Green Key Blog: Job Search Advice for the way you worken-usThu, 19 Sep 2019 13:07:56 +0000Starting Pay For Grads Little Changed Since 2015<p></p><embed alt="NACE average starting pay for grads" embedtype="image" format="right" id="925"/><p>Last year&#x27;s college graduates earned an average starting salary of $50,944.</p><p>That&#x27;s a healthy bump above the average personal income for all workers, which was <a href="">$46,550</a> when last measured in 2016. However, the National Association of Colleges and Employers <a href="">says</a> starting pay for college grads has barely budged over the last three years,. The 1.4% increase from 2015 to 2018 is a &quot;further illustration of the sluggish growth in overall salaries for college graduates in recent years,&quot; says NACE in its annual salary survey.</p><p>As usual, computer science grads were the top earners averaging $71,411. Surprisingly, that&#x27;s down 1.7% from the average for 2017&#x27;s computer graduates. On the other hand, engineering graduates saw a 1.7% increase in average starting salaries over 2017. NACE reported they averaged $66,638. Within the engineering major, grads with a petroleum focus scored the highest average starting pay: $78,801.</p><p>The complete report is only available to members of the association. Others can buy the report. The executive summary is free.</p><p></p><p></p> to Answer Interview Questions That Cross the Line<p></p><embed alt="job interviewing" embedtype="image" format="right" id="551"/><p>Monster recently posted <a href="">an article</a> listing 5 illegal interview questions so obvious only a hiring manager living in a cave for the last 50 years would ever ask.</p><p>Is there an interviewer who doesn&#x27;t know that asking something like “When are you planning to have children?” will all but guarantee hearing from the EEOC? Ditto for asking about a military commitment. Asking “How often are you deployed for Army Reserve training?” or anything even remotely related is a sure way to be answering questions from your state employment office and the feds.</p><p>The Society for Human Resource Management has a <a href="">highly detailed &quot;toolkit&quot;</a> that discusses in detail the legal dos and don&#x27;ts of job interviews and applications. There&#x27;s a list of acceptable and unacceptable questions every interviewer should keep handy.</p><p>Yet, even trained interviewers will cross the line. A well-intentioned recruiter interviewing a talented woman who could become the company&#x27;s first female executive, might ask her how comfortable she would be working with an all-male group and managing a division never before headed by a woman.</p><p>Illegal? Almost certainly. </p><p>As the candidate, what do you do in a situation like that? Careers adviser and writer <a href="">Allison Doyle says</a> if the question is part of a pattern of illegal and discriminatory inquiry, refuse to answer or walk out. &quot;It may be uncomfortable to do, but you need to be comfortable working at the company. If the questions you are being asked during the interview are indicative of the company&#x27;s policies, you may be better off finding out now.&quot;</p><p>In our example, the question wasn&#x27;t intended to discriminate. Though clumsy -- an executive-level candidate would already know something of the culture -- it was asked out of genuine concern for the candidate.</p><p>Deciding to ignore the illegal aspect, our candidate chooses to reframe the question to highlight her strengths: &quot;I&#x27;ve worked with many diverse teams and have always focused on the task and achieving mutual goals. Bringing a different perspective to a team opens up the discussion to see all options.&quot; </p><p>Answering an illegal question by addressing the intent and refocusing the interview on your job-strengths is a strategy that avoids confronting the interviewer while reassuring them, as in our example, you&#x27;re not going to be intimidated in a male-dominated environment.</p><p>Unless the question is as blatant as the 5 in Monster&#x27;s list, giving the interviewer the benefit of the doubt gives you another opportunity to highlight your strengths and, should they recognize their faux pas, demonstrate your tact.</p> We Make Bad Job Decisions<p>Have you ever been disappointed in a new job? Lots of people are. <a href="">Multiple surveys</a> tell us that 3-in-10 new hires quit in the first 6 months. An astounding 16% quit in the first week. &quot;Buyer&#x27;s remorse&quot; leads some to simply not show up for their new job, which has given rise to the growing <a href="">&quot;ghosting&quot; phenomenon</a>.</p><p>Most of us, though, don&#x27;t ghost and we don&#x27;t quit. We may be unhappy in the job, yet we stick it out.</p><p>What happened for the bloom to come off the rose? The short answer is we made a bad decision. But, how did that happen?</p><p>An <a href="">article on the <i>Harvard Business Review</i></a> with the provocative title &quot;Why Are We So Bad at Choosing the Right Job?&quot; gives us some answers:</p><ul><li><b>We&#x27;re influenced by the money</b>. &quot; Even when people <i>say</i> that they would happily take a pay cut if they could work less, commute less, or have a more enjoyable job, they often <a href="">don’t actually make those choices</a>, and prefer to stick to the higher salary.&quot;</li><li><b>We&#x27;re good at tolerating bad jobs. &quot;</b>When it comes to jobs and careers, it is really a case of &#x27;better the devil you know.&#x27; You can put people in meaningless roles and under bad managers, and they will still be reluctant to try something else.&quot;</li><li> <b>Poor self-awareness limits smart choices. </b>&quot;People are generally quite inept at evaluating their own talents. Even when they do decide to &#x27;follow their passions&#x27; there is just no guarantee that they will end up doing something well, let alone that it is useful or in-demand.&quot;</li><li> <b>It’s hard to know what to expect.</b> Because organizations make an effort to market themselves and their jobs as attractively as possible, it can be difficult to match your skills and expectations. </li></ul><p>Here&#x27;s the advice the author gives for avoiding a bad job decision: In order to land the job you really want, you need to be clear about what you are good at, what the job in question is really like, and de-emphasize financial incentives to fulfill other values and career drivers. Above all, you will probably benefit from being <i>less</i> resilient so you are less likely to put up with a bad job or a bad boss.&quot;</p> a PhD Discovered About Hiring Everybody Should Know<p></p><embed alt="taxi" embedtype="image" format="left" id="903"/><p>It wasn&#x27;t that many years ago you&#x27;d read about college grads tending bar or working as janitors. Bloomberg even headlined an article &quot;<a href="">Why Are So Many College Graduates Driving Taxis?</a>&quot;</p><p>These days, with recruiters practically begging for applicants, you don&#x27;t much hear about PhDs driving for Lyft. But don&#x27;t let that fool you into thinking that just because you have a college degree finding a job is easy. Even STEM grads have to work at it, as Surayya Taranum, a PhD in biochemistry, recounts in a fun and enlightening post on <a href=""><i>Cheeky Scientist</i></a><i> </i>about her own job search.</p><p>Her dissertation was complete. It was going to be published. And she was ready to move out of academia and into industry:</p><p> &quot;I did a lot of research to find out what options were available to me in the industry.</p><p> &quot;I figured out what industry roles interested me the most, and prepared my resume to target those positions.</p><p> &quot;I was ready...</p><p> &quot;I had no doubt that I would get the position of my choice, in the company of my choice.</p><p><b> &quot;</b>Until I came across an article that talked about HR recruitment trends.&quot;</p><p>Reading it was an awakening, for Taranum. Up to then, she had spent her entire adult life in school, working on projects sometimes for no other reason than they were interesting. In business, projects are market-driven with the goal of producing revenue. &quot;This means,&quot; she writes, &quot;That anyone considering a career in industry must learn to educate themselves and align their career plans with current and future trends.&quot;</p><p>&quot;Knowledge of hiring trends is extremely important, they are the direction in which most recruitment efforts will align in that company/industry. PhDs ignorant of hiring trends will face more challenges in finding a great job in industry,&quot; Taranum warns.</p><p>She goes on to list five hiring trends, familiar to anyone who has looked for a job recently. Among them are the use of video interviews, social media, assessments and AI resume screening and an emphasis on potential. The fifth one, that it&#x27;s a candidate-driven market, should be, as she puts it, &quot;music to the ears of any highly-skilled job seeker.&quot;</p><p>While true enough, Taranum counsels her PhDs they nevertheless must have &quot;an excellent job search strategy that they execute perfectly. Because, although the market is candidate-driven, employers are still careful in their recruitment.Companies want to be certain that the candidate they hire has not only the right technical skills but also the soft skills required for the job.&quot;</p><p>Excellent advice for everyone, PhD or not.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p> Do You Need to Earn to Rent?<p></p><embed alt="US map showing hourly wage by state" embedtype="image" format="left" id="890"/><p>To afford a two-bedroom rental in New York City&#x27;s fashionable Chelsea neighborhood you&#x27;d need to earn at least $49 an hour. Drive north 80 miles to Poughkeepsie, and you can get two-bedrooms for little more than half that.</p><p>The National Low Income Housing Coalition <a href="">has compiled</a> HUD data from across the U.S. on the fair market rent for one and two-bedroom rentals by state and right down to individual zip codes. Then, using the rule-of-thumb that rent should be no more than 30% of income, calculated what a household would need to earn to afford the rent.</p><p>This is a useful tool if you&#x27;re thinking of relocating. Because it&#x27;s all based on government estimates of what it costs to rent a modest house, the actual rent expense may be understated. But it does offer a general guide to the relative rental costs. </p><p>What the Housing Coalition report -- and it&#x27;s quick reference map --shows is renting in the South is about as cheap as it gets. It&#x27;s possible to get a two-bedroom earning as little as $14.26 an hour in Arkansas. In four other states -- Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and West Virginia -- you can rent for less than the $15 an hour minimum wage that some states and municipalities are requiring. </p><p>On the other hand, in Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, New York and Washington, D.C., it would take more than $30.00 an hour on average. </p><p>What makes the Housing Coalition&#x27;s project especially compelling is that the data is presented interactively. As our example shows, where in a state you are makes a big difference. Manhattan is pricey. Poughkeepsie is not. Even in Hawaii, the priciest (on average) state there&#x27;s great variability. Statewide, the average hourly pay for a two-bedroom is $36.82. In the Koko Head area of Honolulu, you need to earn $59.62. On Lanai, you only need to earn $24.42.</p><p>You can plug in the Zip code of an area you want to see what you&#x27;d need to earn to afford to rent. You&#x27;ll find checking out the country addicting, whether you have any intention of moving or not.</p>