Resources for Life After St. John’s

Whether you are a Johnnie looking for your first job or your tenth, moving to a new city from your childhood home or thinking about other life changes, St. John’s has resources that can help.

Below you will find links to information–some courtesy of St. John’s staff, some from other sources–that will help you explore, connect, and stay informed. And remember, the Alumni Relations Office, the St. John’s College Alumni Association, and the Career Services Office will always be at your service.

 

How to Supercharge Your Job Search

Searching for jobs can be a highly discouraging process, especially if we don’t know what we’re getting into.

Most of us have never taken a class called Job Search 101 or gone through training or certification. Usually, the advice we get amounts to some kind of moral support. Can we improve this process? We can, but first we have to be aware of what actually is productive versus what feels productive in the job search.

Scouring job databases can be a passive way to feel productive.

First: Reduce your dependence on the internet to find a job. A recent CareerXRoads survey suggests that only 15 percent of people are hired through job board ads. Those aren’t the kinds of statistics a successful effort yields. But how much time do we spend on the internet looking for jobs?

Whatever it is, it’s disproportionate to the success rate for the tactic. Probably something like 75 percent (at least) of our job hunting process is devoted to trawling job boards for leads.

But it’s really common. Most people spend the vast majority of their job search time on job boards. Why? Because it’s a way to feel productive without having to actually leave our comfort zone. It’s an easy way to feel like we’re getting somewhere. But it’s really not productive at all and that time can be put to much better use. It’s just a matter of learning what to do and how to do it.

So what are the other 85 percent doing that I’m not?

Start by taking a small chunk of time that you’d normally spend searching the internet for jobs and replace it with something that supports the No. 1 way people are hired: personal referrals. What do we do to increase the chances of getting personally referred to a job? We network.

But what is networking?

“You’ve got to network,” we’re told, “nothing risked, nothing gained!” “Be outgoing!” But what does that really mean? Awkwardly rubbing elbows while eating cheap hors d’oeuvres? Wearing out your mouse by requesting LinkedIn connections ad infinitum? Flipping some switch that transforms you into an extrovert who feels perfectly fine asking anyone and everyone for a job? Ugh.

Networking is one of those things we all think we understand but, if pressed, wouldn’t be able to solidly define. So what is it?

According to Alumna Marti Acosta (A92): Networking is the art of building long-term mutually beneficial relationships. We do this by making repeated, direct contact with all sorts of people through a variety of media. This includes former colleagues and bosses, people you meet at bars, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, hiring managers, recruiters and industry experts. Just about anyone, really. You never know who’s going to be the key connection leading to your next job.

But here’s where it turns from an abstract concept into a concrete tool. You need to be able to call on people in your network when it counts. That doesn’t mean you have to spend time with them often or be best friends with them. But it does mean that you know something about their interests and their professional life, you are interested in how things are going for them, you keep in touch sporadically and help them out when you can. Even if you’re just sending a link to an article they would be interested in or letting them know about an upcoming event in their area. Nobody likes a relationship that only consists of one person asking for things or help.

To avoid those awkward situations where you need help, but the other person is loath to give it, put some small effort into cultivating your relationships. This might seem blatantly utilitarian, maybe even unseemly. It’s why most of us have a hard time networking: when we are first learning what it is and how to do it, we feel like we aren’t being genuine to ourselves and to our contacts. But if you are being smart about your networks–cultivating people who share some of your interests or whose path in life relates to yours–then you aren’t feigning anything. You are building bridges with people with whom you actually want to be connected.

So here are some things you can do today that will increase your productivity and preserve some of your sanity in the process:

  • Reestablish five old connections or friendships. Rekindle your acquaintance by sending a friendly “How are you?” email. You don’t have to mention that you are in job search mode. This is where you must find or recall something about that person in which you are genuinely interested and connect with that person through that subject.

  • Use the Johnnie Network. The St. John’s College Community is highly connected in ways that most other alumni networks are not. Johnnies love to help other Johnnies, so if you have a field you are interested in, find another Johnnie who has been through it and can offer some guidance. Again, be sure to use SJC Connect!

  • Practice random acts of helpfulness. Not as a means to an end, not with the expectation that your kindness will necessarily be reciprocated. But because in doing so you are contributing to a network. If you come across a good job lead that is not what you’re looking for, forward it to someone you know who might be a fit for the role. Send an interesting news article to someone you know would be interested. Send adorable cat videos to someone who you know is feeling down.

  • Up your LinkedIn game. Import your contacts from Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Outlook, etc. into your LinkedIn profile by going to Connections > Add Connections. Because these are people you know (or used to know), you’ll get lots of easy confirmations.

  • Get on the radar of appropriate recruiters. Find recruiters for your region or prospective career by searching on Google and LinkedIn. Do some research to make sure they are relevant, and then send them a connection request. Some recruiters aren’t into connecting with networkers, but lots are.

  • Identify people in a position to hire you in five to ten companies that you like. If you can find them on LinkedIn, send them connection requests. When an opportunity opens up in that company you’ll be one step ahead, ready to get your information to the people who can help your application stand out from the rest.

This is just a handful of ideas, but they all fall under the umbrella of networking, and there’s not a plastic cup of tepid chardonnay in sight.

The point is, people camp out on job boards as a way to feel like they’re getting something done with minimum discomfort. But a lot of the distaste for networking probably comes from a limited view of what networking can be. If you consider all the different ways we have these days for staying in touch with one another, you’re bound to gravitate to some methods over others, so embrace those and make them a part of your strategy. And yes, there probably is a (small) place for job boards in your job search. But maybe not the prominent place they currently enjoy.

If you do search job databases:

Searching job boards like LinkUp online requires its own strategy.

  • Keywords are the most important input. The goal is to use words that frequently pop up in job positions of interest to you. Take your key applications and paste them into one document. Then, scan the entire document for frequently recurring phrases.

  • Job title is general. Titles vary widely, so if you are too specific in your search you might exclude potential jobs. (For example, “Industrial Engineer” constraint excludes “Quality Engineer,” “Capacity Planning Engineer,” “Project Engineer,” etc.). Example: Title: engineer -civil -system -electrical -chemical -software -systems -mechanical -lead -senior -sr -II -III -IV -principal -director -technician -manager -2 -3 -4 -5 (Also filters out undesirable title words and positions likely in need of more experience.).

  • Date posted within the last 24 hours to seven days. The longer you are in that resume stack as an “early bird,” the higher your probability of interviews, provided you meet the job requirements. Entering later into the stack means the hiring managers already have a few favorites from people they interviewed within the last two weeks. So, always sort by “most recent” in the openings.

Finally, a list of job databases:

Indeed: A massive jobs database with everything under the sun, organized by location.

Careerjet: Another mega-site with a wide range of professions.

LinkUp: Job search engine.

Idealist: A large database consisting solely of nonprofit work.

The Jobist: Not a database per se, but a list of job search databases.

Draft Job Board: A frequently updated list of writing jobs, with many freelance options.

e-FinancialCareers: A database of jobs in finance.

Gun.io: Tech, developer jobs.

Renter’s Delight

TIP #1: FIGURE OUT WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD & HOW TO QUALIFY FINANCIALLY

Reality check: perhaps the most important qualification you will have to demonstrate when applying for a rental is your income level. Landlords want to know that you’ll be able to pay your way. However, as a recent college grad, your budget is probably fairly modest. Here’s what you need to know:

Determine if you qualify financially. Figure out your gross monthly household income (pre-tax). Make sure that this value is at least three times more than the rent of your prospective apartment. Since it might be difficult to achieve that on your own, it might be wise to live with at least one roommate to increase your options.

What do you do if you don’​t qualify? One option is to have a co-signor or guarantor on your lease.

TIP #2: GET A LAY OF THE LAND

It’s time to decide where to live. You might be moving to a new city to get a leg up on your professional career, so it’s important to check out different neighborhoods in your new city prior to the big move. You’ll probably be committing to at least a year when you sign a lease, so it’s best do some research that gives you confidence that you are moving into the right neighborhood for you.

Visit a few weeks prior to moving. Whether you’re looking for a large party pad with friends or a quiet apartment in a quaint neighborhood, you should do your best to plan a trip to your new city two to four weeks prior to moving. Read up on the city with some popular local blogs to get the inside scoop on news, neighborhoods, and social happenings.

This time frame to view apartments prior to moving is ideal for apartment hunting. Take advantage of being in town and set aside some time for private viewings and open houses. Get a feel for what you like and if you’re lucky, you might even leave an open house as a proud new renter! As a best practice for apartment hunting, we advise that you should always view an apartment before you commit to it. In addition, you should never wire money, pay a security deposit or make a rent payment prior to signing a lease.

Stay with family or friends initially. If you have the luxury of staying with family or friends during the first few weeks in your new city, take full advantage of this opportunity! Not only will you save some money, but this will allow you to ease into your transition and take more time to decide what neighborhood makes most sense for you socially, financially, and for your commute. Not to mention, you can take more time to find that dream rental that actually fits your price range.

TIP #3: CREATE A RENTER PROFILE

Coordinating all of the materials to position yourself as the best possible rental applicant can be overwhelming. Organizing a renter packet that you can bring with you to an open house will provide immense value, especially as a first time renter. Showing you are proactive and transparent with a prospective landlord will go a long way. We’ve outlined some of the materials you’ll need to present to landlords to help you stand out in a crowd.

Renter packet checklist. Not sure what you need to include in your renter packet? Use this checklist to make sure you’re ready to be the best version of you once you find that perfect rental.

Renter Cover Sheet:

  • Include photograph and complete contact information
  • Write a short blurb about yourself. Topics might include employment, why you’re a good tenant, reasons for moving, when you plan to move, explanation of potential drawbacks on your application and a sentence indicating your interest in discussing the property further
  • Qualifications: credit score, annual household income, occupation, move-in date, date of birth, number of roommates, number of pets, eviction history, criminal history
  • Criteria: desired bed count, neighborhood, additional amenities
  • Offer letter from your employer indicating proof of salary and/or two months’ worth of pay stubs
  • Generic application
  • Credit report

Information from Renter’s Delight can be found here.

On Moving to a New City

Consider the four stages of culture shock: honeymoon, negotiation, adjustment, and adaptation. These don’t necessarily happen in a linear fashion–you might go through all of these stages in a single day. But in general, moving to a new city follows a timeline:

  • Weeks one to two: Feels like a vacation; you are enamored with exploring new places and meeting new friends.
  • Week three to month three: You may start to have second thoughts about your new hometown as you learn more about its downsides and start to miss your friends and family. This tends to get worse until around month three, when things come to head with a “What have I done?” moment.
  • Months four to six: You might still feel a bit down on your new town, but it will get better as you learn to just accept the things you initially viewed in a negative light and focus on the upsides of living there.
  • Month seven to year two: You make new friends. As you grow, that growth is associated with these new friends in your mind. It starts to feel less strange to refer to this place as your “hometown.”​
  • Year three and beyond: The strange is now familiar—maybe you’ve maintained your fondness of your new hometown and continued to find avenues for growth, or maybe you are ready for your next adventure.

Overall, moving is an excellent way to learn about yourself and stimulate personal growth. Though it can be daunting, you are bound to gain some valuable insights about yourself and the world in the process. It’s important that one of the keys to this process is meeting new people and making new friends.

On Making Friends in a New City

The Three Keys to Fostering Friendship

There’s a practical wisdom that suggests that, for friendships to develop, there are three necessary (but not sufficient) conditions:

Proximity: Being physically around people for extended periods of time tends to promote friendship.

Repeated & Spontaneous Interactions: This means running into someone at the grocery store and idly chatting every once in a while or talking about the weather with your neighbor as you get the paper in the mornings. These aren’t planned; these are times when your paths just happen to cross in your daily lives. Post-college, this is trickier. You don’t have a community of people you see at dinner every day. At first that might be a welcome change, but eventually you might thirst for the kinds of organic community you had in college. You can promote this kind of community by choosing to do your shopping, dining, exercising, etc. within your neighborhood. This increases the chances of running into people over and over again, and perhaps making new friends.

Interactions and Settings that Promote Vulnerability: Vulnerability here means being able to let one’s guard down and truly be oneself. People tend to be cautious when they first meet other people. We usually don’t express our true selves to new acquaintances or in formal settings. Here, backyard BBQ might be more conducive to truly getting to know someone than seeing them every week at pub trivia.

Why Making Friends After College Can Be Harder

We may not ever have had to do it before. In school, the aforementioned keys are organically built in to the environment. You’re around the same people all the time for four years. We didn’t have to be all that intentional about seeking out friends. Once we graduate, it can take a while to develop the habits conducive to meeting and making friends.

Priorities change. We generally have friends that help us fill certain emotional needs. A great New York Times article puts it like this:

“People have an internal alarm clock that goes off at big life events, like turning 30. It reminds them that time horizons are shrinking, so it is a point to pull back on exploration and concentrate on the here and now. ‘You tend to focus on what is most emotionally important to you,’ she [Laura Carstensen, Stanford Center on Longevity] said, ‘so you’re not interested in going to that cocktail party, you’re interested in spending time with your kids.’”

So basically, we have a certain threshold for fulfillment that we must reach every day. If you can find that emotional fulfillment at work or with family, you are less likely to feel the need to cultivate friends who can bring such fulfillment.

We become pickier. With less time and emotional need for friends, we start to become more particular about the kinds of people we’d like to get to know better. We’re conditioned to want to have a lot in common with our friends and to connect on a deep level with ease. But those expectations are based on friends from school or youth.

Resignation. At some point, we will feel like we have put ourselves out there to meet new friends, but that our efforts haven’t yielded much. Just as with dating, not every relationship is going to take off. Many friendships wither away slowly or abruptly. It doesn’t mean you have to give up, though, and accept, as the NYT put it, that “the period for making B.F.F.’s, the way you did in your teens or early 20s, is pretty much over. It’s time to resign yourself to situational friends: K.O.F.’s (kind of friends) — for now.” But this is a self-fulfilling prophecy that’s actually kind of a cop-out as well. Friendship is too important to shirk.

Easy Habits That Help Us Make Friends

With the above in mind, here are some ideas to get you started making new friends in your new city.

Connect with the SJC Chapter in your area. A full list of Chapters can be found here. Follow the Chapter page on SJC Connect to get news and updates from your Chapter. Additionally, keeping your contact information current will ensure that you receive invitations to the Chapter events in your area.​

What if there isn’t a Chapter in my area? If your area doesn’t have a chapter yet, you can still connect with other Johnnies who live near you through SJC Connect. Use the directory to filter for the city and state where you live. This will bring up a list of alumni in your city and allow you to get in touch with them through SJC Connect.

Get in contact with the Chapter leader and introduce yourself. Chapter leaders help facilitate the events that a chapter hosts, but all alumni in a Chapter can suggest events or even offer to lead an event. If you would like more social events or networking events in your area, we recommend that you coordinate with the Chapter leader.

Introduce yourself to your neighbors. These days, it’s common for us to have hundreds of Facebook friends while not knowing the names of the people who live next door to us. Your first foray into making friends should be introducing yourself to your neighbors. Bring over a cake, a six-pack, anything to literally get your foot in the door. You’ll want to meet them anyway, as you’ll likely need to borrow something or get some basic information about the neighborhood. If you don’t hit it off and become great friends, that’s fine, but at least you made the effort and now have someone you know next door.

Re-connect with old friends and acquaintances. Connect with your alumni network and you’re bound to find someone in your new town who went to the same school as you, and if you’re lucky, even at the same time as you. Even if you weren’t really friends in school, you never know what can happen a few years down the road. Or go through your Facebook friends list and see if any of your connections live in your new city.

If you’​re religious, connect with a church, synagogue, etc. Local religious organizations offer ready-made communities that can offer connections beyond your typical superficial banter. You’re automatically finding folks who probably have the same values as you.

Boost your planning efforts. Avoid vague plans about meeting up “at some point.” Set a date and follow through.

Have a hobby and be open to meeting people while doing it. This is common advice. While having a hobby doesn’t guarantee friends, it’s certainly a head start. Find events and groups that regularly get together around your hobby. You are instantly part of a community.

Take advantage of the internet. Sites like meetup.com make it very easy to find groups around you that have similar interests. It’s also no pressure. You can scan events happening in your area, and decide whether or not to go. No one is keeping an attendance sheet. Check out your city’s Subreddit.

Connect with coworkers. This one is a bit complicated. Coworker relationships are often nuanced and hard to read. You never really know where work/career aspirations end and true friendship begins. It’s best to start slowly and perhaps attend a few networking events together or a happy hour after work. Be open to this, but also don’t feel bad about maintaining barriers between work and play if you want to.

Open your house for meals and get-togethers. This is admittedly difficult. It probably feels outside of your comfort zones to invite nascent friends into your home, especially the first few times you do something like this. It also might be hard to identify relationships you’d like to expand on by having them over for a meal. You can start by inviting coworkers, friends from a small group, the people on your local recreational soccer league. Even just one or two contacts with someone is enough to invite them over if you’re brave.

This is a great way to foster the type of environment that gets people to open up more. Holidays are great for this–plan a get-together during holidays for people who don’t have other plans. One idea is to do a “Pizza Club,” where we have a rotating host who provides the space and the pizza dough, while everyone else brings the toppings. Another benefit to hosting is that it will likely be reciprocated in the near future.

Generally, the best ways to make friends in your new city are being open to friendships and opportunities wherever you go, and then following up and making concrete plans. Even those of us who are introverts by nature still need friends. Many of us will tend to resist when invited to a get-together or event, preferring instead the safety and sterility of our own homes. Yet very rarely will we ever regret attending these things and, over time, you might just get a great new group of friends.

Information from On Moving to a New City can be found here.

Student Loan Tips for Recent Grads

Study the Details: It’s important to keep track of the lender, balance, and repayment status for each of your student loans. These details determine your options for loan repayment and forgiveness. If you’re not sure, ask your lender or visit National Student Loan Data System. You can log in and see the loan amounts, lender(s), and repayment status for all of your federal loans. If some of your loans aren’t listed, they’re probably private (non-federal) loans. For those, try to find a recent billing statement and/or the original paperwork that you signed. Contact the St. John’s Financial Aid Office if you can’t locate any records. For more tips on staying ahead of your loans click here.

Information from Student Loan Tips for Recent Grads can be found here.

Post-grad Tutor Reading Recommendations

Q: What book would you recommend to recent grads?

Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina
Though not a program book, this work is reminiscent of War and Peace, but with more artistry. Dostoyevsky called it “a flawless work of art.” To read it is to be immersed in another universe, yet with such intricate descriptions of human behavior that it can sometimes seem more real than the one we live in.

—Christine Chen, tutor, Santa Fe

Freeman Dyson’s Origins of Life (second edition)
Like Schrödinger, who wrote What is Life (read in the Senior Lab), Dyson is a physicist looking from the outside in on questions surrounding life. Dyson writes well and his book is a detailed and insightful analysis centered on the question of whether the basis of life is replication (i.e., DNA) or in metabolism. The former view is still the mainstream (e.g., Richard Dawkins), but Dyson does a good job of contrasting this with equally well-established views that life may consist more in its activity than in its replication.

—Eric Poppele, tutor, Santa Fe

A.R. Ammons (1926-2001)
Ammons is one of the great American poets of the 20th century. His work ranges from short burning lyrics to rambling essays-in-verse on nature and mind. Sometimes he will remind you of a Biblical prophet, sometimes of a modern Lucretius. Aside from his Collected Poetry there are two wonderful book-length poems: “Tape for the Turn of the Year” (written on a roll of adding-machine tape in the winter of 1964) and “Garbage.”

—Guillermo Bleichmar, tutor, Santa Fe

Beneath the Music by Charles Mingus
In perhaps the first post-modern autobiography, Charles Mingus’ memoir takes us from psych wards to center stage with the biggest musical icons of the 20th century. As a supplement to the book, be sure to delve deep into Mingus’ music.

—Andy Kingston, tutor, Santa Fe

Friedrich Nietzsche: The Gay Science & Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Nietzsche describes Beyond Good and Evil, which is what we currently read in seminar, as his “No-saying” book and his necessary revenge after writing his “Yes-saying” book, Zarathustra. If you only read Beyond Good and Evil, you therefore only get half a picture of his philosophy, and the less invigorating half. Like Zarathustra, The Gay Science also captures Nietzsche’s positive vision of philosophy and the future. It is less unique than Zarathustra, which defies all literary categories, but it is still top-notch, and it is more accessible.

—Lise van Boxel, tutor, Santa Fe