MyLifeMyCareer.com

It's been awhile since I have posted about actual companies hiring young guns like ourselves, and positions that seem more manageable than the normal run of the mill business positions which typically involve the cubicle or some variation of it.

This one if for all of those wannabe television hosts, those with experience blogging, vlogging, and pod casting online, and those that are in tune with our culture and the technology driving it. Revision3 produces and distributes internet television programming rather than your traditional over the air broadcasts streamed to your boob tube. One of their biggest shows that they offer is Diggnation - yes, the same Digg.com co-founder, Kevin Rose, hosts this show.

They offer applicable, cool, and entertaining content through the tv killer known as the internet. I can't speak to the quality of the company, the average work day, or how long they will be around but they are looking for full-time and intern positions at Revision3.

For those who have a skill that cannot be honed at a traditional college, you need to consider rocking it out at a school tailored to your needs.

If you're into graphic arts or some other type of art, go to an art institute.

If you're into cooking, go to culinary school. The more well-known culinary schools are tough to get into, so you better have some great menu items up your sleeve.

If you're into video game design, recording arts, movie production, and the like you could attend a technical school like .Full Sail which has industry connections. You could also go to a film school at a traditional college, like at USC.

One of my favorite options coming out of high school that I considered was attending a bartending school for a few weeks, getting licensed, and bartending for a few years before opening up my own bar. If you work 3-4 nights a week (Wed. - Sat.) you should be pulling in $800+ easily a week if you work at a popular bar. Watch the laws in your desired state of employment, as you have to be 21 to work at bars in Indiana now (used to be 18).

There are other options out there if you don't see yourself working in a more traditional position. If you take any of the above routes, there's a good chance you won't be working in a cubicle. Very nice, I like!

If you went through four years of school and are still not sure what you want to do you have a few choices - sit around and live with the parents, get a job and move on, declare a new major and take a few undergrad victory laps, or get into an advanced degree program. Let's explore these options a little more:

Sit around and live with the parents. You'll probably get a part-time job to get paid to support your social life, but the full-time job search will probably last for at least six months unless you are lucky. Companies that usually hire full-time college grads usually hire either right after the fall or spring semester, so you may have to wait until the next end of the semester to start actually working, but your interviews and offers will come before that time so you need to continually be looking.

With your time off and part-time job, you may have time to find out what others are saying about their employers and jobs which will help you make a good choice or avoid a bad decision like them. Also, your friends can refer you if you are someone that they would risk their office reputation on. Referral fees are much larger in corporations and large businesses, so you and your friend could split it if it works out.

Don't just sit around, though. Work a few part-time jobs and find yourself by using the experiences and time off to determine what you really enjoy compared to what you thought you enjoyed. We all have pictures of ourselves after college, and when you actually get there it may be better or worse than planned.

Get the first job and move on. Do what you are supposed to do after college - get a full-time job, buy some suits, and throw in the towel. What? That was a depressing thought, and it's really not that bad for those that research the companies in depth that they are considering. You may find out that the job is not right for you soon after, and then you move on to the next one hoping to get closer to what you like.

The important thing is to not lock yourself into an employment situation by racking up credit card debt or buying stuff that you can't really afford just because you have a bigger paycheck. Have a good time, but create a budget and save your money so that if your job is not working out your paycheck and financial situation is not holding you back from an opportunity that could make you much happier and benefit your career in the long run. This is the getting paid to figure it out method.

Declare a new major and take a few undergrad victory laps. It's never too late to decide that your major is not really for you. Hopefully you decide before senior year, but if not you should not force yourself to graduate unless it is financially not possible to take more courses. Most of your general education courses can be used to fulfill major requirements for 8-10 years depending where you go (maybe longer), so you wouldn't be starting over. I had a friend who switched majors after their junior year to a completely unrelated area of study, and they graduated in five years while working part-time and taking summer classes.

If you force yourself to graduate with a degree that you didn't really enjoy obtaining, chances are that your related job will not be very enjoyable. The key here is that if you don't enjoy your classes then you need to start taking new types of classes. I know that you want to be done with school, but it won't be worth it a year or two down the line when you're already unhappy with your job and area of work. That feeling will only grow and become more and more bottled up until you start taking it out on other people. Life's to short to be pissed for no reason, or for a reason that could have been prevented.

Get an advanced degree. If you enjoyed what you studied in undergrad, and don't feel ready for the full-time job go for a related advanced degree. The course work is more specialized, the projects and classmates will typically be more professional in nature, and many positions now require an advanced degree.

I only recommend this route if you enjoyed your undergrad courses, and you know that you do not want a full-time job yet. If you're unsure about which path to take between grad school and working, take your placement tests and interview with companies at the same time. The best way to learn is by doing, right? Grad school should not be a backup plan in case you don't get hired after your undergrad years, but it is for many students which ends up having mixed results.

Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State university have come up with another great video that makes you question several aspects of your life if you are in college or recently graduated. More details from the video can be found at the K-State digital ethnography site.

This is inspired by a conversation with my younger brother, who is in his third year of college, and I expressed the same feelings while I was in college that he is now talking about. I feel that my major was broad, at least across the technology spectrum, but there were many classes I was not allowed to take since they did not fall in my major's line of study. I wanted to get into some audio recording/production courses as well as fine arts courses, but most were limited to audio or art majors. How limiting one's education to a straight line of inter-related courses is considered beneficial and correct by your university's standards I will never know.

Maybe college should be five years, and the first year everyone is required to take completely different courses from different areas of study to see what they do well in and what they truly enjoy. Four years with little room for error or change of heart really limits your exploratory and personal development. Graduates who have a chance to try new courses or subjects, and really pick something that they love would result in better grades and a more enjoyable college classroom experience for them.

Once I switched majors from accounting/finance (what was I thinking?) to Informatics after one semester, I was more attentive in class and expressed a genuine interest since the lectures and material were aligned with what I was and am currently into. I still look back, and wish I would have just gone the exploratory route the entire first year, and jumped into a line of study after giving all subjects a chance. What's another $20,000 of education and living expenses on top of an already large figure which you have your whole life to pay back?

The current academic schedule allows you to really only declare and switch majors within the first or second semester before you have to play catch up with summer courses to still graduate in four or four and a half years. Take at least the first semester of your first year of college, and take courses completely unrelated to what you wanted to declare coming into college.

One semester will not put you far behind, and it may lead to a much more enjoyable education and work life beyond the college years.

Trendy clothing companies, computer and software companies, food and beverage brands. What do they all have in common? They know that college campuses include dense groups in the 18-24 target demographic. By having on-campus marketing reps, accessing and influencing that demographic could be like shooting fish in a barrel if the marketing concept and plan are executed correctly.

If you are into the game of resume building, and gaming the job-hunting system then these unpaid positions may be your ticket for marketing experience points. How much marketing and experience will you actually pick up? That all depends. Some are as simple as slinging free drinks of a particular brand at the bars on the weekend, and others are more involved like using a software program in classes and going to campus events to promote it (offered by Microsoft several years ago, not sure if it is still around...).

Search job-searching websites, pick up your campus newspaper and look in the classifieds, or check out the career or employment section on the store website the next time you are buying goods on-line to see if they have campus rep positions. There are tons of these opportunities out there, so check them out.

Face it, we young professionals and recent grads are high-risk. Most of us don't have many commitments that make us feel obligated to stay in one place. If we're not enjoying the job, we're going to go find a new place to work - a new party to rock.

I've worked for one year and four months with the same company that I started with about a month after graduation in 2006. That must seem like an eternity to those of you who are already with your second or third company. After talking with friends who have company-jumped and switched jobs already, I've come up with a plan for managers and human resource teams to minimize the risk of hiring us. Face it, we can bring a lot to the table, but we can leave the table quickly if needed.

1. Don't sugarcoat the job responsibilities and positions. It's one things for us to misinterpret the job duties, and it's a completely different issue when the human resource personnel and managers performing interviews lie about what the job entails and what day-to-day working will be like with the company. Without working for an extended period of time, soon to be college graduates will not know even half of the right questions to ask to make sure that they can handle the job and stick around for at least a few years. Your goal should be to help them out rather than docking them for not asking the "right" questions. Unfortunately, the college student or entry-level employee cannot test drive the company for several months, so the better that you can describe the experience as accurately as possible the better your chances of hiring the right person.

2. Constant Feedback This is going to only be beneficial if you have an open level of communication and a mutual respect with your young employee. Meet with them, and don't just tell them about their performance, expectations, etc. Ask them questions that center on how satisfied they are with the company, what they could change if they would, what's different about the job that is either better or worse than they expected, and so on. Don't just ask the questions to appear like you care and because your company has a plaque on the wall that says you care. Ask the questions, get the answers, and actually take action to correct issues, find a different position, or prepare for them to leave - if that is the case. The biggest benefit from gaging satisfaction and obtaining feedback in person is to use that information to better inform new candidates being interviewed so that they don't form the same perception prior to being hired as the employee who just quit after 6 months of work.

3. Work/Life Balance This is one that most companies just do not understand, and is one big reason that that they have high turnover among young employees. Several months prior to working 8-5 five+ days a week for you, your shining new young employee was going to classes three or four days a week only in the afternoon, and going to the bars Wednesday - Saturday nights. Out of all of your employees, the youngest employees have the social lives that are valued much more than older employees (not to say that older employees don't have extremely busy lives outside of work, we younger employees just haven't developed the appreciation for a hard day's work, yet). Even if you are paying your entry-levels large amounts of cash to stick around late into the night or on the weekends, they will eventually realize that even the extra money is not worth them missing out on whatever their friends are doing. Watch their hours, and just make sure to manage their work-load from your end as best as you can as they learn how much they can handle in a normal forty hour work week.

There's more to this list, but I'll save that for another day.

There are two types of college students in their last year of school - those who want a job offer before first semester is over and those that won't start thinking about job offers until first semester is over. It's dangerous to have only one view or the other. You need to mix it up.

How do you know that the right offer will come during fall semester? You don't. How do you know that the offer that you passed up first semester may have been the right offer? You don't and you never will because it is gone. Don't live in the past, and try not to stress yourself out worrying and planning for your future. Your first job will most likely not be your last job, and your first location and company will certainly not be your last. There is room for do-overs and adjusting to get back on track if necessary. Everyone does it, whether they stay with one company their entire career or work for 22 different companies.

You need to educate yourself on what companies you think you would fit into, what type of positions and job responsibilities you would be capable of performing, and what combination of the first two factors will leave you satisfied at the end of workday after workday after workday...

It's never-ending for 45-ish years, unless you fall into the above-average earning category and are able to retire early. You might as well come to the realization early on that you want to have a good job to start off with after college, but it will probably not be your last. It's not a life or death decision picking your first job offer. Your goal for senior year should be to get several offers with companies that provide positions that seem like a good foundation and first step out of education's door. You may guess right, you may pick the wrong one, as well. It's not as big of a deal as everyone makes it out to be.

The big deal is simply getting the first job and making a transition to a new stage in life to find out what you really like and dislike rather than wondering while waiting.

This is a common complaint that I have heard from not just young professionals and entry-level employees, but from 20-30 year employees that are in various stages of management. You are responsible for doing one thing or completing a particular task or group of tasks. Everything outside of that is not really your concern. How does that give you any fulfillment and sense of completion at the end of the day if you don't know what it is you have helped to complete?

As a business grows larger and larger, managers are required to delegate tasks to new managers who then delegate tasks to other employees. This opens up the CEO's days to manage the strategy, growth, and allocation of resources within the company (or to play golf and oversee the construction of their mansions - however you want to look at it). They are the brains and the leaders of the company. They see the big picture.

As much as low-in-the-business-hierarchy employees complain about the lack of understanding of the business as a whole, I'm sure that many CEO's have the same complaint about the many smaller pictures that make up the big picture. They have to trust the processes and output created from the divisions of their company to other managers and to you - the general laborer of the company. The best CEO's are the best simply because they hire great managers, and are able to give up responsibilities to others without worrying or losing to much sleep about it.

It's the nature of the beast - the large business, corporation, or global company. We, worker bees, simply don't have time to perform our task and also take part in the larger processes of the company, and CEO's don't have time to lead the company and know how you complete the task day in and day out that allows the company to succeed. I think about this concept by comparing it to those posters which feature a larger picture made up of many different smaller pictures. The CEO has the wider perspective and sees the big picture, and he has to select which smaller pictures to focus on at a given time, but cannot focus on many of them for very long in order to keep the focus on the big picture. The general population of employees usually sees their small picture and the pictures surrounding it (related processes, teams, and divisions of a company), but only in great companies do they have access to the wider perspective revealing the bigger picture that they are a part of.

The key to a great business and company is having employees and managers that are educated on the larger issues and strategy of the company, and for the employees and mangers to educate senior management on the smaller processes and issues before they become a larger problem. Keeping that balance of working specifically on your task while still gaining the knowledge of the business as a whole leads to more rewarding work experience and understanding of how a business operates.

You need to find a company that is not afraid to let entry and mid-level employees in on the big picture. How do you know if a company is open to itself, so to speak? They are usually the ones with very detailed and exciting career pages and company information pages on their websites. Check out the press release section to see if they have press releases only about their products and services, or if they also include positive press regarding the operations of the company and about their employees. As previously mentioned, it's tough to know for sure unless you have actually worked for the company due to the lack of honest company and employer reviews.

Many companies talk the talk, but very few walk the walk.

Building on the theme of honesty from yesterday brings us to the next topic: Honest opinions about working for [insert company or manager of your choice]. Many students google the terms, company review, employee feedback, or terms similar to this.

Don't.

This is a horrible idea, and one way to skew your perception of a company and possibly scare you away from a good offer and future opportunity. How likely are you to leave feedback if you had a positive experience? Not very unless you have tons of time, and love to express yourself. Now, how often are you likely to say something when you are treated poorly, given inadequate service, or purchased a busted product? Exactly.

We are quick to yell and let people know when we are not happy, but rarely do we let others know that we are content or satisfied since it is the norm. Does this apply to job or company reviews accessible online? You bet it does. Let me prove it to you.

Go to JobVent.com, which is a site that provides users with a place to rate their current employer. Select any letter of the alphabet to view a list of companies starting with that letter. What do you notice about the resulting list? If you said, Wow, there sure are a lot of negative numbers next to most of these names of companies, then you are correct. Not only are there many more negative numbers than positive numbers, look how low some of those numbers go.

Bottom line, the majority or company or employer reviews are submitted by people who are pissed off, and nine times out of ten they are probably created when the employee had a bad day or right after they were fired or decided to quit. It's human nature to want to share our dissatisfaction for a situation, and many of these people think that they are damaging a company's reputation and fighting back.

As long as you are aware of the fact that sites and forums like this are completely bogus, you will be much better off in your job search. Until companies become more transparent and honest about their successes, and more importantly their failures, the thought to seek out reviews of a company should not even cross your mind.

Your career counselors and professors always stress how you need to be honest and present yourself as, well, yourself. What about honesty from the recruiters?

The average interview lasts between 30-60 minutes. Most of my offers were secured by the second or third round, so let's say five interviews at the maximum of 60 minutes apiece and you have five hours that a company determined you were right for them. You just went through 16 years of education, and are going to make a decision about what's next in your life in the matter of five hours. How can you possibly know what a job will be like, what it will be like several months after starting when the new smell starts to wear off, and what your job duties will really entail?

You can't, and recruiters and human resource employees even if they were completely honest could not paint you a clear picture about the job and company. Even though they seem to be unaware it's in the recruiters' best interest to be as honest as possible about the position, so that you don't take the job under false pretenses and end up quitting less than a year into the position. I don't know how to get this message through to recruiters, because they go goo-goo for ga-ga when a 3.5 cumulative GPA candidate with internship experience walks through the door. They receive pressure from above to get this candidate to accept an offer, and if clouding the truth is going to help matters then it will certainly be partly to mostly cloudy the day of your interviews.

They know that after graduation you will get an apartment or house, possibly a new car, and have student loans on the side, so even if you are not satisfied with the position several months down the road you have several financial commitments that will hold you back slightly from quitting suddenly.

Go into the interview process with the intentions of being as honest as possible, but at the same time you need to be realistic and know that the person across the table will certainly be selling the good and standing in front of the bad. Don't be afraid to walk away from the table when an offer comes down if you felt that the BS was thicker than usual.

I actually did not go out searching for a cubicle simulator, but just sort of stumbled on it. Living in Indianapolis, near Ball State University 40 minutes north in Muncie, Indiana it's not uncommon to see commercials on tv for their programs that they offer. Their entrepreneurship master's program looked interesting, so I checked out the website for the Miller College of Business at BSU. I'm not sure that I would ever go to school for an advanced degree in entrepreneurship as I could buy the same books and gain similar resources through the local SBA. Anyways, as I was reading about the program, courses, and honors, I was drawn to the Experience the Non-Entrepreneurial Life at MiseryCubed.com banner.

It's a sad but true representation of the cube farms that the majority of entry-level employees and even mid-level employees work in. It's also humorous because it is a bit overdone even though I a big opponent of non-open, creativity killing, gray walled workspaces.

Thanks to the Gore Gone Wild or general environmentalist movement, jobs in the life science sector are booming. And by booming, I mean if you have a degree with "Bio", "Chem" or a combination of the two with another word, "Tech", you could probably write your own paycheck if you were an outstanding student in your area of study.

Last month alone, the cover story in three magazines that I subscribe to was about cellulosic ethanol studies and the push to produce this next-gen fuel alternative at a mass distribution level. That movement alone will result in thousands of jobs for all of you future scientists out there.

Science has changed dramatically in the past decade with the introduction of affordable super computing to aid research. If you get a degree in Biotech or Bioinformatics you would be a hot commodity. The point here is to be a scientist with the ability to use technology to complement your research, and not to be a computer scientist with a minor in science as some schools offer. Getting the tech-heavy degrees with very little scientific background is not as attractive degree as they make it out to be.

Science and math are not hot majors for most American higher education students for multiple reasons: not gaining grade school and high school students' interest early on, our perception of the American business person and the glamorous occupations that they have, and the complexity and high degree of intelligence and creativity that is required to strive in the field. I'm sure many high school students enjoy math, but they may not be good at it - a common excuse. If you enjoy math or science, stick with it, work hard, and there will definitely be jobs for you in the industry or academia.

Most business jobs involve fitting into a mold and performing a required function with little room for creativity until you get into a management position or if you are fortunate enough to work for an innovative company. Having the ability to research, strive to find something new, and to create something useful seems like it would be very rewarding. I'm sure you would have days as a scientist where you are just running standard tests, but it seems like you would be able to share your ideas and create your own projects based on research initiatives which would be amazing.

Go for a hot degree if that is where your interest lies rather than going for a degree that seems like a conventional and safe bet.

I've talked about it before, and I saw it explained in detail by none other than Larry David on last night's episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm on HBO. They have taken in a hurricane refugee family, and one of the family members had a job interview. Larry explained to him that the interview starts out and the interviewer is on top and you're on bottom as they start to grill you and ask all the questions. As you start to ask more questions you start to move up and interviewer starts to move down. Eventually you have flipped the interview, and the interviewer is answering all of the questions and trying to impress you. That's where you want to be at the end of the interview.

Check out the episode if you have it DVR'd, Tivo'd, or have access to HBO on-demand (Episode 56: The Rat Dog)

Larry suggests that Leon flip the power dynamic of an interview by asking questions, not just answering them. Leon gets excited by the idea of turning it around on him: "topsy turvey the motherf**ker!" - from HBO.com episode guide

I like Careerbuilder and Monster as much as I rip on them for selling out and not providing the type of job searching tools that they could offer with all of the positions that they have in their database. Careerbuilder thinks that video resumes will be the future of the resume. I wonder why they think that? Maybe because YouTube is hot, hot, hot right now and for the past few years, and even though CB is late to the game with incorporating video into their service they have done it. Should they, though?

Whether or not video resumes are the future (they are probably not...), I found their examples on right and wrong ways to present yourself as ridiculous. The people in the "right" videos are about as personable as my left foot after it has fallen asleep and no longer has any feeling. The sad thing is that this is considered professional behavior, and if you want a job you need to read your resume back at 23.75 words per minute staring straight into the camera wearing a suit. Imagine an office full of these people and you have the current environment at the majority of companies out there.

I want to work with the people in the "wrong" videos, even if it is for a short period of time. The first guy is your typical sales rep, but at least he has fire. I probably wouldn't hire him because I would be annoyed after 5 minutes, but at least he has a personality. The girl in the middle needs to lose the "ummm", but at least she stands out. The last guy is awesome. If you are going to play guitar and sing a song in your interview, you are in. I would take a chance on hiring this guy believing that his motto is "work hard, play hard".

You can be personable and professional at the same time without being a future corporate robot. Whether you submit a video resume or are in an actual interview, don't be another Pinocchio.

Managing a restaurant is the classic business example that was used in many of the textbooks and courses that I took. It's a simple yet complex business that illustrates many principles perfectly.

Kitchen Nightmares, featuring Gorden Ramsey, is just another reality television show brought to us by the fine people at FOX. At first glance, yes, it does have it's moments which were built up for entertainment purposes, but this show has good value for those out there running a business or looking to start a business. Every single episode so far has involved a manager that has lost the fire and control of the business.

Ramsey comes in, shows them that they are putting out a piss poor performance that won't win any awards, and re-ignites most of them to love their business and want it to be successful. It's basic consulting - managing employees better, doing market research, improving your product, delivering high quality products and service day in and day out, and doing what you love.

I don't know how many times it has been said to these managers, "If you don't love it, quit or sell it and move on". That's great advice for any entrepreneur or business owner, but also applicable to you in your area of study or first job. Life is too short not to be happy doing something you love.

I went to college in Indiana, and am working my first job out of college in Indiana. Apparently, not everyone does this, and I'm not sure why - 40 degree single day temperature swings, corn, 6 months of no shorts, one large city, corn, etc.

Brain drain, which is better known as smart graduates leaving the state after college, is a large problem because of reasons already stated above. The governor was going to start giving scholarships if students would commit to working for three years in Indiana after they received a degree, but it has never been enacted (Read More...).

It's a cool idea if you know for sure that you love living here, and will be here for awhile. Who knows that they will be happy enough to stay for three long years? The last thing I would want to do was keep working somewhere that I hated simply because I couldn't afford to pay back $20,000.

It would make more sense to me, and make it easier for the state to track graduates over time if the program gave the money back with your state tax return in three incremental payments over the three years - $4000, $6000, and the last and hardest year you would get your $10000.

Good idea gov, but don't make freshmen sign off on something that is basically a seven year contract at that point before they have even switched majors for the first time or bonged their first beer. Are any other states doing something similar to this?

Recently, I read an article about how the values and culture of a company change when they become a public company or a part of one. No matter what you say your company motto or values are, the number one value and goal of a public company is to generate returns for shareholders.

I don't know many people out of my group of friends who don't work for a public company or a company that is owned by a public company. Unless you work for a small business, it's pretty tough these days to not work for a shareholder driven company. I don't know how you can act in the best interest of the business, especially in tough times, when you have people willing to sell their stock if you don't show them what they want. It's the nature of the beast, I guess.

I'm not saying that small businesses don't have to deal with outside pressure, at all, especially if loans or venture capital is involved. Small businesses have different kinds of problems, like managers trying to do all of the work rather than delegating, employees not communicating truthfully because of the small size of group involved, and simply trying to keep the business going throughout the early years.

Just be aware of factors affecting the nature of whatever company you are working for or thinking about working for, and what's really driving the growth or lack there of.

As businesses come up with more and more ways to cut costs in the human resources category, like outsourcing, contractors, part-time instead of full-time, etc., we will begin to see our length of employment with one company decrease dramatically. Telecommuting is still a concept that most companies stray away from, but the cost reduction realized from eliminating a permanent physical office can be quite large. The disconnect between employees and employer is aided by working remotely, so the monetary cost savings may not be as justified as some make it out to be.

A trend that is likely to grow is eliminating the number of full-time employees, and bringing on contractors and part-time employees to quickly train and complete a project before moving on. What's the point of keeping a full-time employee who specializes in a certain type of development or other type of skill when they are only needed for several months out of the year?

There is even a job searching site that is specifically aimed at part-time, freelance, and contractor type positions. Sologig.com could find you a temporary position which may last several months or several years at which point you could find your next position and company. Think about it: we lease cars rather than buy because we love getting something new every couple of years, we rent an apartment or condo rather than purchasing a home because we are always on the move and don't want to be tied down, and we change the channels much more than we actually watch or listen to one thing at a time.

We weren't meant to be tied down to one position, but usually a financial commitment, personal relationship, or some other burden keeps us in one place because of the job security and bi-weekly paycheck. I personally don't feel tied down currently, and like to think that I willingly show up to the office everyday (although, I would be lying some of the time). Starting over and getting re-trained on some new concept, process, or product is not my favorite thing to do, so seeing my hard work in the beginning which can take what seems like forever to learn finally come to fruition is a rewarding experience.

Face it - whatever side you are on, your opinion and view can change the very next day. Our generation is known for job-hopping, but maybe we had it right all along as old-timers and silver haired managers join the wildest game of musical chairs where the music never stops: the current and future job market made possible by the growth and availability of information through new mediums and tools which we created.

Depending on what you are into and what you would enjoy doing to put food on the table day after day, going to college may not be for you. According to a recent article in the Kansas City Star, the hot jobs now for the young and career-minded may very well be in technical, trade and skilled service occupations -- such as welders, auto technicians, heavy equipment operators and nurses.(Read more...)

Some of these positions will still require trade school or an associates degree, but just as many you could probably start working right out of high school with the necessary skills being taught on the job. I think that it is important that they mention the issue of perception, and how you will be perceived if you work in a factory or production plant of some type. A friend of mine worked at an auto manufacturing plant for a summer job (not internship) on the line and made $18.00+/hr. Show me a traditional business internship that pays that much by dividing out the salary into hourly portions, and I would be surprised if the business positions payed that much.

There is also the argument that you need to gain the experience from four years on a campus away from home. There is so much that you do gain socially and personally outside of the education, but is it worth $100,000 over those four years? That's definitely a debatable point.

If you enjoy working with your hands or have a technical skill, it's nice to know you have the option of not necessarily having to shell out dough for college. At the same time, many jobs do require an advanced degree of some type. Do what you want, and what you think will make you the happiest now while setting yourself up for future opportunities.