

Answer the initial question and give some examples of times in which you’ve worked alone or with a partner or team. But don’t try to second guess what the interviewer is looking for to get a job. “There are no right or wrong answers—some companies value independence and some value working in teams,” Jaffee says. The key is to find the one that matches with your own preferences.

An answer to this question might look like this:

“I prefer working in teams. In my previous job, I worked closely with a colleague to put together a business model for a client. They asked us to build a predictive financial model to outline where their business could be three years down the road. I got to do half of it, and my partner got to do half of it based on our expertise, and we were able to put it together and make a presentation to the client. I really enjoyed working with someone else to create the financial model and present it as a team and also learned so much from my partner that I was able to take with me to other analyses I did independently and with other colleagues down the line.”

5. Tell Me About a Time When You Had to Present Financial Data.

This question helps an interviewer assess whether you have experience and skills making presentations. Some financial analysts are regularly tasked with presenting data to company leadership or other parties, so hearing how you’ve done in the past will help them predict how you’d do in the role you’re applying for. Your answer will offer a glimpse into how you prepare for a presentation, the kind of data you’ve presented (including whether you were presenting your own data or someone else’s), and how comfortable you are speaking in front of people at different seniority levels.

They might also want to know whether you considered the presentation to be successful, what you learned from it, and what you would have done differently if you had a chance to do it over again.

How to Answer

This is a great opportunity to use the STAR method to tackle your answer: Situation, Task, Action, Result. This involves setting the scene, describing what your responsibility was in that specific situation, explaining what steps you took, and talking about the outcome or results of those steps.

Think about your answer before launching into it, and tell as detailed a story of your past experience as possible. “Don’t leave out any facts,” Jaffee says. “Include enough information that will allow the interviewer to get a good understanding of everything that was involved.” And be prepared to answer follow-up questions about the story you’ve told.

An answer to this question might look like this:

“As a company, we were considering acquiring another competitor and needed to identify what the combined financials of the companies would look like. I had to identify synergies related to head count, technology, payroll, redundant internal services, and ultimately forecast the financials to show the combined companies. I started by making sure I knew exactly what numbers the decision-makers in my company were focused on and why and then dived into the modeling component, sharing with colleagues for verification and input along the way. Once the bulk of that work was done I put together a slide deck that included a model output and highlighted the most important conclusions I’d come to. I presented my findings with specific recommendations to my team as well as a group of executives. They had several follow-up questions, as was expected, many of which I was able to answer on the spot but a few required me to go back to the model and incorporate some of their feedback. In the end, the majority of my recommendations were adopted but I learned the most from the few that had to be altered. The next time I had to put together a similar presentation, I tried to anticipate these kinds of questions and my recommendations were sharper for it (and got adopted with barely a tweak).”

6. Give Me an Example of an Analysis Gone Wrong. What Could You Have Done Differently to Avoid the Problem, and What Did You Learn?

Did you build a model that initially missed three assumptions and this wasn’t discovered until you presented it to someone? Or did you create a model that simply didn’t work the way it was meant to and six months down the road it didn’t produce the expected results?

Everyone gets things wrong sometimes and companies like to hear that you’re able to learn from your mistakes. Your time on the job isn’t as valuable if you haven’t learned and grown from your experiences. “Development is not just a function of time,” Jaffee says. “Development is a function of self-awareness.” (This is also why companies might ask about your greatest weakness.)

How to Answer

There are a few types of stories you should always have on hand in an interview, and one of them should be about a time you made a mistake or something didn’t go as you expected it to. Describe the mistake as directly and openly as you can—that’s part of what the interviewer will be looking for—and then move on and talk about how you’ve learned from it and what you’ve done since to ensure you don’t repeat the same mistake.

An example of an answer to this question might look like this:

“My team was tasked with building a model for how many salespeople we should hire, looking at the cost of hiring and training versus potential revenue. Six months later, we realized the model didn’t work as planned—we predicted three new salespeople would translate to new revenues of $1 million, but we only had revenues of $500,000. In order to understand what went wrong, I reviewed every step of the analysis and spoke to all the stakeholders individually about what, from their perspective, had caused the mismatch between our projection and reality. I learned in that process that we had made some flawed assumptions about ramp-up time and how many customers freshly onboarded salespeople could close per sales cycle. In future models, we made sure to loop in those stakeholders earlier and to dig into even more granular detail to test our assumptions from every direction and make sure we weren’t missing anything.”

7. What Processes Do You Use to Create Financial Analysis Reports?

Reporting is generally a big part of a financial analyst’s job, and the reporting required will depend on the role. If you’re interviewing for a sales organization, for instance, you might be creating monthly, quarterly, or annual sales reports. In your answer, they’ll be looking for technical skills as well as collaboration skills, communication, organization, follow-through, and time management.

How to Answer

Answering this question is about giving examples of what you’ve done in your current or former positions, including not only the specific software and methodologies you use, but how you engage with people at the organization to really understand the requirements they’re seeking. Articulate the thought process you would go through to understand those requirements and then explain how you would execute the task and follow through on your responsibilities. For best results, take a deep dive on one example and go into as much detail as possible—interviewers might follow up for more examples, but your first example should take them through the entire process.

8. If You Could Only Pick One Financial Statement to Make a Decision on a Company, What Would You Pick?

A recruiter might want to see that you have an understanding of the major financial statements a company has. They might ask you to walk them through an income statement, a balance sheet, a statement of shareholders’ equity, and/or a cash flow statement. Or they may ask you a question like this so you can show that you not only know the statements but understand when and how to use them.

How to Answer

The best response here is not just to choose the financial statement you prefer, but also to discuss why you think it’s the most useful source of information for a certain kind of situation and address why the other financial statements might not be appropriate choices.

An answer to this question might look like this:

“I prefer to use the cash flow statement to make a decision on a company, especially if I’m trying to glean how a company is doing in a moment of trouble or crisis. It’s going to show you actual liquidity, how the company is using cash, and how it’s generating cash. A balance sheet will only show you the assets and debt of the company at a point in time, and shareholder’s equity just shows you what’s been paid into the company and what exists net of assets and liabilities. The income statement has a lot of information—revenue, cost of goods and services, and other expenses—but I find the cash flow statement most useful for evaluating a company’s overall health in the short term.”

9. What Do You Think Is the Single Best Evaluation Metric for Analyzing a Company's Stock?

The recruiter is looking for your thought process as you compare and contrast different valuation methods. This helps an interviewer see that you’re familiar with multiple financial concepts when it comes to stock valuation and that you understand the pros and cons of different types of methodologies.

This question is more likely to come up if you’re interviewing to work for an investment bank or research firm. But you should be prepared to walk interviewers through how you come to an answer on any type of process question you receive.

How to Answer

Walk the recruiter through your thought process in choosing the metric you prefer and talk about what it can tell you about the stock and how that would help you evaluate a company. You can also mention other metrics in your answer to help you explain why the one you chose is better or what secondary metrics you’d pick if you could add others to support your primary choice.

An answer to this question might look like this:

“Of the three most commonly used valuation methodologies, discounted cash flow, comparable company analysis, and precedent transactions, I think that comparable company analysis is the most beneficial across all different types of companies and industries. Specifically, I like to look at the P/E ratio [price-earnings ratio] since it provides a yardstick for determining whether a stock is undervalued or overvalued as compared to its comp set. A low P/E ratio—when compared to similar companies and stocks—might be a sign that the price of that current stock is inexpensive relative to the company’s earnings, while a high P/E ratio might indicate that the stock’s valuation has become too high especially if it’s higher than others in its comp set. It’s important to note that one methodology or ratio generally does not tell a complete story by itself and others should be utilized for a more holistic approach, but I think P/E ratio comp analysis provides the least room for variability.”

10. Which Profitability Model Would You Use to Determine if a Project Will Be Profitable?

This is another question in which a recruiter wants to understand how you do things. They’ll be looking for the steps you take to get from point A to point B, such as looking at revenue streams and looking at the costs associated to come up with that profitability model. They want to see if you understand how to calculate a net present value and discount cash flows.

How to Answer

You may have to do some math, particularly if a company gives you a specific problem to solve. Be prepared to walk the interviewer through your thought process. “I had a question like this when I was interviewing,” says Nathan Atkins, an investment banking analyst at M&T Bank. “They asked, ‘We want to invest in a higher quality leather for our seats in a car; it’s going to cost X amount of dollars to do it, and we need it to return Y, so is this a good investment?’”

For instance, an answer might look like this:

“Net present value is a good model for forecasting, since it finds the difference between the present value of cash inflows and the present value of cash outflows over a period of time. If a company was investing in a project, you’d want the required return, the number of periods, and the cash flow coming in over that time. You’d take cash flow, divide it by one plus your hurdle rate to the power of the time period, subtract your initial investment and that would give you your net present value. What this should tell you is the value today of this future stream of payments. As long as it’s positive, that means the project is worth doing.”

11. What is EBITDA?

There’s technical knowledge associated with a job as a financial analyst, and you’ll be expected to know and understand it. Luckily, this isn’t the part of the interview that most financial analyst candidates find stressful. “The assumption is that most people applying for a financial analyst job would understand the basics of finances, so those are questions that most candidates are going to get right,” Jaffee says.

In short, be prepared to prove that you understand the financial concepts that make up your job. You might be asked to analyze a spreadsheet, read a financial statement, discuss how you’d solve a problem in Microsoft Excel, or explain a financial term (like positive cash flow), among other things.

How to Answer

In this case, you should explain the concept of EBITDA—starting by spelling out what the acronym refers to—and make sure you also say why it’s an important metric in evaluating a company’s financial health.

For instance, your answer might be:

“EBITDA stands for Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, and Amortization, and fundamentally, it’s a measure of net income with interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization added back to the total. It’s a useful metric for analyzing and comparing financial health across firms since it removes financing and accounting decisions from the equation. But I’d also add that there are drawbacks and EBITDA can be misleading on its own, as it doesn’t take factors such as capital investments into account.”

12. How Are the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement Related?

This is another question that gets at technical knowledge that interviewers assume you have walking into an interview for a financial analyst position. They ask it to make sure that you have a baseline financial knowledge, but it’s also a good barometer for how seriously you’re taking the interview process and how prepared you are by how easily, accurately, and clearly you respond.

How to Answer

Make sure you practice your responses to this and other technical knowledge questions out loud and in front of the mirror prior to your interview so that you have a fairly concise and accurate answer at your fingertips (without sounding too rehearsed!).

For instance, your answer might be:

"The first line of the income statement is the revenue line or “top line,” and after subtracting various expenses you arrive at net income or “bottom line” for the company. Net income comes into the cash flow statement as the first line, which is then adjusted for all non-cash expenses to get to a change in cash over a specific period. This change in cash will correspond directly to the cash line item in the balance sheet, providing a more detailed look at why that specific balance changes. The balance sheet is unique in that it is a snapshot of the balances of accounts at a specific time vs. a period of time (i.e. the previous quarter). Net income also connects to the balance sheet as a change in retained earnings."

https://www.themuse.com/advice/financial-analyst-interview-questions-answers-examples?sc_src=email_1575321&sc_lid=132281553&sc_uid=0VrW5nDlME&sc_llid=128656&sc_eh=b3364f87ca0559331&utm_source=emarsys&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily_20210915_NoSpon_90Day_1575321&utm_content=sponsored&utm_term=_&uid=885319293#22b71212-80bf-4d0e-a917-2302d2192fea

The ECO and nine students trekked to the NYC area over Winter Break to visit two power-house firms run by economics majors. First we visited private equity firm Kelso in Manhattan followed by a visit to W&P Design in Greenpoint, NYC an urban-industrial hot spot in Brooklyn. Details of our visit follow, but one important take away from both visits was the power of the UVA network. Our alumni discussed this directly and indirectly as benefiting them personally and in their professional work.

At Kelso, we met UVA economics alumnus CEO Frank Loverro and Managing Director, UVA History alumnus Frank Bynum in their plush offices on Park Ave. Firm V.P. Bill Frayer. (Colgate University) walked us through the recruiting process for PE and several deals that the firm has worked on. Kelso invests primarily in middle market companies in Energy, Healthcare, Financial Services, Consumer Goods, Industrial, and Media. We learned about the deal process from idea sourcing through valuation, purchasing, management, and selling. We also heard how both Frank and Frank acquired their jobs at Kelso and what their work is like at the senior level. We met UVA McIntire School alumnus Forrest Compton, who discussed his background at Credit Suisse before moving to Kelso and Dan Slutsky's (Brown) experiences with Kelso as an Associate after moving from M&A at Bank of America. The attending students made some great connections for future opportunities. Kelso looks forward to staying connected to the department. 

Our next stop was W&P Design, "a unique full-stack product design company. The firm sees ideas through from design, to manufacturing and delivery. Economics alumnus Josh Williams gave us a tour of their open, contemporary multi-use space in an industrial section of Brooklyn overlooking the Hudson River. It offered a different office culture than Kelso and our UVA students had a chance to observe these very different work environments. The space houses a design team, sales team, operations and logistics, marketing, and production team. Manufacturing and most distribution are off-site. In just five years the company has grown from a staff of 2 (Josh and fellow UVA alumnus and long-time friend Eric Prum) to 80 employees in the states and 100 employees including their overseas staff. Their first round of major funding was for a particular product "the mason shaker" and was crowd-sourced through Kickstarter.  It was one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns at the time seeking a goal of $5,000 and reaching $75,000. The company's products are in catalogs all over the world and in stores like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, and Williams-Sonoma. But even with that national and international reach, they keep much business close to home in NYC and in Central Virginia. Their primary distribution center is close to Lynchburg.

A new major project for Josh and Eric is the launch of their consumer goods incubator, Assembly. It is an innovative model where ideas are conceived through the company leadership and then teams are hired to build the products and launch the newly founded company. They are hiring summer interns in sales and design, and full time staff in sales, design and project management. They are also seeking Co-Founders of their newest brands. 

Both Josh and Eric had other jobs before launching W&P, Josh with Lehman Brothers/Barclays and Eric working for a paintball manufacturing company. They got their first taste of owning their own business running a catering company in Charlottesville while they were students.

After leaving Barclay's, Josh attended Culinary School in New Orleans and soon after Eric and Josh launched W&PDesign, they brought on a former intern and friend, UVA alumna Elizabeth Tilton, to build out and run their marketing department. You can read more about all three UVA alumni and W&P Design here.

This first ECO trip was a huge success and we thank our alumni for making it so.

Networking Programs! New Job Postings! Economics Career Forum!

AT WORK The Wall Street Journal, October 10, 2021

Can Your Career Help Change the World? You Have 80,000 Hours to Try.

Many of us want jobs that contribute to the social good. Effective Altruists say some lines of work benefit humanity more than others, and those positions might surprise you

By Krithika Varagur Follow

Oct. 10, 2021 5:30 am ET

Most of us hope our jobs make a positive difference in the world. It’s one reason companies have infused their mission statements with lofty goals of improving lives and talk of broader purpose in recent years.

Some workers aren’t leaving that to chance, using an evidence-based approach to pursue careers that they believe will provide the maximum benefit to humanity.

They belong to a movement called Effective Altruism, which relies on science and data to determine how individuals can use their time, money and skills to do the most good. Conceived by two Oxford University philosophers in the late 2000s, the EA approach is drawing new attention as the pandemic prompts many workers to reassess the sense of purpose and meaning they derive from their work.

Much of Effective Altruism’s early focus was on encouraging people to pursue lucrative careers to have more money to give and demonstrating which causes went the furthest to improve human lives. (Contributing toward deworming pills against parasites, for instance, helps keep millions of sub-Saharan African children in school, Effective Altruists say.) The early archetype of an EA acolyte was an investment banker or tech executive who gave large sums toward such interventions.

Through a nonprofit called 80,000 Hours, the movement has since expanded into helping people design do-good careers tailored to their talents and skills. The London-based organization, launched in 2011 by EA co-founder Will MacAskill and Benjamin Todd, gets its name from the 80,000 hours you are likely to spend working over a 40-year career, assuming you work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year.

Of the roughly 2,000 consultations that the group has done with career seekers during the past decade, some 500 have happened in the past year, says Mr. Todd, the group’s chief executive. The Effective Altruism Forum estimates that, based on EA surveys, several thousand people world-wide are actively engaged in the movement’s community.

Finding the right altruistic career can take time. Adam Gleave, 28 years old, worked at a hedge fund after graduating from Cambridge University, where he first encountered EA. His plan had been to make a lot of money to give away, and he donated part of his salary to the Long-Term Future Fund, a nonprofit focused on global ​challenges like advanced artificial intelligence and pandemics. But he left his job after 10 months.

‘I felt like my job wasn’t directly addressing the problems I consider to be truly important.’

— Adam Gleave, now a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley

Rather than just donating to AI issues, he​ decided he could work on them himself. After ​conversations with 80,000 Hours members, he enrolled in an AI doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley. There, he develops techniques for refining machine learning systems, like the ones that generate product and news recommendations on social media platforms.

“I only want to work on problems that directly affect our lives,” he says. He hopes to eventually see his technical ideas put into practice by companies and through government regulations, after he completes his doctorate next year.

80,000 Hours advises people to aim for the highest-impact job that addresses the social problem of their choice. High-impact work often means a high-status position—by EA’s logic, working at a startup developing large-scale solutions for climate change, for instance, would usually be more effective than becoming a social worker. Its website includes a job board for hundreds of EA-aligned postings, most of them white-collar roles, like a China-focused analyst at a Washington think tank or a gene-editing research associate at an Australian biotech firm.

The organization’s own list of priorities reflect a distinct worldview. Effective Altruists focus on the really big, and sometimes abstract, picture, including AI, climate change, great power conflict, surveillance and the governance of outer space—topics that could be plucked from agendas at Davos or the Aspen Ideas Festival.

Scarlette Lesma, 29, discovered EA online a couple of years ago, and its ideas resonated with her. She had been a program manager at a software provider for the energy industry, and had grown frustrated that she couldn’t draw a direct line from her work to the advancement of renewable energy. From attending EA meetups in London, she learned about Counterfactual Ventures, a venture capital firm that supports startups working toward a sustainable food system. Discussing EA in her interview helped her land the job, she says, and her manager there is also into the movement.

“EA principles really influence how people react day-to-day at our company,” she says. There is a strong emphasis on numbers and measurable impacts, she says, and several founders backed by the company came to it through EA connections.

Numerous Effective Altruists are entrepreneurs—an especially high-impact career choice, according to group principles. Lincoln Quirk, 35, lives in Concord, N.H., and helps run a 1,000-employee startup called Wave, which enables mobile payments to sub-Saharan Africa. By focusing on countries with some of the world’s poorest populations, he says, the company’s technology stands to have a larger possible impact.

Mr. Quirk has attended Boston-area EA meetups for several years and also recruits from them. “At least 10 of our employees came to Wave from EA circles,” he says.

Some critics of the EA approach say it overly emphasizes fields out of the scope of many workers, such as AI, and gives short shrift to professions like teaching or healthcare, which also involve directly helping people. A career based on a hard-nosed calculation of societal impact isn’t necessarily the most fulfilling, they argue.

EA backers say their recommendations focus on the best available opportunities to help improve the long-term future, and that 80,000 Hours emphasizes the importance of personal fit for a job more than it once did.

I was intrigued enough to sign up for my own 80,000 Hours consultation. I’m not precisely the nonprofit’s target audience, which Mr. Todd described as a “self-selecting group” whose priority is to change the world in certain ways. (I admitted that I had some reservations, since I believe my job as a journalist is to inform, not advocate.)

After recapping my skills and experience on a brief online form, I hopped on a free 30-minute Zoom call with 80,000 Hours adviser Habiba Islam, who works full-time at the nonprofit after several years in management consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

There’s no need to change my profession, she says, but were I to further my career along EA principles, I could look out for stories on large-scale, but lesser-known, risks to humanity, such as AI biases or potential pandemics beyond Covid-19. Or are there other looming challenges I could tackle with my platform, she asks?

I tell her I’ll think about it.

The Southern Economic Association® Honors Twenty-Eight Distinguished Fellows As the Inaugural Cohort

The Southern Economic Association® (SEA) presented and honored its inaugural cohort of Distinguished Fellows on November 19, 2023 during its 93rd Annual Meeting in New Orleans, LA. The inaugural cohort consists of all living past Presidents of the Association, who are at least two years removed from office.

The SEA Board unanimously approved a resolution creating a Distinguished Fellows Program at its 92nd Annual Meeting. Distinguished Fellows have a substantial record of exceptional scholarly achievement and long-term involvement and service to the Association. Following this initial cohort, no more than two Distinguished Fellows will be recognized in any one year. 

A list of the 2023 Distinguished Fellows inaugural cohort, with the years of service as SEA Presidents in parenthesis, follow:

1. Thomas R. Saving, Texas A&M University                                                                      (1980-1981)
2. Kerry Smith, Arizona State University                                                                               (1988-1989)
3. Charles R. Plott, California Institute of Technology                                                       (1989-1990)
4. Kenneth G. Elzinga, University of Virginia                                                                      (1990-1991)
5. Karen I. Vaughn, George Mason University                                                                     (1994-1995)
6. John J. Siegfried, Vanderbilt University                                                                            (1996-1997)
7. William A. Darity, Jr., Duke University                                                                            (1997-1998)
8. Dwight R. Lee, University of Georgia                                                                               (1998-1999)
9. Kathy J. Hayes, Southern Methodist University                                                               (1999-2000)
10. Marjorie B. McElroy, Duke University                                                                              (2000-2001)
11. Charles A. Holt, University of Virginia                                                                             (2001-2002)
12. Richard B. McKenzie, University of California, Irvine                                                  (2002-2003)
13. Eugenia F. Toma, University of Kentucky                                                                        (2003-2004)
14. William R. Johnson, University of Virginia                                                                      (2004-2005)
15. Catherine C. Eckel, Texas A&M University                                                                     (2005-2006)
16. James D. Gwartney, Florida State University                                                                   (2007-2008)
17. Jonathan H. Hamilton, University of Florida                                                                    (2008-2009)
18. William F. Shughart II, Utah State University                                                                  (2009-2010)
19. James C. Cox, Georgia State University                                                                            (2010-2011)
20. Bruce J. Caldwell, Duke University                                                                                    (2011-2012)
21. Paul H. Rubin, Emory University                                                                                        (2012-2013)
22. Joseph Hotz, Duke University                                                                                              (2013-2014)
23. Doug Davis, Virginia Commonwealth University                                                           (2014-2015)
24. James Alm, Tulane University                                                                                             (2015-2016)
25. Peter J. Boettke, George Mason University                                                                       (2016-2017)
26. Christopher J. Ruhm, University of Virginia                                                                    (2017-2018)
27. Donna B. Gilleskie, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill                         (2018-2019)
28. W. Kip Viscusi, Vanderbilt University                                                                              (2019-2020)

This group of Distinguished Fellows are not only all exceptional scholars but have also played an important role in the growing the size and prestige of the Association. The Southern Economic Association congratulates all of them on this important recognition.

For further information contact:

Benjamin Powell, Secretary/Treasurer

Southern Economic Association®

(806) 742-7138

admin@southerneconomic.org

http://www.southerneconomic.org/

Alex Gross presented his paper, "Private Labels and Bargaining in the Supply Chain: The Case of Wine," at the International Industrial Organization Conference in Boston, MA, in April 2019. His findings: private label products can increase a retailer's profits on national brand products by about 11% on average. The conference offered a great opportunity to receive feedback on his work and meet prominent researchers in his field. 

October 24, 2018

by Raquel Serrano at WayUp

Going to school isn’t just about gaining an education; it’s also about forming professional relationships that’ll help you carve the path to your dream career. From your first year in college to your last, part of your time as a student should revolve around preparing for your career and making sure to use all of the resources at your disposal. Networking is an essential and integral part of your professional development and definitely shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Even the best students make these gaffes, so let’s go ahead, and get your professional network in tip-top shape by discussing the top 5 mistakes students tend to make.

1. Thinking It’s Way Too Early to Start

A common mistake students make is believing that they need to be juniors or seniors before starting to build their professional networks, but like any relationship in life, the more time you invest into it, the stronger it becomes. As early as your freshman year (if not earlier), you should begin forming a career plan and be on the look-out for opportunities to connect with companies and professionals in your industry.

A great way to get started is by joining a professional organization at your school! Industry-minded organizations such as the ACS (American Chemical Society) and the SEA (Student Education Association) have chapters located in colleges all throughout the country. They host networking events of their own all the time, focusing on providing students of all years with valuable knowledge and connections in their fields. Some may require membership dues (as low as $10/year), but the leverage gained really pays for itself.

It is never too early to go out and gain exposure in the professional world. Show up to events, talk to everyone, be honest about where you currently are, express your interest and stay in touch. A conversation you had your freshman year might score you a job upon graduation.

2. Connecting Only With Students in the Same Major

Some of the greatest collaborations and partnerships known throughout the world began between college friends. It’s a commonly overlooked fact, but you might have a potential business partner sitting in your classroom right now. Start talking to some of your peers, and you might find that your career goals align.

Don’t just focus on connecting with students only in your major, though. Strive for compatibilities, not just similarities, so that you create a wider and more diverse network. If you’re a graphic designer with hopes of creating your own magazine and your roommate is an English major and aspiring editor, keep in touch! These are the times to form those relationships that will help carry your career forwards, so hold them close.

3. Speaking to Professors Only About Grades

Your greatest source of support and connections will sometimes come from the very individuals teaching your classes. Your professors are people who have years of experience and are more than willing to share all of that with you (otherwise they wouldn’t be teaching!).

If you have questions or would like recommendations for graduate programs or professional options, send your professors an email or talk to them after class. Set up a time during their office hours to discuss your career path; they can shed a light on any doubts or concerns you might have.

4. Keeping Circles Local

As a student, it may be tempting to keep your contacts within a few miles outside of your own home or college town, but this isn’t a wise move in the professional world. There are plenty of opportunities available to you beyond your town and state, so don’t be shy about branching out. In this age of social media and the internet, it’s easier than ever; companies located miles away are now only an email or tweet away!

Even if you aren’t contemplating relocating after college, keeping your network wide and open will lessen the risk of you missing out on a great opportunity not only within, but also beyond your own backyard.

5. Failing to Stay in Touch

Once you’ve made a connection with someone, it is essential to keep in contact with them over time, or else that connection will fade. Sending people a quick “hello” or tagging them in a relevant article with a note like “This reminds me of your work” keeps the conversation going even years after you’ve last seen each other. You don’t have to maintain in constant communication with them, but do be present and accessible.

Feel free to reach out for advice or an opinion concerning something relevant; just be sure not to ask for too much or make the conversations all about what they can do for you. Don’t worry if they don’t respond right away; recognize that they may be pretty busy, so remember to be patient. If it’s been some time since you’ve met, begin first by reminding them how you know each other, and always be sure to exercise proper social media and email etiquette in order to keep your communication professional.

So, which of these mistakes are you guilty of? The good news is, it’s never too late to fix any of them. Make the most of your life as a student and set yourself up for even greater success with strong connections and contacts. So, be bold and get that network growing!

https://www.wayup.com/guide/community/contributor-5-student-networking-mistakes-raquel-serrano/?bsft_aaid=16aef095-c60e-478d-bd63-710fbcbf3e89&bsft_eid=cab4f55b-933b-8adf-23cc-82f41c233b59&utm_campaign=11-19-21_newsletter_cs&utm_source=blognewsletter&utm_medium=email&refer=newscs-11-19-21&bsft_clkid=5cb789a1-6afb-4b8c-99a5-90e09041b88e&bsft_uid=6efd3913-fb14-4826-8640-69152160ecda&bsft_mid=79e086d9-ae16-4d3c-a1cb-a965661cad6e&bsft_mime_type=html&bsft_ek=2021-11-19T14%3A00%3A47Z&bsft_lx=9&bsft_tv=9

Sleep and productivity experts weigh in on how to get your morning mojo back; ‘Whatever you do, don’t log on to your work email’

*From the ECO: Although this article intends an audience of working parents, this applies to anyone who is working on modifying their schedule to rise earlier, post-Covid.

For the Wall Street Journal
by Rachel Feintzeig
9.06.21

First I was waiting until the kids went back to daycare. Then the deadline was the return to the office, which never came.
Here I still was: avoiding my alarm clock, stumbling out to walk the dog in my pajamas, ignoring judgmental looks from my husband as he sipped his green smoothie, 6 a.m. workout complete. Had I even brushed my teeth?
I had to face it. My mornings were a mess.
It began as a small indulgence in a strange time, the delicious pandemic sleep-in. Virtual school meant no frenzied dropoffs; remote workers ditched the commute. What else was there to do, stuck at home? A Nielsen survey from June 2020 found 54% of those working remotely were getting up later than before, compared with 12% rising earlier.
Now, on the cusp of a new season, it’s time to take back our mornings. Many kids are returning to in-person learning. Some workers are being called to the office. And even if you don’t have something making you get out of bed, now might still be the moment.
“We kind of have to just do it ourselves, because we don’t know what’s coming next,” says Eric Komo, a manager with software company Leadpages, who lives in Roseville, Minn.

In the early days of the pandemic, he took advantage of the freedom, ditching his early-morning bike ride in favor of snoozing. It took a pandemic puppy to shock him and his husband back to a better routine. Boba, the 10-pound Shih Tzu the couple got in August last year, wakes up at 6 a.m. No exceptions.
Now the couple keeps a strict 10 p.m. bedtime, and they spend their mornings sharing coffee, reading newsletters and running outside together. Mr. Komo says he feels more energized.
“Secretly we were very grateful,” he says. “It got our day started and kind of opened up time in the morning that we didn’t know we needed.”
One of Mr. Komo’s colleagues at Leadpages, Bob Sparkins, seems a little less convinced. He has loved sleeping in until 8 a.m. during the pandemic.

“I know it’s healthier,” he says of shifting to earlier mornings, as his two kids transfer from their at-home pandemic learning pod back to school. Then he recalls how packing daily lunches feels. “Sisyphean.”
Mr. Sparkins has been prepping for the transition by setting a timer on his television so it automatically turns off by 10:30 p.m.—the effectiveness of the cue varies depending on how good the show is—and filling the freezer with home-cooked, easy-to-grab food, like pancakes for quick breakfasts. He has also talked to his boss about coming in a little late. The pandemic showed flexibility doesn’t have to impact productivity, he says.
How to get going
The sleep researchers I talked to would approve. They made me feel infinitely better about my own habits—so much so that I considered sharing some of their findings with my husband, in hopes of tempering all those loving but slightly condescending looks.

“A lot of people think, ‘Oh, you’re just lazy because you get up late,’ ” says Elise Facer-Childs, a research fellow at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, who has studied 
night owls. “But there’s actually really clear scientific evidence behind these differences.”
Still, she acknowledges we’re living in a morning person’s world. To shift earlier, start by getting into bed 15 minutes earlier than usual, says Rebecca Robbins, a sleep scientist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Cut out screen time at least 30 minutes before bed, and quit with the snooze button, which just interrupts the flow of natural sleep, she says.
Once you’re up, head outside. Exposure to light will help reset your circadian rhythm. After two weeks, you’ll feel good, Dr. Robbins says.
Being awake is only half the battle. You also need a solid morning routine, says Wendy Ellin, a workplace productivity consultant based in Atlanta.
“Do you want to live accidentally or do you want to live intentionally?” she asks. “Accidentally makes me nervous.”
Her own morning routine is a 45-minute eye-opener that includes meditating, sipping hot water with lemon, writing in a gratitude journal and stretching (a regimen I find both awe-inspiring and terrifying). She promises a mere 7 minutes is enough—just think about what motivates and focuses you. Do three yoga poses, turn on your coffee machine, pet your dog. Whatever you do, don’t log on to your work email, she advises.
“It’s more people needing your attention,” she says. “That stuff just starts to swirl in your head.” Save it for when you’ve had a little time to adjust to the waking world.

Add a buffer
Earlier in the pandemic, Edwin Akrong fell into the habit of rolling out of bed and heading straight to video calls on his computer. The “cold start” was jarring, says the Brooklyn, N.Y., resident, a co-founder and chief product officer at communication startup Katch.
“You’re not in the flow,” he says.
He realized he needed a buffer between sleep and work. These days, he wakes as early as 5:30 to fit in a run before meetings with colleagues in India..

Written By: Adam Uzialko

Imagine you’re on an elevator. It stops, and the vice president of a company you want to work at steps in.

“The doors close and you have 20 or 30 seconds to grab his interest,” said Melanie Winograd, marketing specialist at IMPACT Group. “Quick! What do you say?”

This is where the elevator pitch comes in. Keep reading to find out the importance of having an elevator pitch — and how to create one that can keep just about anyone’s attention.

What is an elevator pitch?

An elevator pitch is a short, preplanned statement designed to pitch yourself or your brand. When done right, it can be your secret weapon, opening the door for additional communication.

According to Winograd, an ideal elevator pitch should provoke interest, be interesting and memorable, and last about 30 to 60 seconds (the length of an average elevator ride, hence the name). Any longer and you risk losing your audience’s attention; any shorter and you might leave out important information. You want to include details about yourself or your business that encourage open-ended questions and conversation from whomever you are pitching, she said.

Did You Know?

An elevator pitch should last less than a minute, the average length of an elevator ride.

Where do you start with a career elevator pitch?

Iris Kloth, founder of Onwards & Upwards, a career-coaching organization, uses some basic templates to help her clients form their elevator pitches. Kloth suggested considering these three questions and using your answers to create one to three sentences about yourself.

1. Who do you work with? (This applies to internal employment as well as external coaching or consulting positions.)
2. What do you do, or what role do you play?
3. What result is achieved? (Describe the change or success you bring to this role.)

Fabienne Hansoul, founder of Rise Within-Leadership Coaching, recommends using your LinkedIn profile to get started and generate ideas.

“LinkedIn lists your experience, expertise, core skills and personality traits,” she said. “These elements paint a clear picture of your strengths. Tie these key points about yourself together by sharing an accomplishment, your career objective and your skill set.”

>>Read related: How to Use LinkedIn Personally and Professionally

How long is an elevator pitch for investors?

The ideal length of your elevator pitch when you’re looking for angel investors and other funding sources (as opposed to a job opportunity) depends on your audience and not the volume of ideas you would like to get across. An elevator pitch’s role is not to introduce all the dimensions of your business concept but to stir interest.

The pitch should be intriguing and attention-grabbing, leaving your audience wanting more information. Avoid cramming too much information into the pitch, as it takes your attention away from the target audience.

Where you have more time, focus on explaining the crucial points of your business idea. Give your audience the chance to challenge your idea and ask questions so you can offer clarity. Be receptive to feedback on their areas of concern.

What are tips to prepare an elevator pitch?

When you present your pitch, you don’t want to overwhelm your audience with too many details about yourself or your business; you need a clear outline and points that are interesting and beneficial to your audience. Here are a few tips on how to craft your elevator pitch before you present it.

1. Know what you want to achieve.

Have a goal in mind for your pitch. If you’re searching for a job, your elevator pitch should present your best skills. If you intend to start a business or need more funding to expand, focus on mutual benefits to you and your audience.

2. Identify your unique proposition.

It’s important to realize that other people are hoping to get a similar position or are also pitching their business ideas. In your pitch, focus on what is unique or special about you or your idea, but make it more about the listener. [Learn how to define your unique selling proposition.]

“Remember that it’s not about you,” said Gee Ranasinha, CEO of marketing services provider KEXINO. “Put yourself in the position of the listener. Shape the value message as a solution to a problem, and keep away from technobabble and jargon. Talk about how you offer a solution to the problem without getting into under-the-hood mechanics of how it works or why it’s better than the competition. Don’t tie up every loose end — leave openings for questions.”

3. Keep your pitch concise.

Ranasinha stressed the need for concision in your pitch. You need to make your point early and clearly.

“Think of your pitch like a blog post,” Ranasinha said. “Start off with your strong headline — your value promise — and then spend the rest of the time backing up your position with evidence, case studies or testimonials.”

4. Tailor your pitch to each listener.

Ranasinha also noted that your elevator pitch shouldn’t be a static, memorized statement. Instead of regurgitating a canned speech, engage your audience by asking a question posed as a problem that your product or service solves or that you could solve if you were hired.

5. Practice delivering your pitch.

No matter how great your elevator pitch is, it will be useless if you can’t deliver it in a confident, compelling way. Take some time to practice your pitch so you know where you need to improve. Read your elevator pitch while looking in a mirror. Listen to your tone of voice and watch your facial expressions. 

Key Takeaway

When preparing an elevator pitch, be specific, offer a solution to a problem, and keep your pitch short and sweet. Get more tips for creating a perfect elevator pitch.

How and when should you use an elevator pitch?

There are several circumstances where an elevator pitch is useful. Here are some of the common scenarios.

In job interviews

There comes a time during a job interview when an employer asks you to tell them about yourself. This moment is the perfect opportunity to present the interviewer with your elevator pitch. You can summarize the work you do, your level of expertise and how your experience makes you a good fit for the position.

During individual introductions

An elevator pitch that captures who you are is essential to effective introductions. Have confidence while presenting your best skills or what you do in an organization. The right people who are interested in your skills or business idea may be present and offer you an opportunity.

At trade shows

People often visit various booths during trade shows. They don’t stick around at any one table for long, so you only have about a minute to capture an audience’s interest. That’s a great time to deliver a concise message.

Other times to use an elevator pitch include during group discussions, lunch meetings and group travel.

What is an example of an elevator pitch?

Here is an example of an elevator pitch someone might use during an introduction.

“Hi, my name is Cleo. It’s nice to meet you. I understand you have some big projects coming up and you need to help your team effectively manage its workload. Over my 10 years as a project manager, my team and I gradually developed a software platform that helps managers keep their teams organized. I’d love to talk with you about how our product can help your organization. Do you have some time to talk?”

In just a few sentences, the speaker has presented an idea to capture the audience’s interest, giving them a lot of important information in less than one minute. By ending with a question, the pitcher invites the listener to continue the conversation.

Making a great impression

When you develop an elevator pitch, consider how you want others to perceive you. Career coaches agree it’s essential to clearly communicate what you do, what your strengths are, and why you’re great at what you do. The goal is to get the audience to understand what you or your business can do for them. If you take the time to craft, edit and refine your pitch, you could turn your next unexpected meeting into a world of new opportunities.

Shayna Waltower contributed to this article. Source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article. 

you can offer.

Do you "Like" Too Much?

The ECO is excited to host ten of our amazing alumni this Thursday and Friday for the annual Economics Undergraduate Career Forum! Check out the events happening below (students, register!). We are so excited for our students to connect with these alum!

2024 Economics Undergraduate Career Forum Information:

Day 1: Thursday, March 21, 2024

- Success in the Workplace Keynote Address 5:00-6:00pm https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493527

- Dinner with Alumni at the Ridley 6:30-8:00pm https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493518

Day 2: Friday, March 22, 2024

- Panel 1: Finance from 9:30-10:45 am https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493512

- Office Hours Session 1 (Consulting) 9:30-10:40 am https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493485

- Panel 2: Consulting, Research, Entrepreneurship 11 am-12:15 pm https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493498

- Office Hours Session 2 (Finance) 11-12:10 pm https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493507

- Networking Luncheon from 12:30-2:00 pm https://virginia.joinhandshake.com/edu/events/1493532

This short course provided training on impact evaluation on quasi-experimental research. Participants learnt about important econometric techniques used in policy research design. Those techniques included but were not limited to matching, instrumental variables, propensity score weighting, regression discontinuity and panel data methods.  A separate session introduced participants to the features of randomized controlled trials.  The two days of training focused on using programming languages like STATA in hands-on empirical exercises, understanding and comparing the identification strategies associated with different econometric methods, assessing the robustness of results and learning efficient ways to report them. It was organized by the South Asian Network on Economic Modeling (SANEM). The approximately 25 participants--including young researchers from different research organizations, young faculty members from private and public universities, and central bank officials—offered very positive feedback on the program. 

In October 2019, Devaki Ghose won the Graduate Student Award at the 2019 Empirical Investigations in International Trade Conference for her paper "Trade, Internal Migration, and Human Capital: Who Gains from India's IT Boom?" A link to past student prize winners can be found here, https://www.freit.org/EIIT/2019/GradComp.php .

Yutong Chen, a fourth-year graduate student, presented her paper at the Southern Economic Association’s 2021 Meeting in Houston, TX. The paper, “Does the Gig Economy Discriminate? Evidence from Physicians in China,” finds that patients discriminate against female physicians, which leads to gender gaps on an online healthcare platform. Additionally, the platform’s ranking algorithm exacerbates gender gaps via the feedback loop.

Article from AfterCollege

Hiring managers often won’t hire a candidate because the candidate lacks energy and doesn’t show enthusiasm. You’re so anxious during an interview that it’s easy to act this way. Nervously answering a steady stream of tough interview questions squashes the passion in even the best candidates.

Interviews shouldn’t feel like interrogations. A successful interview should be a two-sided conversation so you can demonstrate your true professional self with confidence.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YRAotCZroX8Be

View our job interview webinar to get a complete list of sample interview answers and questions from career expert Courtney Young-Law: a sincere and actively engaged candidate. Here’s how to practice and prepare so you sound comfortable and not rehearsed:

Common Interview Questions

Behavioral Questions: stories about your past actions will help inform the employer how you will behave in the future.

Problem-Solving Questions: Employers ask these to understand how you process and think through a problem.

Skill-based questions:  You may be asked to demonstrate any “hard” skills in the interview by taking a test or doing a task.

Motivation Questions: They get to the “why” of your job search. Why are you leaving? Why this role? Why this organization?

What questions should you ask?

Questions that demonstrate your interest: This is where passion and enthusiasm come in. Questions are a key way to tactfully demonstrate you’re own interests and values while learning about the company. These questions will also demonstrate that you did your research.

Questions about the company to ensure they are the right move for you: Sadly, 46 percent of millennials left their last job due to lack of career growth. You want to make sure that this role and company will help you excel.

Questions that are tactical and help clarify misconceptions: Here is where you can ask about next steps, a timeline for hiring, or address any points of weakness in you as a candidate.

View our webinar to get a complete list of sample interview answers and questions from career expert Courtney Young-Law. 

Goldman Sachs, Alibaba, Think Tanks and Non-profits - Read on!

Hello Econ Majors,

As you consider your internship, externship, or job search, it can be helpful to know graduates, who have passed through Monroe Hall before you, are doing now and what they did immediately after graduating. 

The ECO recommends the following resources to help you review where recent graduates work and attend graduate school. Additionally, I've shared below resources, which more broadly, convey industry opportunities that Econ majors often pursue. With any questions, please feel free to schedule an appointment with me.

ECO First Destination Reports: Data gathered from graduate surveys and scraping data from the web.
UVA Career Outcomes Reports: Data gathered from graduate surveys and scraping data from the web (all majors).
ECO Alumni and Friends List: This list includes more than 500 economics majors, sorted by employer, who have offered to provide career advice to majors.
LinkedIn Group for Economics Majors: All majors are welcome to join this group.
LinkedIn Results of Economics Majors Query: These are the results of filtering our UVA alumni by reported major on LinkedIn. The results will populate in order of number of employees. More than 15,000 UVA LinkedIn members are affiliated with an economics major. Filter by recent graduation dates and internship information will be more accessible. Consider these employers for your own internships.
What Can I Do with an Economics Major: Lists employers by sector, industry, and job function. Includes dozens of majors to review.

Then, consider using these tools above to help you network with people in industries/job functions that interest you. Complement this research with your PathwayU results to even further refine your search. PathwayU is an online interest assessment endorsed by UVA career offices, which matches your reported interests with industries and job functions. The assessment takes about 30-45 minutes to complete and you may review the results independently or with a career advisor. 

Wishing you a fantastic week!

Jen Jones

Article written by Jennifer Loito for Forbes. 

Congratulations! You just landed a coveted summer internship at your dream company or organization. Now it’s your turn to maximize that valuable opportunity to the fullest.

Here are five tips to ensure you get the most out of your internship experience.

Invest In Relationships

The best part of any job I've ever had has always been the people. As an intern, you have incredible access to an array of interesting, talented and diverse professionals at an important moment in your budding career. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

Every person has a story to tell, and you can learn something from every person. Genuine curiosity is the bedrock of any strong professional relationship. If you’re not interested in other people–chances are they won’t be interested in you! Ask your new coworkers for coffee and dedicate time to learning about their background and experience. Prepare a list of questions in advance and be strategic and intentional about each conversation. Ten years from now, you probably won’t remember most of your internship assignments, but you will remember those early mentors, and this is one way to ensure they also remember you. Your goal should be to leave your internship with several strong professional contacts who you can rely on for professional help or use as a future reference.

You should also take time to bond with your fellow interns. Not only are these individuals in the same boat as you, they can help make or break your internship experience. At some point, you’re going to encounter a difficult day and will need a good “office bestie” in your corner. Internships can often lead to lifelong friendships. And you never know what your fellow interns will go on to achieve and how your careers might intersect in the future.

Volunteer For Everything

Not only do internships provide a great opportunity to develop tangible skills that will serve you now and in the future, they also have the power to teach you about yourself and what interests you most. You may be certain that you want to go into a particular career field, but it’s not until you’ve been exposed to other areas and experiences that you can ever be truly sure. Learning what you like–and what you dislike–is invaluable knowledge.

Seek out opportunities to learn about different departments within your company or organization. If you’re passionate about communications, go ask the operations team if they need help with any projects. If you’re certain you want to become a lawyer, don’t confine yourself to learning only about the legal department. Expand your horizon and you’ll become a more employable, well-rounded young professional.

Volunteering for projects is also one of the best ways to set yourself apart from other interns. This may require you to step up and help on projects that are unglamorous, monotonous and, yes, downright boring. Treat the worst projects with as much attention and detail as the best ones.

Employees recognize which interns consistently volunteer to help, and the more you step up and prove yourself, the more you’ll be entrusted with greater responsibilities. The best managers and executives still maintain that intern mentality and willingness to roll up their sleeves whenever duty calls. As the saying goes: never be too small to do the big things and too big to do the small things.

Master Social Cues

The COVID-19 pandemic can be measured in both lives and livelihoods. But it also cost young professionals something else: valuable exposure to in-office, professional social interaction. Now that companies and organizations are slowly returning to in-office work, young people with limited work experience are learning how to behave in an office environment for the first time.

In an age when so many of us, myself included, are glued to our screens, learning proper office etiquette and social cues is essential. Interacting with people on Zoom is very different than in person. There’s nowhere to hide, and being in-person gives you the opportunity to see how different people, with different quirks, personalities and working styles, collaborate. How do you demonstrate respect? How do you know when to speak up in a crowded meeting or appropriately challenge a superior? How do you fake interest in someone’s weekend plans at the water cooler? These soft skills will never appear on your resume, but they might dictate how far you go in your career.

Write Often

Look at any job description and there’s a good chance it mentions the importance of strong writing skills. Now, I know what you’re thinking: Why do I need to become a great writer when we have platforms like ChatGPT and Bard? While the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has changed the game, machines still lack the storytelling and emotional complexity of human beings. Yes, it’s very important to learn the strengths and shortcomings of these new platforms. But becoming a strong independent writer and storyteller will serve you well, both now and in the future.

One of the best ways to improve your writing is to write more and then ask others to critique your work. Ask around and learn which employees are considered the best writers. See if you can read their work, and even better, have them review your writing. One goal from your internship should be to walk away with a few pieces of exceptional writing that you’re proud to include in your portfolio or use as a future writing sample.

Learn To Say “Thank You”

The two most important words in any workplace are “thank you.” Learning to appropriately express gratitude in a professional setting is critical.

Use your internship as an opportunity to become an expert in crafting thoughtful electronic and handwritten thank you notes. When someone lends you their time, talent, or goes above and beyond the call of duty, find a way to acknowledge them.

A proper thank you note has a few main components. First, it must be genuine. It should include the person’s name and detail what they did and why you’re thankful for it. The note should be timely. Don’t wait weeks to send a note or email, do it the same day the action occurs.

A short message of gratitude goes a long way. Verbal feedback is nice, but nothing beats a good thank you note.

And on that note, thank you for reading!

Article written by Rebecca Zucker for Harvard Business Review

Most of us, at some point in our career, will conduct a job search — if not several of them. While it can be a time of excitement and hope about new opportunities to come, it can also be a time of great uncertainty and anxiety. Not only will you likely feel the full range of possible emotions during the course of your overall job search, but you may also experience these highs and lows in the span of a single day or week. You might be elated one moment to learn that you are a top candidate for a desired position only to be disappointed to find out that the job went to someone else — or perhaps you were unhappy with your performance in a job interview, but were later relieved to learn you’ve still made it to the next round of interviews.

The job-search process is fraught with ups and downs, not to mention the angst that comes with the uncertainty about the future of your career and livelihood. Here are a few strategies to manage the emotional rollercoaster of the job search:

Know what’s coming. The job search is a process that can be as short as several weeks, or more likely, several months. As with any other process, there are peaks and valleys. One week you have networking meetings and interviews scheduled, people are responding to your emails and you feel encouraged and hopeful — then radio silence — making you feel confused, frustrated or even helpless. Knowing from the start that you will experience these swings in activity and emotion can help prepare you to better anticipate and handle them when they do occur. In particular, when you do encounter the downward part of the cycle, you can say to yourself, “I knew there would be days where nothing is happening, and I would feel frustrated, and today is just one of those days.” When you know it’s coming, you will be less surprised or shaken by it, as well as less likely to personalize it, allowing you to rebound and move forward in your search more easily.

Process your emotions. Engaging in activities like mindful meditation or journaling can help you process negative emotions as they arise. In contrast to avoiding, suppressing or ruminating over your emotions — which are shown to be correlated to anxiety and depression — processing your emotions through mindful meditation or journaling involves actually feeling these emotions more fully. It is this ability to experience our emotions, without judging them or trying to change them, that allows us to move through them more quickly and effectively. In a classic study, unemployed engineers journaled about their thoughts and feelings related to being unemployed for just 20 minutes a day for five days. Eight months later, 52% had found new jobs compared to only 18.6% for the combined control groups. In addition, brief mindful meditation creates improved emotional processing and reduced emotional reactivity and has been shown to enhance our emotional processing, even when we’re not meditating.

Get support. Having someone to talk to throughout your job search, such as a career coach, therapist or a job-search work group can provide much-needed emotional support, beyond that of friends and family. An experienced career coach who is an expert in the job-search process can also help normalize what you are experiencing and feeling at any given phase of your search and can be a good sounding board to help guide you when you are feeling unsure of yourself or what to do next. As with a coach, a job-search work group can also help you feel a sense of partnership to help mitigate feelings of loneliness that can often arise in a job search, creating a sense of community as well as providing tangible help to advance your search.

Engage in energizing activities. Make sure your days include activities that energize you, such as exercise, listening to your favorite music or some other activity that revitalizes you. Your mood and overall energy level will show in your interactions with others, whether it’s a coffee meeting with a former colleague, a networking event or a job interview. Exercise, in particular, not only has a positive impact on mood, but also increases self-esteem, sociability, motivation and cognition and can help you be at your best. David, a client of mine, started exercising daily during his job search. He not only lost 15 pounds and three inches from his waist, but also felt mentally and physically stronger, had a greater sense of agency and was more confident going into interviews.

Put things into perspective. It’s easy to feel powerless or discouraged when things don’t progress in the job search the way we would like. Perhaps a contact hasn’t made an important introduction for you yet like she said she would, or a recruiter hasn’t gotten back to you in the timeframe he initially indicated. While you can send a friendly reminder, take a step back to think about their other possible existing priorities. Chances are, your job search isn’t in their top five priorities on any given day. Seeing this perspective can help de-personalize the situation and mitigate the negative emotions surrounding it.

Roberta, another client of mine, was deeply depressed when her job search hit the one-year mark after she lost her Finance job in the last recession. Her depression, while understandable, created an unproductive cycle of negative thoughts and feelings which kept her paralyzed in her search. I asked her what “Roberta 20 years in the future” would say about her year of unemployment. Without hesitation, she said, “Oh, it’s a blip.” This “it’s a blip” perspective allowed Roberta to emerge from her depressed feelings to not only envision a more successful future, but she also was able to move forward much more productively, and ultimately landed another job as a partner at top-performing investment management firm. Feelings are temporary, as are many of the situations that create them (such as a job search). Seeing these challenges as impermanent is a key part of being optimistic, which is associated with higher levels of motivation, achievement, well-being and lower levels of depressive symptoms.

Using the strategies above can help make the inevitable shifts between the highs and lows of the job search more manageable as well as help you to stay motivated and productive for the duration of the ride.

Amzad Hossain was one of 4 graduate students recently awarded a GIDI iGrant by UVA's Global Infectious Diseases Institute, which supports faculty and graduate student research aimed at reducing the impact of infectious diseases around the globe. He will use the fellowship to further his research on mother and child mortality in Bangladesh. More specifically, Amzad says that he will collaborate with Moogdho Mahzab (a 4th year Economics PhD student) "to examine the effects of community-based health clinics on child health outcomes such as take-up of vaccines to prevent infectious diseases and neo-natal mortality. The government of Bangladesh in 1998 introduced a policy to establish 13,500 community clinics spread all over the country. Each community clinic (CC) was to provide various services including maternal & neonatal health care services for around 6,000 people. We will exploit the variation in the policy with regard to community clinics--its introduction, withdrawal and subsequent reintegration--to identify the effects of community clinics on health outcomes. As the search for effective ways to improve health outcome continues, our findings can be of great relevance for stakeholders and policy makers."

GROWTH SPOTLIGHT: VICE

Uncubed, a UVA-founded tech/recruitment company in NYC specializing in helping undergraduates find employment in tech firms, hosts webinars on diverse topics. The ECO encourages you to check out Uncubed's website to learn more about the best in class and up-and-coming tech firms that are hiring!  And they host a huge career fair each fall in NYC. Read on...

VICE's rise from Canadian counter-culture rag to multi-billion dollar global media empire is an astounding tale of growth. 

But with that scale comes great complexity. Including the technical challenges of serving up VICE's signature content - from a look at rising cannabis use among senior citizens to the emotional toll of shopping online – in 35 countries and nearly 20 languages. 

Hear how the company handles this and learn about VICE's inner workings from Jessica Brown, Direct of UX, and others. 

Watch Now. 

(This is the latest video in Uncubed's collaboration with Amazon Web Services, where we talk with the people building the world's most impactful brands.) 

Haruka Takayama presented her  job market paper, "Greenfield or Brownfield? Firm FDI Choice and Intangible Capital," in the "Understanding Foreign Investment" session.  Melissa Spencer presented two papers. The first paper, "Safer Sex? The Effect of AIDS Risk on Birth Rates," was selected by UVA to represent the department in the meeting's graduate student sessions. The second paper, "The Effect of Tasers on Fatal Police Encounters," was selected for a session on policing sponsored by the Committee for the Status of Women in the Economics Profession. 

"My bet is anyone born during the 1970s likely does it at least 10 times a day. Anyone born during the 1980s likely does it at least 20 times a day. And anyone born after 1990 probably has no clue that they do it close to 100 times a day. What I'm referring to is using the word "like," and using it incorrectly at that. And, like, it is not such a good thing. In fact, it is likely, like, hurting you in, like, interviews, meetings, and, like, pretty much any other work-related setting where you have to speak. Here's why: When you use the word "like" as a filler word or improperly, you typically come across as unengaged in what you're speaking about, unintelligent, nervous, indecisive, and as someone who's lacking a mastery of the English language."-Derek Loosvelt

Click here to read the rest of the article

The Macro Financial Modeling (MFM) Summer Session, organized by the University of Chicago's Becker-Friedman Institute, is designed for early-career professionals and doctoral students in economics and related fields who are interested in developing enhanced macroeconomic models with linkages to the financial sector. Diego Legal-Cañisá, who participated in the 2018 Session,  reports that it was "an excellent opportunity to receive feedback on my research from a wide range of top scholars with similar research interests. I did a poster presentation which allowed me to practice explaining my research and preliminary results and answering questions clearly and concisely. I received insightful comments and recommendations, such as suggestions of additional exercises I could perform and connections I could make to other related areas. In addition, the MFM was a great opportunity to learn more about frontier research in macro-finance from top scholars and to listen to inspiring keynote talks by Lars Hansen, Christopher Sims, Andrew W. Lo, and Harald Uhlig, to name a few. Last but not least, it was a great opportunity to exchange experiences about academic life with colleagues and gather resources pertaining to conferences and internship opportunities, job market tips, and other useful resources that will help me develop as a researcher."

Article from Handshake Blog 

Get ready to ace your next job interview with these essential tips! Learn how to research the company, practice your answers, and more.

Preparing for an interview can be nerve-wracking, but with the right mindset and a few key strategies, you can set yourself up for success. Whether you're applying for your dream job or just looking to improve your interview skills, there are a few steps you can take to make sure you're fully prepared and confident on the big day.

1. Research the Company

Before you walk into an interview, it's important to have a good understanding of the company and the role you're applying for. Spend some time researching the company's mission, values, and culture, as well as any recent news or developments that might be relevant to your interview. This information can help you tailor your answers and demonstrate your interest in the company.

2. Review the Job Description

Make sure you thoroughly review the job description and understand the responsibilities and qualifications required for the position. This will help you prepare thoughtful answers that align with the company's expectations and demonstrate your fit for the role. It's also a good idea to think about any relevant experiences or skills you can highlight during the interview.

3. Practice Your Answers

One of the best ways to prepare for an interview is to practice your answers to common interview questions. This can help you feel more comfortable and confident during the actual interview. You can find lists of common interview questions online and practice answering them aloud or with a friend. Be sure to focus on answering the question directly and succinctly, while also demonstrating your skills and experience.

4. Dress Appropriately

Make sure you dress appropriately for the interview, taking into account the company's culture and dress code. It's always better to err on the side of dressing too professionally, rather than too casually. Make sure your clothes are clean and wrinkle-free, and that your hair and makeup (if applicable) are neat and tidy.

5. Arrive Early

Plan to arrive at least 10-15 minutes early for your interview. This will give you time to check in with the receptionist, use the restroom, and calm your nerves before the interview. If you're unsure of the location or parking situation, do a test run ahead of time to avoid any last-minute surprises.

6. Bring a Copy of Your Resume

Make sure you bring a copy of your resume, along with any other relevant documents or certifications. This shows that you're organized and prepared, and can also help refresh your memory if you need to reference any past experiences or accomplishments during the interview.

7. Follow Up

After the interview, send a thank-you note or email to the interviewer. This shows that you're interested in the position and appreciate the opportunity to interview. You can also use this as an opportunity to reiterate your interest in the company and emphasize any relevant skills or experiences that you may have overlooked during the interview.

Interview Prep Tips

Listen Carefully

Listen carefully to the interviewer's questions and make sure you understand them before answering. Take a moment to gather your thoughts and give a clear, concise response. If you're unsure of the question, ask for clarification.

Be Authentic

Be yourself during the interview and let your personality shine through. Authenticity can make you stand out from other candidates and help the interviewer get a sense of your fit with the company culture.

Show Enthusiasm

Show enthusiasm and passion for the position and the company. This demonstrates your commitment and can make a positive impression on the interviewer.

Follow Professional Etiquette

Follow professional etiquette during the interview, such as greeting the interviewer with a firm handshake, maintaining appropriate eye contact, and avoiding interrupting or talking over the interviewer.

Practice Good Posture

Maintain good posture during the interview to convey confidence and professionalism. Sit up straight with your shoulders back and your feet firmly on the ground. Avoid fidgeting or slouching, which can convey nervousness or lack of confidence.

Showcase Your Accomplishments

Don't be shy about highlighting your accomplishments and successes during the interview. Use specific examples to illustrate your skills and experience, and explain how they would be beneficial to the company.

Research the Interviewer

If possible, research the interviewer ahead of time to gain insight into their background and interests. This can help you build rapport and establish common ground during the interview.

Be Prepared for Behavioral Questions

Be prepared to answer behavioral questions that ask you to provide specific examples of how you've handled certain situations in the past. Use the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result) to structure your answers.

Be Prepared to Address Weaknesses

Be prepared to address any weaknesses or gaps in your experience or skills. Provide honest, constructive feedback on how you're working to improve, and demonstrate a willingness to learn and grow.

Show Gratitude

Show gratitude throughout the interview process, from thanking the receptionist to expressing your appreciation to the interviewer. This demonstrates your professionalism and leaves a positive impression. After the interview, follow up with a thank-you note or email to reiterate your appreciation.

In conclusion, preparing for an interview requires a bit of research and planning, but it's well worth the effort. By following these tips, you can demonstrate your skills and experience, showcase your interest in the company, and ultimately land your dream job. Good luck!

Meet America’s Best Employers For Diversity 2022

Jared Council

Forbes Staff

I cover stories at the intersection of business and race

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Apr 26, 2022,09:45am EDT

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Over the past two years, the focus on racial disparities has put a spotlight on several industries. The impact of Covid-19 on the lives and livelihoods of Black families has raised questions about healthcare equity. The economic fallout for Black workers and Black-owned businesses has once again illustrated the need for financial inclusion and access to capital. Meanwhile, remote learning has turned attention to the disparities in resources and academic outcomes for students in underserved communities.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that those sectors have been laggards in embracing the importance of racial diversity in serving the underserved. However, the devastating impact of Covid-19, combined with heightened attention to racial inequities following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020, appears to be having some impact. Although far from sufficient, those sectors made the greatest gains in addressing one of the key factors in advancing representation in Forbes’ 2022 list of America’s Best Employers for Diversity.

This year’s list features a higher proportion of companies in banking and financial services, the healthcare and social sector, and education. Each sector increased its presence on the 500-company list, with each making up 8% of the list versus 6% last year.

“The impact of Covid-19 took the world by storm and revealed the magnitude of inequalities that exist in communities of color, especially Black- and minority-owned businesses,” John Patton, head of U.S. diversity and inclusion at TD Bank, told Forbes in an email. “To stay on track and continue on our path to diversify talent across the organization, we’ve enhanced our focus on diversity and inclusion and we report on our progress annually as part of our Environment, Social and Governance Reporting suite.”

This commitment helped earn TD Bank No. 9 on our fifth annual list of America’s Best Employers for Diversity. Forbes partnered with market research firm Statista to survey 60,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees and pinpoint the companies they identified as most dedicated to diversity, equity and inclusion. Respondents were asked to rate their organizations on criteria such as age, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation equality, as well as that of general diversity. More than 10,000 companies were reviewed and roughly 2,000 were given a diversity score, which takes into account surveys of a firm’s diverse employees and its publicly disclosed information about representation.

Statista found that some of the best-performing companies on the list have tangible action plans and initiatives aimed at providing support and representation for diverse employees. That includes initiatives such as leadership programs that target underrepresented groups and women. According to Statista, 16% of researched companies had women CEOs, and 31% had executive leadership and board positions filled by women. More than 55% had an executive leadership position with the explicit task of promoting diversity and inclusion.

Despite the progress companies have reported in increasing diversity, much work remains. A case in point is ChristianaCare in Newark, Delaware, which set a goal in July 2020 to grow the number of people of color in leadership roles there by 15% in three years.

Caregivers from ChristianaCare's Pride Employee Resource Group and Inclusion & Diversity department celebrated Pride Month with a special flag-raising ceremony on ChristianaCare campuses to symbolize the organization's commitment to diversity and inclusion of the LGBTQIA+ community. 

Ranked at No. 40 on the list, the company is on track, growing to 46 from 41 since July 2020, a 12% increase. However, the percentage of non-white employees ranked at or above director level actually got smaller, from 15.9% that summer to 14.7% today. In other words, the growth rate for managers of color was slower than that of the overall pool.

“I saw this 12% increase, and I got excited. And then I saw that the overall percentage went down, and I stopped being excited,” says Pamela Ridgeway, the chief diversity officer and vice president of talent at the 13,000-employee healthcare system. She says she’s encouraged, though, and that experience taught her to celebrate wins and set new targets.

The healthcare industry is under pressure to improve DEI-related outcomes given some of its glaring racial disparities in health outcomes, such as higher death rates for Black women in maternal care. The mandate for many DEI healthcare leaders has included lowering racial disparities within employee and patient populations, and the belief is that the former can help with the latter.

“We are bad to Black patients, and we’re bad to Latino patients,” says José Rodríguez, associate vice president for health equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Utah Health system, referring generally to outcomes in the healthcare industry. The Rocky Mountain-based healthcare system ranked No. 41. “However, there’s emerging data that shows when you have more Black providers, the health outcomes for your Black patients go up. And the same is true for your Latino population. So we’re working to end disparities.”

Progressive Insurance and technology company VMware ranked first and second, respectively, on the list this year, up last year from No. 20 for Progressive and No. 11 for VMware. Progressive’s DEI related efforts include a “Dare to Disagree” diversity workshop, while VMware has won acclaim for its efforts around disability inclusion.

Adobe, which ranked No. 6, has a number of efforts underway, including partnerships with historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-serving Institutions, and the Equity and Advancement Initiative. The latter initiative involves collaborating with 11 nonprofit organizations and is designed in part to foster discussions around issues of importance to diverse populations, such as voter rights.

“We really want to make sure we create an ecosystem outside of Adobe that enables us to see around corners,” says Brian Miller, chief talent, diversity and inclusion officer at Adobe. “So where companies can get very reactive … we wanted to start creating organizations that allow us to get in front of that conversation and then tie them to our employee networks.”

For the full list of America’s Best Employers For Diversity, click here.

Methodology

To determine the list, Statista surveyed 60,000 Americans working for businesses with at least 1,000 employees. All the surveys were anonymous, allowing participants to openly share their opinions. Respondents were first asked to rate their organizations on criteria such as age, gender, ethnicity, disability and sexual orientation equality, as well as that of general diversity. These responses were reviewed for potential diversity gaps. Statista then asked respondents belonging to underrepresented groups to nominate organizations other than their own. The final list ranks the 500 employers that not only received the most recommendations but also boast the most diverse boards and executive ranks and the most proactive diversity and inclusion initiatives. The survey period ran from September to October 2021.

How to plan your networking strategy.

Network, Network, Network!

By: Rebecca King-Newman

This article was taken from Firsthand

You know the old saying it’s not what you know, it’s who you know? One of the many things your law school does for you is set up networking events to allow students to interact with active lawyers. So, why should you network when you have already been in class all day and you have three papers to write? You should go because you want those attorneys to know you.

School Yourself

Your school sets up formal or informal events to connect the community and alumni with current students. They know that these events help create opportunity for both the attorney and the student. You may think it’s just another stuffy event to make the school look good, but it’s the perfect way to make in-person connections you wouldn’t otherwise make.

These events are also great practice for those on-campus interviews. Since they are usually informal, even if a suit and tie are required, they are not rigorous interviews that you need days to prepare for. Rather, they are a chance to meet people already practicing. Maybe there will be someone attending that is in the specialized field you think you want to target. Maybe there is someone present that works for that firm you covet a position with. No matter what, there will be someone at the event that will make attending worthwhile.

Another simple way to network is to join a student organization or two in law school. Most organizations will have a faculty advisor you can get to know outside of the classroom. Your fellow classmates can also surprise you. You will meet a diverse group of people, likely from all different parts of the country and world, who you may not normally socialize with. Those classmates can open doors to other interests and people that you might not have thought about. And that professor you feared and/or dreaded being in class with? He may be really funny or down to earth outside the classroom, and you can connect in a different way.

Speaking of professors and faculty, don’t overlook getting to know them, too! Many schools have professors with a wide swath of knowledge outside their current position. Most law school professors did not jump right into teaching. They had careers in the law before coming to teach, which means they have friends and associates from that practice life that can be beneficial to your future career. Hit up their office hours or invite them to lunch. Professors got into teaching because they want to help students, and this is your opportunity to reach out on a one-on-one level and get their help. You may find that one professor is more helpful than another, but give it a try and see who you connect with and who provides you with guidance.

Don’t forget to look at more fun, informal events. Many law schools will host casual meetups at local bars and restaurants, or golf outings with alumni and friends. Even though you have not graduated yet, these events are another opportunity to mingle with those already in the workforce. You may realize a person you admired is very approachable when they are in a restaurant as opposed to the corporate office. Seeing people you may be working for and with outside of the office is a good way to read how you interact with them—and how they interact with you and other students.

Don’t stop at events only put on by the law school. There are other non-traditional events and outside school events that can benefit your future career. Most law schools are attached to an undergrad university or college. Go to Homecoming events and start talking! You’ll be amazed who you meet and what industry they are in. And if a person is loyal enough to the school to come back for Homecoming—they’re loyal to fellow students and alumni. That can bode well for future career connections.

Go Off Campus

Many local and state bar associations also welcome law students to come to their meetings and events. This is especially useful when you want to practice in the same location as your law school. Attorneys love to promote themselves and their work, so start up a conversation with someone at a bar event, and you will likely come away knowing a lot about that person, the practice and the firm.

Think about attending continuing legal education (CLE) events. You don’t need to start racking up CLE credit yet, but many events will allow law students to attend for little or no cost. CLE sessions will teach you more about the real practice of law in the area you may have an interest in. Let’s face it, law school teaches you the mechanics of law, but at a CLE, you are learning about real life issues that come out of the actual practice. Usually they include case law updates, which are invaluable in your practice area. These events also address common issues in the area of law and how local attorneys are addressing them. Again, there is always someone to meet and learn about by attending.

Get Social

Social media is also an important way to network. Many schools have alumni pages and groups on Facebook where events are posted, and questions are asked. Twitter and Facebook often are informal and are a good way to learn about people and their careers. LinkedIn is also a way to connect in a more professional setting. LinkedIn also is a valuable tool to read company profiles, find out who works at a firm from your school, and see the job opportunities that are available. Make sure your social media presence is fit for the job, too. Check your settings on who can view your profiles, and clean up any older, less flattering posts. Many firms have people who will look at your online social media presence to make sure there are no red flags. Law school is a transitional phase of your life, where you are trying to form your future legal career. Remember the old lawyer joke that you should post like someone will read it later in court!

Making connections doesn’t have to be restricted to law-related events and organizations. If you like a certain charity or organization, volunteer and get involved. If politics is your thing, join the local party organization and attend their events and lunches. Recreational groups are also an excellent way to get out and meet people. Running clubs, biking groups, and cooking classes are all ways to meet people in the community and enlarge your circle. While it may not be traditional networking, from a law student perspective, you may be surprised at how adept you become at meeting new people and striking up conversations naturally, which will pay off for that more formal networking event or interview.

Know Before You Go

So now that you have decided to check out some of these events, despite your busy school schedule, what things do you need to do to prepare? First of all, know the audience. Is this an event put on by the school? If so, see if you can find out who may be in attendance. Do some homework on those attorneys and organizations before you go, but not with the aim of turning this into a full-fledged interview. Rather, you want to at least know a little about the person and firm before striking up a conversation.

Another thing to find out is if the event is formal or informal. Is a suit going to be required, or is business casual more appropriate? If it is an informal event, make sure you wear something appropriate and not your favorite sweatpants. Will there be food and drink provided? If so, make sure to curtail your drinking so you are presenting yourself in a responsible manner.

Don’t forget to brush up and practice your elevator speech. It may seem silly to practice out loud, but reciting the speech in your voice—and even to yourself into a mirror—helps you hone the message and make sure you come off as genuine. Make the speech how you normally would speak, and not like you were writing it out for submission. This is your chance to make an impression on someone who will be back to school for that on-campus interview, or someone who makes important hiring decisions at a firm.

Keep an open mind when you attend these events. You may go into it thinking you really want to meet a certain partner because she works at the firm where you want to work. After meeting this partner, you may realize she is not a fit with what you initially thought about the firm. Then you may turn around and meet someone else at the event you did not think you would want to meet, and find out that firm or that person does exactly what you want to do. Law school is as much about finding out what you like as what you do not like. If you go into the event with an open mind, you may surprise yourself on what you discover. Don’t forget to ask for a business card or contact information.

Networking can be fun and the most interesting part of law school. It can teach you a lot about people, firms, and yourself. If you make it a priority to network almost as much as you study, the rewards will be tenfold. It will help you be prepared for that on-campus interview. It will open your world to people and places you want to work, and maybe some that you want to avoid. Networking will round out that law school experience and get you outside the classroom. So, get that elevator speech ready, wear your best attire for the event, and have fun!

Hello Majors!

Networking, building relationships! This blog is about this daunting, exciting, intimidating, and rewarding process of building connections.

I recently connected with 1990 econ alum Brian Ramsay, President of private equity firm, Littlejohn & Co. I met Brian through Professor Elzinga. Brian had written to Professor Elzinga because he had been interviewed on a podcast (link below) where he discussed the power of weak ties, something those of you who took Econ 2010 with Professor Elzinga may remember from lectures. Through this email, Professor Elzinga connected Brian and me at the ECO and now I'm sharing Brian's remarks about networking with you. And, it is my hope that in the coming year, Brian will spend time with our majors in the department in-person or virtually. This story demonstrates perfectly the power of networking and building relationships. (During the podcast, you'll also learn about private equity from Brian and the importance of financial analysis skills and . To reach Brian's networking remarks, skip to the 10:00 minute mark.) So much of the work that the ECO undertakes is to set the table for you to join the conversation with our economics alumni and employers.  And while we all have independent networks, which are forged from the building blocks of our own families, friends, and experiences outside of UVA, our goal in the ECO is to share the cultural wealth of our UVA community. We will talk much more about this together in ECO programs and individual advising, but for now, take a listen to Brian Ramsay's interview with "Top of the Pile."

https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/top-of-the-pile/career-path-private...

Then, take action and reach out to one professional to practice your informational interviewing. This could be a relative, family friend, friend's family member, your family physician...you get the picture. Use these links to draft your email/phone call script to secure the meeting and then this link to prepare for the call. Send me a message to let me know how it goes!  We will include your comments in an upcoming newsletter.

And, please believe me that asking for help now from alumni and other professionals is completely appropriate and expected. The day will come when you will pay it forward by helping upcoming majors who will be in the shoes you once filled.

Link to How to Write a Networking Email That Gets Results

One week Business Lab in D.C. for Majors!

"Every year, Vault surveys thousands of investment banking professionals, asking them to tell us about life at their firms. We ask about culture, compensation, hours, training, and many more areas, including the hiring process. With respect to the hiring process, we ask professionals which traits an ideal job candidate needs to have to get hired. In the past, and again this year, banking professionals told us that the following traits are highly important (and, in some cases, required): a strong work ethic, team-playing ability, strong communication skills, strong technical skills, superior intellect, excellent problem-solving skills, and the ability to adapt to different situations." -Derek Loosvelt 

Click here to read the rest of the article. 

1. Why did you choose to study economics? 

A month into my first semester, Professor Elzinga gave a lecture in ECON 201 that changed the course of my college trajectory. The topic—rational consumer behavior—was neither inspiring nor profound, but the lesson stuck. I found myself measuring the costs of a good in terms of its next best alternative, ignoring sunk costs when I made a decision, and seeing applications of economics everywhere. Drawn to this “economic way of thinking” during my first months of school, I attended my professors’ office hours, participated in behavioral experiments in the VEcon Lab, and even went water-skiing with Professor Elzinga. As I pursued economics further in subsequent semesters, I was struck by its systematic explanations for the world around me—everything from business strategies to Congressional voting procedures to income inequality. I was fascinated by these questions and the way that economics answered them, and there was no turning back! 

2. What courses/ professors have been particularly influential and why? 

This question is a tough one, because there have been so many! I'm grateful to Mr. Elzinga for his wise counsel, steadfast mentorship, and the way that he constantly challenges me. His ECON 201 class first drew me to the subject, and since then I've had the pleasure of learning from him in his Antitrust seminar and through an independent study on the intersection of economic thought and Christian theology. I'm grateful to Mr. Coppock for his encouragement and natural gift for relating to students. His Public Choice seminar was incredibly interesting and stimulating, and it remains by favorite class to date. I'm grateful to Mr. Holt for his patience, kindness, and willingness to invest in my academic potential. Learning from his expertise in experimental economics has been a true privilege. And the list goes on! I'm grateful to Mr. Olsen for guiding me through my first research project, to Mr. Burton for connecting me wonderful people and opportunities in the Department, to Ms. Turner for her amazing dedication to her students' flourishing, and to many others who have invested in me. 

3. What makes the economics department special? 

As my previous answer demonstrates, the faculty in the economics department have made all the difference to me. They create an atmosphere in which freedom of inquiry flourishes and opportunities abound. During my time in the department, I've particularly enjoyed the opportunity to conduct research. Last year, I completed an independent study in which I used Stata to estimate the efficiency gains of housing vouchers as opposed to public housing. Additionally, I work as a Research Assistant in the VEcon Lab, exploring ways that human behavior either aligns with or deviates from economic theory. In addition to these pursuits, I've also gained immense value from the opportunity to serve as a Teaching Assistant in introductory economics courses. Teaching is a great responsibility and privilege, and helping my students grasp the discipline’s most fundamental principles reminds me of why I fell in love with economics in the first place.

4. How did you spend your summer between third and fourth year? (This language has been changed. Former question asked “How did you spend last summer?” Or, we may mention in the heading that these responses were collected while you were a student and now you are an Associate with BCG.)

I had a fantastic summer interning for BCG in their DC office. My role as a Summer Associate involved collaborating with my case team to strategically simplify the organizational structure of a large tech firm. Day to day, I spent good deal of my time building models on Excel, creating Powerpoint decks for client presentations, and performing data analysis with my team. At the most basic level, my task was to solve problems, and both the content of the work and the atmosphere of the office made my job both stimulating and sustainable. I have no doubt that the experiences the Economics Department has provided me differentiated me as a job candidate, and Jen Jones and the ECO office were enormously valuable to me as I navigated the job recruitment process. Furthermore, once I began my internship, it became abundantly clear that the critical thinking that I learn through my economics coursework would help me succeed in the Associate role. I am looking forward to returning to BCG as a full-time Associate next year. 

5. What is the most interesting thing you've done in the Department?

Serving as one of the first undergraduate Teaching Assistant for introductory economics courses has been and continues to be an incredible privilege and learning opportunity. Standing in front of a classroom twice each week, I’ve learned to present economics concepts in creative ways. I’ve learned to establish credibility by coming prepared for class and by speaking with confidence. I’ve learned to establish approachability by adding lighthearted elements to my lessons and being transparent about any mistakes I make. Working one-on-one with my students, I’ve learned the joys of helping others succeed. I’ve learned to help my students work out practice problems themselves, rather than just listen to me explain them. I’ve learned to exhibit patience and encouragement in the face of my students’ frustration and disappointment, particularly after midterms. 

As a returning TA this year, my goal is been to use these lessons to both improve upon my teaching and to be a leader among new undergraduate TAs. I seek to be a role model by putting my students’ needs above my own. Whether it means putting extra effort into planning interactive lessons, sacrificing time to meet outside of my office hours, or simply demonstrating to my students how much I care about their success, my role as a Teaching Assistant continues to be my most meaningful University involvement. 

Another Career Fair Approaches! New Job Postings! Economics Career Forum!

Recent college graduates, I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that fewer employers than ever care about entry-level candidates’ GPAs—so all those exam and assignment grades that had you camping out in the library are worth less than you may have thought. 

The good news is that fewer employers than ever care about entry-level candidates’ GPAs—so the actual knowledge and skills you gained from your education and other experiences matter way more than the numbers on your transcript.

According to a new report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), 37% of employers intend on screening recent grad applicants by GPA—down from a recent high of 73.3% just a few years ago.

As a recent grad, you’re probably more aware than anybody that grades aren’t necessarily a reflection of how much you learned in school or what you’re capable of in a work environment. This shift “signals a recognition that screening by GPA may weaken efforts to build an inclusive workforce as it can put students who are balancing school with work and other responsibilities at a disadvantage in the job market,” NACE executive director Shawn VanDerziel said in a press release.

So what are employers looking for in recent grads? The skills and abilities that you’ll actually use in the workplace. Here are the attributes that the most employers ranked as very/extremely important for the 2022-2023 recruiting year:

1. Problem-solving skills (61.4% of employers said this was very or extremely important): Employers want workers who can identify issues and come up with solutions. Regardless of what your major was, you likely had to evaluate different aspects of an issue or question, decide on possible methods for finding an answer or drawing a conclusion, execute on one of these methods, and back up your decisions—all vital components of problem-solving.
2. Ability to work in a team (61%): Those group projects were good for something. You can also use team sports and other group extracurriculars to demonstrate your ability to work well with others.
3. Strong work ethic (52.4%): You just finished college, and you may have managed part-time jobs and/or extracurriculars on top of that. So you know how to work hard and get things done. (Read more about how to demonstrate soft skills—like work ethic—in your job search.)
4. Analytical/quantitative skills (50.4%): These are the skills that help you find, evaluate, and synthesize information to make decisions and/or solve problems. For example, in college you may have had to analyze data for science or business courses, or you may have had to choose the right sources and incorporate them into a research project or paper.
5. Communication skills (50%): Communication skills encapsulates any way you might share or receive information from others. In college you participated in class discussions, put together presentations, sent emails, and submitted written assignments like papers and lab reports.
6. Technical skills (50%): Technical skills are the ability to use certain pieces of technology or specific methods or techniques, such as creating formulas in Excel, coding in Javascript, or optimizing conversion rates for a marketing campaign. As a recent college grad you definitely have some already and and can likely pick up more of them quickly.

Bonus tips for showing off your skills as a recent grad

So how do you show companies that you have these skills and qualities? Here are a few pointers for your resume, cover letter, interview, and overall job hunt:

1. Figure out what a specific company wants by closely reading the job description they’ve posted. Then, tailor your resume and other application materials to emphasize the skills you have that matter most for this job.
2. Leverage internships and part-time jobs. These experiences show that you have the professional skills necessary to thrive in a full-time role. In fact, the NACE report found that relevant internship experience is the top deciding factor when there are two equally qualified recent grads competing for a position.
3. Don’t restrict experience to paid work. Volunteer experience, extracurricular activities, projects, and coursework are all ways you could have acquired and used the skills employers are looking for. So mention that fundraising event you organized for a local hospital or the project that sent you out into the field to observe wildlife behavior.
4. Don’t skip the cover letter. Cover letters can be hard to write, but even when they’re optional, they’re almost always worth it. You can use your cover letter to give specific examples of when you’ve used the skills an employer is looking for and connect your education and past experience to the entry-level role you want.
5. Prepare for your interview. Be ready to answer common interview questions and prep a few stories that show how you’ve used skills and demonstrated qualities employers are looking for.

By Andy Meeks

Imagine, for a moment, how much time a day you spend uninterrupted with family members. Got it? Now go ahead and double it. That, friends, is roughly how much time every single day the average Netflix user spends bingeing content.

It’s an estimate that comes via Streaming Observer, which found that the average Netflix user now spends a little more than an hour a day streaming content on the service. Which adds up to some 434 hours, the equivalent of 18 days, over the course of a year.

Here’s how the site arrived at those numbers. “At the end of last year, the company announced that its users streamed 140 million hours of content per day. At the time, there were 117.58 million subscribers. Simple math shows that dividing 140 million hours of content watched daily by 117.58 million subscribers results in the average user spending 1 hour and 11 minutes each day watching content on Netflix.”

One hour and 11 minutes doesn’t sound so bad, until you put it up against the roughly 36 minutes of quality, distraction-free time that other studies have found people spend with family members each day.

Here’s a closer look at what Streaming Observer has found:

“Recent studies have found that families only spend anywhere from 34 to 37 minutes of quality, undistracted time (e.g. time where they “feel they actually bond”) together on a typical day,” Streaming Observer notes. “Let’s average that out to 35.5. That means the typical subscriber spends about half as much quality time with their family as they do with Netflix.”

But there’s more. Again, these are all rough estimates, but according to the most recent annual edition of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey, the Streaming Observer data also shows that Netflix users generally spend a lot more time bingeing than they do exercising, reading and hanging out with friends. Combined!

The crazy thing is that even with numbers like this, and with Netflix binges eating up so much of users’ time already, the company’s CEO Reed Hastings thinks the company still doesn’t own enough of its users’ day. “We’re still a small fraction of every society’s overall viewing,” he said on a call with investors earlier this summer. “So I think there’s still room to go there.”

Indeed, the company is still working to grow as much and as fast as it can. During the most recent quarter, Netflix reported 130 million global subscribers, up 25 percent from 104 million in the year-ago quarter.

Per Zacks Equity Research, Netflix is hoping to add 650,000 subscribers in the U.S. and a little more than 4 million internationally in the third quarter.

Read more