CAREER BUILDER EXPO

(By the way, my new telephone number is 323-919-9785. The 217 number is no more.)

On the same day that I belatedly cleared up 2004's taxes by visiting a tax accountant (yesterday), I got the job hunt off to a more formal start by attending the LA Times' Career Builder Expo at the LA Convention Center that afternoon.

Most of the companies/hirers with booths represented traditional corporations - banks, consumer corporations like Coca Cola, restaurant chains, HMOs - (not to mention the army and police) that were not relevant to my search, but there were a couple of (free) lectures on job search topics like resumés and interviews that I thought would be good to attend just to see what the "state of the art" was these days - at least in California.

The resumé talk turned out to be a marketing "teaser" by a woman whose career was advising job hunters in writing resumés and selling themselves to employers, so it was reveal 20% and invite you to buy her book, make an appointment to get the other 80%. Not very ethical, I thought. (Although you get what you [don't] pay for, I guess.) Her surface credibility suffered from the fact that her handout with its (very minimal) example of a "cutting edge" resumé had suffered from electronic submission and she evidently hadn't checked to see how the LA Times expo staff had printed it out before her talk. (Not very professional of her.) Some of the circular "bullets" on her bullet list came out as dollar signs, something she admitted to her embarrassment were pretty "tacky" professionally.

The second talk was well done, however. (The man was a professional presenter and taught classes and workshops on public presentations, so I suppose the bar was higher.) He was advocating "informational interviews" - i.e. interviews to get information about a career rather than a job itself. It was something that immediately clicked with me, since I had done something similar when I was hunting for PhD programs from Cairo back in 2002 and emailed a number of "experts" in my field to see what institutions they would recommend to someone starting out their training. I was pleasantly surprised at how forthcoming total strangers were in giving often quite lengthy advice to a total stranger. There is an innate sense of helpfulness in most persons, apparently.

The idea was to contact people who are already doing what you might be interested in doing as a career, making an appointment to speak with them briefly (he recommended 15-20 min.) about their job - no hidden agendas - and get their insight into the pros and cons of the field, who the experts were, what professional groups they belonged to, etc. This also would have a secondary benefit of making you known to real people in the field who might suggest your name to someone else later on. I thought the idea was a great place to start - especially since I don't want to commit to a career as a multimedia writer or instructional designer for the publishing industry if I ultimately won't like it.

Academia is great at some things, but is sadly out of touch with the "real world" when it comes to jobs outside of academia - something I fought continuously as I struggled to get the courses and experiences I knew I'd need later on during my PhD program. I knew, for example, from the beginning that in my field I should have basic computer programming skills, but the University of Illinois, stuck in its archaic undergrad/grad dichotomy, wouldn't accept my programming credits from the local community college, where I had gone to beef up my computer skills, because they were "undergrad" courses and I was in a grad program. I may well have to supplement my PhD with a couple more professional training courses/workshops in computers to qualify for the jobs I'll be wanting.

HOUSING BUBBLE

Just as a local glimpse into our huge housing price bubble here in Southern Cal, I will quote (courtesy of the LA Sunday Times) the latest median house price for my zip code in Los Feliz/E. Hollywood: $855,000. (That is the MEDIAN price, by the way. You could get off with a real cheapie for, say ... half a million.)

In Ann's old Westchester neighborhood, a very respectable address (though not exclusive), the median price was only $760,000. A bargain! Of course, the question is how many "average" people can afford the "average" Southland home at the moment - and the last figure I remember was something like 25%. Something's rotten in the state of Denmark ... I mean, California.