by: Adrienne Rodney

It has been said many times that it is better to create your own job than to find one. If you are unsure how to begin, there is a worldwide community that can help you.

In 2011 we attended Startup Weekend three times. Held in just about every metropolitan city in the US and across the globe, Startup Weekend is for entrepreneurs, programmers, designers and other creative types to take an idea and turn it into a business in two-and-a-half days.

Startup Weekend is important because it teaches novices and professionals how to think, act and work like entrepreneurs. Many of the startups turn into actual businesses, with the teams working together far beyond that original weekend.

With free legal advice, free mentors and of course, free food, Startup Weekend gives you a chance to put your passion into practice. So if you think you have a good idea, don’t keep it a secret. Participate in a Startup Weekend and watch your ideas flourish.

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After everyone’s positive response to our Jobsville story, Brooke took the idea all the way to Mountain View, CA for the Mega Startup Weekend, where Brooke and his team worked on making Jobsville a reality.

We recently interviewed Frank Denbow, lead organizer for Startup Weekend NYC and a major force behind Mega Startup Weekend. Check out Startup Weekend in action and hear what he has to say about the events by watching the video above.

by: Adrienne Rodney

Unemployment is rough. Not knowing when the next job will come; stress over paying the bills; judgment from others – it’s an unfortunate circumstance too many of us face.

We are led to believe that searching for a job is your full-time job. Not having an office means having to work extra hard; it is not an excuse to focus on anything else. However, this way of thinking only works for some. Many people take their passions that were once hobbies and turn them into careers.

Journalist Patricia Crisafulli and business consultant Andrea Redmond view unemployment as the perfect time to reflect and refuel. In their book, Comebacks, they recommend those at a rough spot in their careers forego others’ ideas of success and relish in the new opportunities available. It is time to ask yourself, they say, what do you want Act II of your life to look like?

For Becky Blanton, her second act came in 2009 when she won a contest to attend the TED Global Conference, the non-profit conference named for its original emphasis on technology, entertainment and design, where she also spoke on her life as a homeless woman.  Waking each morning to the small comforts of her van, Becky had to fight off the depression that came with homelessness in order to stay focused. As an out-of-work writer, Becky took every writing job she could get her hands on, even when the pay was a mere ten dollars, because it was paid work.

Then she found herself on stage at the TED Conference. She came home (to her van) more energized and determined than before, writing as many articles as she could sell until she could afford an office. “I lived in the van, worked in the office and eventually moved up to more and better paying jobs,” she says. “I have four articles coming out in three national magazines and I’m doing better than ever. The secret is to never, ever, ever give up.”

Jason Black was a technical writer by trade and novelist by avocation when he lost his job.  Already a member of various online critique groups, Black used his time out of work to put more focus on his writing and editing. Many were quick to point out his talents with the red pen, including one person who recommended he try editing professionally.

Black got a business license, created Plot To Punctuation, and marketed his Web site to a writer’s association which led to new clients. Working with the association led to more clients, and now he is booked several months in advance. While this new endeavor is still in the early stages, it gives him the confidence and emotional support he needs.  “Discovering that I have a skill I didn’t know I had, that people in my field are willing to pay for – that was a tremendous boost to my spirits during what would otherwise have been a very difficult time.”

Becky and Jason teach a very good lesson: unemployment does not need to hold you back from following your dreams. If you are unemployed and feel stuck, distracted, depressed or unsure of your future, this is the perfect time to focus on what you love doing and then go out and do it.

For Marlene Baroli-Turati, unemployment meant turning a hobby into a career. Laid off from her Fortune 500 job in 2008, her MBA and years of experience could not help her land a job that afforded her lifestyle. “I found it very difficult to find a suitable job to replace the one I had lost,” she says. “I searched and searched, and nothing. So I made a huge career change.” The career change came when she started her own business, DaSweetZpot, making jams, jellies and other delectable treats.

“I began my business a year ago,” she says, “and I feel very successful as I have been able to replace my lost income. It’s a one woman show, and I am thrilled!” After a rough patch of unemployment, Marlene can finally say that life is sweet.

And Stay Within the Law

by: Brooke Allen with Adrienne Rodney

This article is about working for free and a follow-on piece will discuss educating yourself at minimal cost.

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Q. Are there laws that prevent you from working for free?

A. NO. You are not breaking any law if you work without compensation. It is a free country, after all.

However, there are laws against an employer hiring you for less than the minimum wage. During hard times, even unpaid internships have become harder to land, not only because there is competition from unemployed people with loads of experience, but also because the government has been cracking down on some of these programs as abusive.

You can find loads of opportunity to work for free in exchange for contacts, experience, and references, but first you need to understand the law.

Internships

Why are unpaid internships so hard to get, with some people paying as much as $8,000 to a broker to land one? (See the New York Times article: Unpaid Work, but They Pay for Privilege.) The answer lies in the law.

An employer may legally take on trainees without paying them (often called “interns”), however the United States Department of Labor (DOL) has issued a six-part test to determine if someone qualifies for an exemption to minimum wage laws. Among other things, the training must not be for the immediate benefit of the employer but rather primarily for the benefit of the trainee who must work under close supervision, and must not displace a regular employee.¹

The DOL and state authorities have recently been cracking down on internship programs that do not meet these standards. Their goal is not to prevent people from getting experience, but rather to keep abusive employers from exploiting workers. In normal times, a firm might have an internship program so as to train a pool of candidates from which they might hire in the future. But some cash strapped firms without the budget to hire anyone, whether trained or not, are trying to exploit a dire job market by getting free labor out of “interns.” Such activity violates both the spirit and the letter of the law.

This does not mean that you cannot gain valuable experience by offering your labor for free. However, you do not want to wait around for someone to design an internship for you, but rather you want to take the initiative.

Self-Employment

The minimum wage laws do not apply to the self-employed. And a self-employed person can give away free samples of his or her work.

Consider this hypothetical scenario: Susie’s first job after graduating from college was as a bookkeeper. Unfortunately, it lasted only seven weeks before her employer folded.

After months of traditional job hunting, she decided to offer her services pro-bono to struggling small businesses, as her schedule permitted. She approached 27 firms and five took her up on her offer. After two months, one of those companies made a full-time job offer, and she had to stop helping the other four.

Even though Susie did work for the benefit of the five firms, and she was not in a training program, this sort of arrangement can be perfectly legal. The reason is because, in this scenario, Susie is most likely viewed as self-employed, and as such, not subject to the minimum wage laws. Just like lawyers, doctors, accountants, and even electricians, Susie may give away her labor pro-bono, and recipients are free to accept her offer. Professionals often do this to gain experience, break into a new market, or even just to be good-hearted in helping the needy. And these days, plenty of cash strapped businesses are in need.

While the DOL doesn’t care what the self-employed pay themselves or charge others, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has something to say about whether you are in fact independent or an employee. One reason they care is that many firms have been trying to reclassify employees as contractors so as to avoid paying benefits. But the self-employed people do not have income tax withheld, and many succumb to temptation and don’t pay their full share. So the IRS.would much rather have as many people as possible deemed employees subject to withholding.

The IRS has a “twenty factor test” they to help determine if you are someone’s employee or truly independent. Many of the factors that would qualify Susie as an independent would disqualify her as an intern. For example, to be independent you should not be closely supervised or receive training. The IRS would consider the fact that Susie worked only part-time for multiple companies, and controlled her hours as evidence she was independent. Because she wasn’t being paid, no income would be eligible to be reclassified as subject to withholding anyway.

Lawyers and Human Resource Experts Chime In

Greg Szymanski is the H. R. director for a large home-builder in the Pacific Northwest. Like many people in his profession, he is worried about risks. When we asked about take our daughters and sons to work day, he said, “To be honest, we don’t do it.” Because his operation runs the gamut from low-risk office work to high-risk construction sites, they decided to prohibit bringing any children into the workplace. He said, “Unfortunately, so much of what I do is contrary to my personal beliefs because we’re constantly worried about the potential downside. In my world, all I get is bad news. Nobody ever calls up and says, ‘I’m really glad I work here and thank you very much; I love my job.’”

However, Greg is very supportive of pro-active job candidates who go the extra mile. He told us a story about how they needed to fill a senior management position, and while all the other candidates looked good on paper, only one visited a few of their construction sites even before the first interview. He presented five things he suggested they change, whether they hired him or not. They did hire him because he was the only candidate who began doing the job before they hired him to do it.

Oscar Michelen is a litigator with CuomoLLC representing many small and mid-sized businesses on wage and hour issues, and he is an adjunct professor at New York Law School. He explains that the DOL six part test is just a guideline for the courts to use in determining if a trainee is subject to minimum wage laws. “As long as the employee is the predominant person who is gaining a benefit, it does not mean that you, as an employer, cannot also benefit. You don’t have to be Mother Teresa; you can obtain a benefit.”

We proposed to him a hypothetical situation in which a college student who approaches a firm offering to attempt a viral marketing campaign to be done simply to gain experience. Oscar confirmed that the firm is not in much risk of running afoul of the DOL guidelines since such project is clearly not exploitative. “The government is not looking to stop that,” he said, “Some employers are being over cautious. I’ve told many of my own clients to relax, since you can comply with the law and have interns. There’s no camera in your place of business. Yes, you can bring your nephews who go to college to work in your office for free; of course you can.”

Michael Helfand, founder of http://www.findgreatlawyers.com, describes himself as a lawyer who believes in speaking bluntly and in plain English. He says that if he were a worker he would not worry if an employer were violating the Fair Labor Standards Act. “Take a neighborhood bakery for example,” he says, “You’ve always wanted to be a pastry chef, and the Michael Jordan of pastry chefs is there in your city, and you find out he’s there every day at 4 in the morning. And you say, ‘Look, I want to learn from you, I’ll be here everyday at 4 AM, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do and you won’t have to pay me.’ Do you think that guy is thinking about the FLSA if he takes you on? It’s more of, ‘You know, I’m really impressed by this kid,’ or ‘I can really use the help.’”

He says that the pastry chef has little to worry about in such an arrangement. “The reality is it’s not going to be policed at small business levels, and the only way you’re going to get in trouble is if the person you hire for the internship reports you. And even then our government is so overworked that the odds of the DOL investigating some small firm are minimal. If you get caught it’s not like you’re going to get shut down; you may have to pay a fine or something.”

For Helfand, ethics trumps legality. Kids in college drink before they’re 21, and there are only minor legal and no ethical problems with that. However, cheating on a test might not be illegal, but it is most certainly unethical. Likewise, in the above example, had you asked the pastry chef to teach you what he knows and then complain to the DOL that you weren’t being paid, you might be within your legal rights, but would you be ethical?

Helfand doesn’t want you to obsess about the law. He wants you to do the right thing.

Questions to ask yourself.

Who is in charge? If you are your own, in spirit and in fact, then nobody can tell you that you cannot give away free samples of your work. Some of the most effective people see themselves as their own boss, even when they have a job that comes with a boss, and they are always giving away free work, not only to friends and relatives, but also by doing more than they are paid to do on the job. These are the people who are often first hired and last fired during a recession.

But if you want someone else to be the boss then the law says you must be paid the minimum wage. Working without pay for a boss (other than yourself) puts that person in a precarious position – the goal must be to help you, not themselves, or they may run afoul of the law. This is a lot to ask for.

How do you define “exploitation?” If you think that to be of use to another person without being paid is to be exploited, then, for heaven’s sake, don’t do it. If you think that you must do this because you have no choice, then you’ll see yourself as a victim of circumstances beyond your control. And that is a recipe for depression. While you’re at it, reflect on what is involved in raising a child, or doing homework for a teacher.

What’s in it for you? Most people who become bitter when volunteering to help others lose sight of (or never saw) what is in it for them. Ideally, you should end every day feeling that the ledger is balanced. Even if you didn’t get a fair day’s pay for your work, you were treated fairly, and you got something just as valuable in terms of skill, experience, contacts, pleasure, self-esteem, or whatever. If you only see your work today as a hardship that might pay dividends in the future, there is a good chance that you’ll be disappointed. But if every day’s work stands on its own merit, any good that comes of it in the future is just gravy.

What’s in it for the other guy? The main reason people won’t want to give you work to do, even without pay, is because they think that managing the process will be more trouble than it is worth. You can’t expect a warm response to, “Tell me what to do, and show me how to do it, and maybe I’ll do it or maybe I won’t.” Yet this is the attitude most people take, even if they aren’t honest enough to say so. And, if they don’t deliver, they say, “You have no right to complain; you weren’t paying me.” That is BS. Any person who has reason to believe they can rely on you has reason to complain if you don’t come through.

SUMMARY: If you are willing to exchange free labor for experience, don’t just wait around for someone to design a program for you. Instead, view yourself as self-employed and find people you can help with free samples of your work. Most of these people would never have thought of offering an internship – but you are not asking for one. You are exercising your right to be of help to others.

¹ The six criteria are: 1) The training, even though it includes actual operation of the facilities of the employer, is similar to that which would be given in vocational school. 2) The training is primarily for the benefit of the intern, not the employer, 3) The intern works under close supervision and does not displace any regular employees. 4) The intern is not entitled to a job at the conclusion of the training period, and 6) The employer and the intern understand that the intern shall not be entitled to wages for the time spent training.

And They’re Coming to Teach You Things You Need to Know
By: Victoria Goldenberg

Could No Shortage of Work (NSoW) have existed 20 years ago? The costs in time, money and labor to gather and direct members and run a publication might not have justified the modest and seemingly unrealistic ends of encouraging people to work for free. But now that the Internet is widely accessible, setting up the NSoW Web site was relatively inexpensive and easy. More important, communities commonly assemble around Web sites without anyone organizing them. The formerly difficult task of finding people and directing them to collaborate on meaningful work now happens organically, as those who share NSoW’s philosophy participate in the community on their own.

NSoW exemplifies the behavioral shift New York University professor Clay Shirky analyzes in his engaging book Here Comes Everybody (2008, Penguin Books). He describes a compelling variety of cases, from charming Livejournal and Meetup groups to flash mob protests against the government in Belarus, to illustrate how ordinary people are taking the reins and using new tools, such as cell phones and blogs, to organize themselves.

Mr. Shirky stresses that technology itself hasn’t changed the world, but the ways people adopted it have. He cites people who took photos of Coney Island’s annual Mermaid Parade and posted them to the photo-sharing site Flickr under one name, so people could view all the pictures in one place. Prior to 2005, parade attendees hadn’t pooled their photos, but they’ve changed their behavior because of access to a service that makes it simple. At the same time, the photo-takers organized the pictures themselves, without supervision from Flickr or the parade’s sponsors. By coming together, the photographers created a new, valuable resource for the public.

What’s most appealing about Here Comes Everybody is that it resists exaggerating the Internet’s democratizing power and takes a realistic, contextual approach. Mr. Shirky acknowledges that new media and behaviors do not render older institutions useless, (such as newspapers and commercial developers of operating systems), but they do decrease their relative influence. I especially liked the chapter “Everyone is a Media Outlet,” which compared the effects of mass amateurization of journalism to the popularizing of the printing press, noting how it ends professional publications’ monopoly on the news just as the printing press ended scribes’ monopoly on publishing.

I spoke with Mr. Shirky by phone to discuss how No Shortage of Work can challenge people’s assumptions and encourage working for free, rather than not working at all.

“Whenever the digital sharecropper hypothesis comes up—why are all these people working without pay?—the answer is: That’s the wrong question. The idea of working for free assumes there’s this normal case in which you only do something if you get paid, and then there’s this pathological case in which you do things because you like them. That is a legacy of neoclassical economics that assume we’re all self-interested and isolated, rational, maximizing actors. One of the observations I’ve made recently is that one reason these behaviors are so surprising to us is because our previous explanations for human behavior were so lousy. We all do things for free all the time and we don’t even experience them as being for free.

“I think the surprise has been that we’ve believed that intrinsic motivation—things we do because we like them—is inherently limited to the private sphere, basically hearth and home.

“The intrinsic motivation can take place in the public sphere now. We just needed a medium to make that possible. The value of people working, full stop, is basically the value of making yourself happy. It’s a value that’s indivisible to other things.”

He also discussed whether communal learning might decrease the higher education system’s relative importance in the job market:

“Given that the premium of college education offers on the job market is now being leveled out, we’re clearly going to see a rise of lower-cost attempts to deliver the value of a college education.

“We may be in one of those times where people say, ‘demanding a four-year college degree for the training I need for this job doesn’t make sense anymore’. There have certainly been enough observations about the economic disadvantage of four-year education that people are willing to consider it, but it’s not going to be a general social change. Probably some industry will shift away from demanding a four-year degree pro forma to figuring out when it matters and when just having the skills training is enough.”

Shirky described how he learned skills such as computer programming from online communities and how this valuable method of learning can be invisible:

“I think it’s telling about the social piece that we don’t have any middle word between ‘I went to an accredited institution and got formal learning’ and ‘I am self-taught’ to reflect the way a lot of people learn these things which is, ‘I joined a community that knows and cares about the subject I care about, and I learned it there.’

“The language doesn’t yet give us a way to reflect on being communally taught as opposed to institutionally taught.”

No Shortage of Work is a venue for communal education. By participating in it you can learn from the pros, outside of a formal setting, and work to build vital job skills—or just for the joy of it.

by Brooke Allen

I was eight when we got our first television. Although it cost a month’s take-home pay, my parents consumed it sparingly, as if it were candy.

In the eighth grade I became interested in Amateur Radio, and lost interest in TVs configured as receivers, so I took one apart and rebuilt it as a shortwave transmitter. When my friends watched the Flintstones, I talked to people all over the world.

Yet television is insidious and relentless, and by my senior year in high school, my father, mother, sister, and I would spend hours each day sitting together as we drifted apart.

My freshman year at college was 100% TV-free and it felt great. As I flew home for the summer I formulated a speech about how I had no time for television.

Before I could speak, my dad told me the TV was in the barn if I wanted it for parts. My family had figured out what was happening to them. One night after dinner, my mom and my sister watched as my dad took out a .22 and put a bullet through the picture tube.

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Clay Shirky discusses television and brains with time to spare in his book Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. He says TV claims about 200,000,000,000 brain-hours in the United States each year. He estimates this to be about 2,000 times the effort that it took to build the Wikipedia in all its various languages.

Broadcast television and the Wikipedia are both things your brain can consume, but the Wikipedia is also something you can help produce. And if you do, two things will happen: 1) The world will be a better place, and 2) You will increase your connectedness with others.

In 1973, my girlfriend and I hitchhiked to Appalachia to spend a week with her aunt and uncle, who had surprisingly little news to convey about her childhood friends. “Don’t worry,” my friend said, “we’ll get the low down at the hoedown on the weekend.” It turned out there were no more hoedowns; they had been canceled once Hee Haw went on the air.

Shirky says that when lonely people watch TV, they report feeling less lonely, even though their passivity and the one-way nature of the experience makes them even more alone.

Q. What do people do when they lose a job?

A. They watch more TV. (Click on the graph above to see an interactive version of how people spend their time throughout the day. The big dark red band is TV viewing by the jobless. The tiny orange sliver is time spent working.)

When you lose a job, it is easy to feel useless and disconnected. And yet, watching TV is a useless activity that does not make you more connected – it just makes you feel as if you are.

Instead, do something with your excess brainpower (cognitive surplus). Even if you can’t find someone to pay you right away, I’m sure you can find something you enjoy doing for its own sake.

View the rest of this article for more pictures from people who have better things to do than watching TV all day (such as taking photographs). Copyrights are reserved by all original photographers.

The photo above was conceived of by model Miss LoLo who says, “The inspiration behind it was to display an independence from TV and to motivate people to think outside the idiot box.” The photo was taken by  Dave Wolanski who says, “My50th birthday was a month ago. I can hear the clock ticking and I don’t want my legacy to be that I knew all the quirks of the characters of NCIS, one of my favorite shows by the way.”

Would you go out of your way to take a photograph for a complete stranger for no money?

Eleven people did that for me.

TWICE!

The First Time: I wanted to illustrate an article about my favorite park in Japan so I wrote to people who lived near the park on my favorite social networking site, Couch Surfing, and asked if anyone had a photo lying around. None did, but 11 people went to the park to take pictures just for me. This is free time and generosity at work.

This Article is the Second Time: Zillions of people have posted gadzillions of photos on Flickr, including hundred of smashed TVs.

We asked 12 people for permission to use there photographs for this article and 11 said yes. (Still have not heard from one of them.)

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Ede swares he does not have a gun. However my father did, and Ede has the perfect photo to go with the story of how my dad shot the TV.

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Hopefully Andrina did not waste too much of her day watching this TV.

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Chase says, "The economic downturn may make it hard to find a regular job, but it can also be a great time to go into business for yourself. Invest that time in yourself in one way or another."

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Reed says his brother, his girlfriend, and he found this old TV in the desert and decided to put it out of its misery.

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Jim says, "I find that ordinary television just sucks the intelligence right out of my head. The best use for a TV is as a DVD monitor so that you can at least choose exactly what to put into your mind. Have you heard the Groucho Marx quote about TV, probably from the ealry 1950s? He said, "I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."

Julia says, "I like watching TV as much as any other teenager, but I don't think that a life should depend on that."

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Whitney and some German friends found this shirt in a store and althought they did not have enough money to buy it, they tried it on in the changing room. "I, however, snuck a photo, SHHH"

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Dustin says, "I'm proud to say I watch zero TV and haven't had cable for multiple years. Life's too short to spend yours watching someone else's."

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A Review by NSoW subscriber: Ariel Gros-Werter

Charlie Hoehn, in his free on-line e-book, “Recession-Proof Graduate”, outlines how a newly-graduated 22-year-old can become recession-proof, i.e. receive multiple job offers in under a year despite being in a recession.

His plan is fairly simple in essence; reject the old job search methods. Rather, offer “free work” to gain employers’ trust and show your skills, with the understanding that while there is no immediate payoff, you can theoretically do non-paying projects of your choice for companies you like with the hope that after they have come to know and trust you they will create a job for you in their company.

Unlike an internship, Hoehn claims, free work lets you avoid competing with others for advertised internships, and allows you to control your work by offering companies a 1-3 week project that you have thought out for their own benefit. This is ideal for them, Hoehn explains, because they don’t have to think up a project for you or babysit you as you work, and they will accept your idea because there’s effectively no risk on their side – they don’t have to meet you or have you in their office, and since they’re not paying you if they don’t like your work they can reject it and forget it happened.

Hoehn’s idea of free work has both pros and cons. An advantage is that you set your own work schedule (just make sure you complete the project within the deadlines). You choose companies you like, and set your own project parameters so you’re always doing work that’s interesting to you. Furthermore, you will gain great connections and potentially a job if you do quality work.

A negative is that this can be a difficult path; you should only go for it if you can fully commit. Doing unpaid freelance work for months can be difficult. It takes consistent dedication and discipline which is hard for many to sustain without a reward in sight. If you can keep to it, this method may reward handsomely, but before starting on this route carefully consider whether you’re up for the challenge. It can be difficult to focus on unpaid projects for weeks on end when there’s always another job to apply for or other more immediate-gain job-search items on the to-do list.

Additionally, with college loans to pay back, high health care costs, and a desire to immediately move out of parents’ homes to live independently, freelancing for free can be financially draining, while also insecure of rewards (there’s no guarantee you’ll be hired).

Hoehn claims we need to stop thinking we are entitled to a paycheck. I believe that if you are doing work for a company, there should be a benefit, whether monetary or otherwise. You should be willing to work without monetary compensation – not because you don’t deserve it, but because the time working is an investment towards getting a job, gaining experience or a good line on your resume. Hoehn is right that we shouldn’t define work simply as something we do for pay; however when choosing work always consider what benefit you gain, whether monetary, good will, or otherwise.

Free work is much easier to do in some professions and skill ranges than in others. If you are marketing yourself as a website designer, it is simple to send a redone prototype of a company homepage. However, most jobs are heavily administratively-based (in a broad sense of the word) and so are difficult to accomplish without either being in the office or using private company information (which HR may not let you have without a non-disclosure agreement).

Offering to do work for free is a great way to make connections and gain a company’s trust. However, to avoid sounding cocky as if you know what the company needs better than an employee of 20-years, offer your project idea as a suggestion only while putting the main emphasis on helping with whatever will be most useful. This unfortunately may result in not working on projects you are interested in, but will succeed in the main purpose of gaining the company’s favor.

Hoehn is dead-on that as a recent graduate, skills are key. Experience is certainly a plus, because working professionally is different than doing college work, but employers want to see you can work in an office environment at the bottom of the hierarchy. More important than experience, employers want to know you have the skills to do the job and can learn the rest. However, it is hard to prove ability without showing it, so decide which skills you need to prove and figure out other ways to showcase them, be it writing samples or community event planning or designing your own webpage.

It is necessary to have something to show for your job-searching time. I was asked at two interviews, “what have you been doing?” That, I learned, was not just a question of how I pass my time. The interviewer wants to know that I am enhancing my skills and maintaining my focus.

It is even better to have material results of what you have accomplished, both for the interviewer and for your own mental confidence. Nothing is worse than feeling you’ve wasted months with nothing to show for it. Volunteer or learn a language; do something that you can look back on and see results. Better yet, find an activity to do everyday or 3-4 times a week to maintain a sense of regularity in your life.

Hoehn suggests it is cheaper and more useful to skip grad school and gain knowledge from experience or reading. While in some professions having a Masters degree may not be as important as having the knowledge, it may be hard to get the experience needed to gain knowledge without a higher degree. This is also highly dependant on the professional field in question. In some fields, having the degree is less important while in other professions a higher degree is necessary to advance beyond low-level jobs, such as in research and public health.

Hoehn comments on controlling your web presence. Start a blog, create a LinkedIn account and join other groups, anything so that a Facebook page with drunk photos won’t be in the first 3 entries if a potential employer does a Google search of you. If you can’t delete it, hide it. College may be in the past, but it can still haunt you. Having a well-written blog pop up allows you to show off your writing skills while also displaying a human side amidst a sterile job application process. I suggest this be started long before graduation. A blog is most credible when it’s been maintained for months, so start early and cut the dead-time.

Hoehn’s article presents interesting ideas for a recent college graduate. However, his ideas do not apply to everyone. His concept of free work is golden for some professions and skills, but is impractical for others. It can also be extremely difficult to maintain the needed discipline for months. However, offering to work for free is a great way for a recent college graduate to gain a company’s favor. It is one option for a regular activity and something to show for time spent job-searching. Additionally, do things which display your skills, which are often more important than experience. Lastly, control your web presence to present yourself professionally on the internet.