Government Job Search: Part Two

The months passed by. I was getting very anxious. Since January, when I first applied I had heard nothing. It was mid May. All the effort in perfecting my resume, getting the right references, listing everyone of my accomplishments to date, was held in the balance on an online website.

Soon I would have to go another direction. It is never good to just hope for a job and wait for it to come to you and this is exactly what I was doing by waiting for this job. The time for me to go and search for a summer job, even though it may not be where I wanted, was growing daily. Until I got the e-mail and opportunity I was waiting for in late May.

The e-mail was very generic. It explained the five Ws of the job opportunity and not much else. I was excited nonetheless. Out of the hundreds if not thousands of applicants to the job bank, I had been selected by chance. Lucky for sure.

In the e-mail there was a link to be clicked on, should you be still interested in the job opportunity. I don't think I have clicked on anything so fast. Once my interest was confirmed I would be contacted at later date for an interview. Off to my interview then. Wish me good luck...

Government Job search: Part One

It is something that I have been working on for months. Dating back January of this year, I have been searching for a job in the government. To aid me in this job search, I turned to a great a PR mentor of mine, a professor in my school, in an effort to help me get the job. But would this be enough to stop my search and get a job with the government, or would this be another disappointing job hunt for me?

Unlike other jobs where you go and leave your resume on monster.com or workoplis.com, to apply, for my government job, I went online. It was here there was a database, which connects students to summer, part-time, and full-time positions with the government. So in January I posted my resume (filled with my job experiences in retail) to the database and waited for the results.

Before I got to this point of putting my resume in the database however, I was in class. With second semester underway and the summer still months away, I was looking for a job. The reason for this was I wanted a break from working in a retail environment. I wanted something different. A change of scenery in a work environment not in retail or even better, a job in the field of PR.

But this was something that I needed help in. I could not seem to put together a resume that would speak to these requirements by myself. So I turned to a trusted person with a vast amount of PR experience, one of my teachers at school, my PR mentor.

It is fully with my PR mentor's advice that I believe I landed the job. She was able to provide me with information of what I could expect in a professional interview, either with a PR firm or employer such as the government. By no means am I saying that an interview with a grocery store or retail store is not professional. I just mean that for a job with the government or PR firm, the preparation is similar but more advanced.

My PR mentor told me to research the company or government department (although this is hard with the government as they place you in a random department, not necessarily related to your field) to find out any useful background information. To listen carefully to the questions and speak to my experiences learned over the past semester in the program. She also told me what possible questions to expect (many of which were asked in the actually interview) and to let my personality ring through.

Would this job search end up being a successful one for me? Or would working in retail be the only reality for me during the hot summer months? I was soon to find out the answers to these questions