You are a Senior in college and at the point in the year where you are wondering “What am I going to do in the upcoming months?” or “How do I even begin looking for a job when there is so much out there?!”  Have these thoughts ever crossed your mind?  I know they have mine.

When I logged into Linked in, I found a network full of opportunity of employment.  But my question is: “How do I make myself stand out from the rest?  Why would an employer want to hire me from my Linked in page?”

Guy Kawasaki declares that it is widely underused for employment opportunities, selling, or making purchases.  About employment he states, “It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries.”

Collis Ta’eed named eight things you can do to find employment using Linkedin

1. Fill out your profile to make you look good, i.e., COMPLETE IT!
2. Expand your network
3. Invite people
4. Request introductions
5. Edit your public profile
6. Make an email signature
7. Get recommendations
8. Promote your profile elsewhere

Remember this is your FIRST impression that an employer has of you, so like anything you only get that change once.  Make it your best!

So my advice for you is to go out there, put the time into your profile, network, and remember that if at first you don’t succeed, try try again! Keep improving your profile and expanding your network!

A current trend of the Web 2.0 revolution is the shift from travel agents to websites. More and more people are turning to the internet to plan their next vacation. Here are the reasons why:

• Easy to find many vacation alternatives/ideas
• Cheapest prices
• No service fees for a travel agent
• Customer reviews legitimizing vacation destinations
• Convenient and customizable vacation packages

There are a number of great sites to use to utilize the internet as the ultimate trip planner. According to customer review, the best site to find the cheapest air, hotel, cruise and car rental prices is on Kayak.com

Kayak is the number one user rated travel website because competitor sites such as Travelocity and Hotwire search only their own databases, Kayak searches over 140 airline websites, online travel agencies and other travel sites in order to come up with its list of best fares. This is unique in the industry.

Also available through kayak.com is the fare alerts tool to let you know when a price drops.  Kayak even allows you to compare search results to other travel sites like Expedia.com. There are no booking fees with Kayak, which makes it the cheapest everytime.

Mario Sundar, the chief evangelist for LinkedIn just wrote a really insightful post on what makes a worthy post. It all boils down to one thing:

Would I read this post if I hadn’t written it?

So, ask yourself this… is the stuff you write something you would read?

I was recently visiting espn.com and found that most of the articles are in the form of blogs by many of the writers.  I never realized how important and essential they were to websites with many different and up to the minute articles.  I like reading blogs because as it is 11:19 in my class now and there are several articles about things that happened this morning.  Its a very interesting way to communicate information but I feel like I like old school articles much more.  Is anyone with me in revolting against blogs becoming the overwhelming style of choice?

          Over the past year I had searched far and wide for a potential internship.  There are many different ways to find a potential job but one of the most important aspects of finding a job is networking.  Grades are great and a good outfit is outstanding but I found that the most direct way to find an internship is who you know.  

Here are a few ways to network and find your next job in these tough economic times:

• Become a member of linkedin.com
• Find family members or friends who work in a similar industry as you want to work in
• Use the career services
• Tailor your resume and cover letter for each position
• Attend the career and internship fair
• Build relationships with workers of potential companies

Those are just a few simple ways to start youor trek to find the job of your dreams, or just a job in these tough economic times.  Hope that helps!