What you want to take are courses that have the word “Business” in them somewhere, such as Introduction to Business, Getting to Know Business a Little Better, Kissing Business Right on the Lips, etc.
Graduate School
There are advantages and disadvantages to going to graduate school. The main advantage is that if you go to a really good graduate school, like Harvard, you’ll have a very easy time finding a good job. At night, as you lie in your bed, your window will often be broken by stones, around which have been wrapped lucrative offers. The main disadvantage is that you couldn’t get admitted to Harvard even if you held the dean’s wife at gunpoint. So I think you’re better off applying for a job.
Are There Jobs Available?
Heck yes! Don’t you listen to those Negative Nellies who tell you there aren’t any good jobs anymore, just because the steel, automobile, shoe, clothing, railroad, and agricultural industries have all collapsed! There are new career opportunities opening up all the time in today’s fast-changing economy. Just to give you an idea, let’s look at:
Lobster Repair: A Fast-Growing Field
You know how, when you go into a seafood restaurant, they have the lobsters up front, in a tank, all trying to scuttle back out of the way and hide under each other so they won’t get eaten? Well, it’s inevitable that some lobsters get damaged in the process-broken claws, eye stalks falling off, that kind of thing. And then you have the problem that (a) you have damaged lobsters, which you can’t serve to your customers and (b) you have these loose random eye stalks lying around the bottom of your tank, which hardly act as a Cheerful Greeting to your incoming customers. This is why there is such a tremendous demand today for people who know how, using modern adhesives, to reassemble a damaged lobster, or use the leftover parts to construct a whole new one, often incorporating a new and improved design (“Hey,” more than one delighted restaurant patron has cried recently. “My lobster has a claw made entirely out of eye stalks!”).
And this is just one new emerging-growth career field. Others include: Drug Overlord; Computer Geek; Televised Christian; Person Who Sells Staples to the Defense Department for What It Cost to Liberate France; Vigilante; and Pip, whose job is to stand behind Gladys Knight and go “whooo whooo” at certain points during the song, “Midnight Train to Georgia.”
WELDER WANTED—TO weld certain pieces of metal together.
ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT—Young-thinking, fast-moving, forward-looking emerging-growth company with dynamic, attractive plant-filled lobby featuring modernistic, incomprehensible sculpture and old, heavily thumbed issues of Pork Buyer Weekly seeks eager,ambitious,personable, aggressive, can-do, confident, hard-driving, highly motivated self-starter to clean scum-encrusted office coffee-related implements.
Where Should You Begin Your Job Search?
The answer to that question is right in your local newspaper. That’s right! Every day, hundreds of employers pay good money to advertise jobs in the classified ad section, apparently unaware that practically nobody reads it! So I want you to turn to the help wanted section right now and locate all the ads that look promising.
The way to do this is to count the adjectives. For example, take the ads shown above.
The first ad contains only one adjective, and thus represents a poor career opportunity. The second ad, on the other hand, clearly offers a very exciting opportunity, based on the adjective count.
Your Resume
Your resume is more than just a piece of paper ... it is a piece of paper with lies written all over it. Often, a good resume can mean the difference between not getting a job and not even coming close.
in writing your resume, you should follow the format shown in the example below, although you might want to modify it to suit your individual situation. For example, you may want to use your own name, instead of the word “NAME.” Unless you have a name like “Dewey.”
A lot of people make a really stupid mistake: namely, they send their resume to the Personnel Department. Pay close attention here: NEVER SEND ANYTHING TO THE PERSONNEL DEPARTMENT.
RESUME
NAME: (Last name first, first name in the middle, middle name way off to the right, in a little box. Should sound British.) ADDRESS: (Include clear directions as to how to get there, such as, ‘if you come to a Dairy Queen on your left, you have gone too far. PHONE: (Specify whether “Princess” or “Standard” model; note any special features such as “last number re-dial.”)
CAREER OBJECTIVE: (This should sound like the speeches given by Miss America contestants to demonstrate that they have a Personality. For example: “I would very much like to utilize my skills to the greatest of my ability in hopes of achieving a significant degree of accomplishment.” Leave out the part about hoping, someday to work with handicapped animals.)4412
SUMMARY OF CAREER ACCOMPLISHMENTS: (The important thing here is verbs. Verbs verbs verbs! You want to sound like a person with a slightly overactive thyroid. Be vague. Lie. Remember that nobody’s going to read this.)
September, 1985 to present: ADMINISTRATOR. Initiate, coordinate, Participate, and eliminate all traces of long and short-term mid-range interim approaches. 1983 to 1985: COORDINATOR. Gathered, analyzed, and collated a wide range of data, then kneaded it on a floured surface and baked it in a moderate oven until a toothpick inserted in the center came out clean. Served six. REASON FOR LEAVING: Communists. 1981 to 1983: ASSOCIATE. Put my right hand in, took my right hand out, did the hokey-pokey, and shook it all about. REASON FOR LEAVING: Ennui.
EDUCATION
SCHOOL: Harvard and Yale University School of Learning, Ph.D. in Business Appliance Management, 1980.
COLLEGE: Fargo and Surrounding Farms College of Arts and Sciences Such as Long Division, B.M. in Restaurant Communications, 1978.
REFERENCES
I should be happy to supply the names of any number of deceased grade-school teachers upon request.
The absolute last thing the people in Personnel want the company to do is hire you. They don’t want the company to hire anybody, because it just means more work for them. As far as Personnel is concerned, every new employee is one more cretin who will never learn how to fill out his medical and dental claim forms correctly.
So if you send your resume to Personnel, they’ll set fire to it immediately and send you back the following letter:
Dear (YOUR NAME):
Thank you so very, very much for sending us your resume. What a nice surprise it was! “Look at this,” the mail person cried as we all gathered ‘round. “(YOUR NAME) has been so kind as to send us his or her resume!” What excitement there was, here in Personnel! We danced far into the night!