A few books have been written about this subject, most notably Change Your Career: Transitioning to the Nonprofit Sector by Laura Gassner-Otting and The Idealist Guide to Nonprofit Jobs for Sector Switchers by Steven Joiner. (My book, Jobs That Matter: Find a Stable, Fulfilling Career in Public Service, touches on this as well). The main … Continue reading
Questions to ask before applying to grad school
Continuing on a prior post about whether to pursue additional graduate school, here are some basic questions you should ask before applying to a graduate program: What are the employment outcomes of their graduates? Can they point to specific successes? Beyond the nice success stories, what is the average grad doing—what percentage got jobs in … Continue reading
Pick up the phone
Pick up the phone I recently gave away my old futon mattress on Craigslist (thanks, Craig!). Why does this have to do with job searching? I posted the listing in the “free stuff” section. As anyone knows who has ever posted anything in that section, you are immediately inundated with random emails and calls from … Continue reading
The job market is scary. Should I stay in school?
I get this question from time to time. I have to be careful not to get judgmental with my answer, because, ironically, I am a classic example of someone who stayed in school to avoid the job market, and for whom it worked out great. I was an anthropology major as an undergrad, and I … Continue reading
Public Speaking: Stand & Deliver
I’ve been coaching candidates for the Presidential Management Fellowship’s in-person assessment lately, and one part of the assessment process is a 5-minute policy presentation which each candidate must deliver in front of a panel of judges. Public speaking is, for many people, scarier than watching Aliens while on PCP. Scarier than jumping out of a … Continue reading
Handling illegal interview questions
One of my job-seeking clients recently had an interview in which the employer asked her a question about her race/ethnicity. It was for a position that required a lot of cross-cultural understanding, and my guess is that the employer wanted to know whether the candidate had the cross-cultural skills needed for the job. However, employers … Continue reading
Did you get a job offer? Or just a nice conversation?
Once in a while, I hear from a job seeker who has a very nice conversation with an employer, and hears something like “When can you start?” or “I think you’ll fit in well here.” These sound like job offers, but they are not necessarily job offers. It is quite dangerous to make an assumption … Continue reading
Civil Service Hiring: The State of New York
This post may be one of the longer ones I’ve written because the hiring process for New York State is so different from the private sector process. It is what I would call a “classic civil service” process, in which networking or personal connections will do absolutely no good—and this deliberate removal of any internal … Continue reading
Federal hiring reform, round 2
As those who follow the intricacies of federal hiring already know, the Merit Systems Protection Board found that the Federal Career Intern Program (FCIP) violated merit systems principles because positions were not advertised enough to allow veterans to apply, and thus violated veteran’s preference. (For those not familiar with federal hiring, this last sentence will … Continue reading
Tips for Phone interviews
Congrats! You have a phone interview. There are plusses and minuses of phone interviews. These days, I would ask if you can do a video-based interview via Skype so you can at least see your interviewers. But if not, you can prep for a phone interview a few ways. The main advantage of a phone … Continue reading
Heather Krasna, PhD & Associates 