Non-Traditional Employment, Part II

You might recall I wrote a piece about non-traditional employment a little more than a week ago  and posted a link to a Businessweek article that featured ~20 recent graduates and their back-up employment plans.

One of the vignettes that caught my eye was of a University of Washington (my alma mater) MBA student named Eddie Minkoff.  He listed an interest in Product Development but when his plans didn't go as expected, he ended up climbing mountains all over the world--sounds like my kind of work!

This last week I tracked Minkoff down and asked him about his journey and where he ended up.  Here is a snippet of our conversation:

EM: The short answer is I did end up travelling after finishing up my internship at T-Mobile, ultimately spending 5 months in Iceland, East Africa, India, and Nepal. I came back to Seattle in February and the job market was still bad. I took a mountaineering course and got involved with a second non-profit called Intercity Outings, which is a part of the Sierra Club that takes disadvantaged K-12 students on outdoor trips to gain an appreciation for nature.

The last component is that I'm working as a contractor for Microsoft right now in Product Development for the Bing search engine. Still shooting for the product management in a consumer company path, but nothing there yet.

Job search--what does that person do?

For some of us, the most difficult aspect of job-hunting is trying to figure out exactly what job title we should be searching for.  For example, what is the difference between a real-estate analyst and an analyst in the biotech industry?  And, what do brand managers, hedge fund managers and human resource managers actually do on a day-to-day basis?

Do you know what industry you would like to work in? --Media, Manufacturing, Technology, Telecom, Transportation, Health Care....?

There are multiple resources available in BCS to find answers to these questions, including a book named "The MBA Career Bible."

If you find yourself applying to a wide range of jobs with little focus or direction, I suggest you stop by! I read all about sales and sales management in the pharmaceutical industry this morning and I now have a much better idea of how to proceed with my search.

Happy job hunting!