Money magazine just put out the ten fastest growing careers in America. They are:

1. Software developer

2. Physical therapist

3. Financial advisor

4. Civil engineer

5. Marketing specialist

6. Management consultant

7. Information technology consultant

8. Database administrator

9. Financial analyst

10. Environmental engineer

We're reposting this information here for a couple of reasons. First, it's interesting to see what fields are growing the fastest. Second, and more importantly, we should all be thinking about what factors we want to prioritize in our career decision-making. The fields listed here are vastly different from one another. For instance, a management consultant and a software engineer have very different work experiences, with next to nothing in common. So is this the list you should be looking at? Or should you be looking at a list of the highest paying jobs? Or the jobs with the highest satisfaction levels?

There is no "right" list at which you should look. The important thing is to think about what matters to you before making decisions based on these types of lists.

Awesome results from our first pilot program with SFUSD!

Our first pilot program with the San Francisco Unified School District has finally come to an end. Hundreds of high school students have used our services and given us awesome feedback! Here are some of the results:

- 93% of students said they would recommend us to their friends

- 50% of them who didn’t know what they wanted to do in the beginning said they now have a career in mind after using CareerEagle and watching the videos

- Compare to another career education software, which cost SFUSD nearly $1M in the past year, 68% of the student said they prefer CareerEagle (MVP stage) over the other career software

We are pretty excited and look forward to expanding our services to more school districts and benefit more students in the near future!

SFUSD: Thanks for your support and we really appreciate your feedback!

A little bit about what comes next..

We’ve received amazing positive feedback about our service from both students and adults over recent months.

Over the coming year we’ll continue to offer our paid subscription service to adults. In addition, we’re also offering our service to school systems and have finished a semester pilot with one of the San Francisco Unified School District’s largest schools, Galileo High School.

While we charge schools (a low rate) for access to CareerEagle, we offer unlimited free access to schools in poor communities that lack the resources to afford our software.

If you want your school to have access to CareerEagle, let the administration know that they should contact us. Enjoy the site!

CareerEagle is now an official partner of Galileo Academy Of Science and Technology (as of March 2012) and Gateway High School (as of April 2012). So far, the students love our videos and keep asking us to cover more professions! Stay tuned for more results from our pilot programs with these two high schools! 

Top 5 Things You Need to Know to Create a Great Resume

1.  Remember to include your contact information – there’s nothing more annoying for a prospective employer than finding a good looking resume and then realizing that the phone number or email address is missing. Most employers won’t bother to find your information if you don’t include it in the header.

2.  Keep it to one page – This is a hard and fast rule. Really. Unless you’re a senior executive who has held a number of very high level positions, you should be able to cull your experience down to a single page. If you can’t do that, then you’re including fluff that doesn’t belong in there.

3.  Make it relevant – You don’t have one resume that you use for every application. You have a resume that serves as the starting point for every application. When you apply for a job or internship at a national park, you’re going to want to show off a different set of skills than if you’re applying for a job or internship at an accounting firm. Tweak your resume to highlight experiences that show some relevance to the job or internship to which you’re applying.

4.  Highlight accomplishments – You only have one page. Don’t waste space talking about the data entry you’ve done unless it was the most impressive thing you did. Give bullet points about the two or three most important things you did in any role.

5.  Be honest - Make yourself sound as good as possible, but always, always, always be honest on your resume.

If you're in either high school or college, you should be looking for an internship right now. Here are the top 5 reasons why..

1. It helps differentiate you - When you apply for a college, master degree or job, you'll be competing against lots of other people. On average, there are roughly 6 applicants for every open position in the US. If you want to stand out, you'll need more than your grades. An internship can help with that, particularly if it's in the field of the school or job to which you're applying. It makes you more unique, because now you're more than just a set of grades; you're a person with experience.

2. Experience - An internship gives you valuable experience. This is important both in terms of what it does for your skill set as well as what it tells others. It builds your capabilities in that field and tells others who are looking at your resume that you were able to do real work outside of a school setting, making them more likely to hire you.

3. Recommendation - Internships are good opportunities for you to get recommendations and references. These are the lifeblood of your future applications to schools and jobs. Without good recommenders, you'll find it very difficult to take the next steps in your career.

4. Decision-making - You need to decide whether a career is right for you. This site is just a first step, to help you find careers that look interesting. We strongly recommend doing an internship as a next step, to get your hands dirty and determine whether a given career truly excites you.

5. Everyone else is doing it - For once, this is a good reason to do something. Other students across the country are getting internships. They are your competition for the best schools and jobs. If they have that experience and you don't, you'll be at a disadvantage when you're both applying for the same school or job.

So don't wait! Start searching today. You may wish to check out a site like internship.com. Or apply to us by going to the Contact Us button and submitting a message stating your interest.

Here are the top 10 articles posted on Twitter and Facebook this week:

Jobs

The 9 Oddest Job Interview Questions Asked at Tech Companies in 2011 - Mashable
Job Interview Etiquette - Mint
Job Seekers, Creativity and Flexibility Count - Wall Street Journal
How to get a job: what's missing from resumes I'm reviewing - DailyKos
How to Get a Job Without Experience - Harvard Business Review

Education

Two Families, Two Takes on Virtual Schooling - Wall Street Journal
‎5 Core Steps to a More Satisfying Career in 2012 - Forbes
Don't Pay for Technology: 25 Freebies for Students - Education-Portal
Twitter in the Classroom: Watch This Teacher Engage Shy Students in Learning History - Good
How college prep is killing high school - Mother Nature Net

To get a continuous stream of updates remember to follow us on all our social media channels:

3 Minute Campaign Facebook -- CareerEagle Facebook -- CareerEagle Twitter -- CareerEagle StumbleUpon

Written By Monica Page

Very rarely are people able to go into the career of their dreams on the first shot. As with most things in life, trial and error is expected to finally find that perfect with. Instead of wasting years of your life toiling away at a job you hate, the simple act of talking to someone in a field you are interested in could help you fully determine whether it can make you happy or not.

It is a key fact of life that people like to talk about themselves, thus is should not be too hard to hear from someone about their career. With channels such as LinkedIn and blogs, it is now much simpler to find someone in an area you are interested in and asking them to share their experiences with you. This isn’t a interrogation, but a simple way to gain insight into their career and work-life.

It’s one thing to hear about a career from a textbook and another to actually interact with the person living the life day-to-day. At times the information you gain will be discouraging, other times it will be the inspiration you need to move your life in that direct. Either way, hearing from someone about their career will either save you from making a time-wasting mistake or lead you into a happier, more fulfilling life.

One out of every four children in the US live in poverty. Poverty in the US is defined as a family of four living with a combined income of under $24k per year. It’s really not poverty – it’s below subsistence level.

Many of these children have parents who are good, hardworking people who want to find a job but can’t. The system has failed these individuals. If someone is willing to work hard in America, he should be able to find a job. At CareerEagle, we’re trying to help.

We’re not a job search site. There are more than enough of those. But we can help people understand what opportunities are out there. The videos in the CareerEagle library are intended to provide visibility into the vast range of options available. Watch our videos and get inspired to seek a job that you never even knew existed until now. That’s a powerful tool. And it’s a tool that can help both executives who are looking to switch careers as well as the desperate parents who are looking for work so that they can support their families. Let us know what you think. Share your story.

-Aaron

Written By Monica Page

When it comes to presenting yourself to employers, the old saying “never judge a book by its cover” can be a little misleading. It is very likely that you will give multiple impressions to potential employers before you ever speak to them face-to-face (or through Skype of over-the-phone). Your resume will be doing most of the talking, and it is important to convey that you want the job and that you are the perfect fit for it.

The marvelous benefit of using a computer is the ability to effortlessly edit material whenever you need to. Taking this into account, it is not unlikely that through a job search you will have multiple versions of the same resume for various positions. It is important to ensure that your resume is full, but also not weighed down by an excess amount of non-relevant information. Provide each recruiter with the information they want to hear and nothing more. If you come off as boring and irrelevant on paper, no one will want to speak to you in person.

Once your resume is in order, make sure that all other online channels and representations of yourself all convey the same message. You don’t want to come off as confused and unfocused (even if you are). No matter how well you can convey your thoughts and ideas in person, very rarely will you get the chance to bypass the resume/coverletter gatekeeping. Tailor your resume, tailor your message, and then you’ll be able to pitch yourself face-to-face with recruiters.

Things are starting to heat up here at CareerEagle. You may have noticed that we’re getting 1-2 job videos up every day!

Alex and I have spent a fair amount of time pounding the pavement in San Francisco, interviewing people in a wide variety of jobs. We just ask people to answer three simple questions:

1. 1. Tell us about your job

2. 2. Tell us about the career and educational path that took you to where you are

3. 3. What do you wish you knew when you started your career

The results have been amazing. People have opened up in a way we didn’t expect. They’ve been honest, putting their proverbial arm around the viewer and telling them the way that the world is. Their stories are powerful and contain tough, compelling wisdom about how to pursue your dreams. Send us your feedback or reply to this blog. We look forward to hearing what you think.

Written By Monica Page

Any student who has entered college in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis can collectively agree on one thing: the blissful ignorance of being an undergrad is gone. The traditional university remains a testing ground for many “not-so-scientific-experiments,” but everything now comes with a price tag. The “time is money” philosophy holds true when the scenario of spending one extra semester trying to find yourself could make or break your future credit rating.

As tuition costs rise and student fees are tacked on the minutest things, spending the least amount of time required to graduate is of the upmost importance. It may be a stretch, but perhaps it is wrong to think that all students just spend a lot of time in college just to have something to do. What if, and this is without any scientific citation, the average student spends so much time in college because they don’t know what to get out of college? You may answer that they receive a “degree,” but that is simplifying a very complex situation.

As college students pursue this mythological “degree,” there is still step zero: choosing a major. An elusive creation that is interesting and actually provides the student with a glimpse into a promising (or at least emotionally happy) future is like catching a Quidditch snitch. Most students do not have the opportunity to hop around to every major offered in the course catalog to finally find that “fit.” If a student wants to explore and learn more about a career or major, they need to do it on their own time. Although some colleges have the option of “career” or “major exploration” courses, they can sometimes be so unbearably boring or broad that nothing useful comes out of them.

With the technological progression in recent years it is easier to get a feel of a career or major. Videos, articles and the basic human activity of talking to people can keep a student on track to graduate not only on time, but in a career path they are actually interested in. There are those who are ready for the world in kindergarten with their five-year college plan mapped out in crayons; and then there is the rest of the world who are blissfully clueless of life’s next stage.

The basic human emotion of not knowing what’s next is expected, and will just require you to work a little harder. Spending a little more time when it comes to exploring and learning about various paths can provide insight into a world outside of the highlighted yellow pages of re-used textbooks. Hearing directly from someone satisfies the other person’s basic need: people enjoy talking about themselves, especially about what they like doing and, more generally, being. Absorb knowledge gained from various channels to make a clear, informed decision. College is too expensive and life is too long to be stuck in a dead-end job paying off student loans and eating Ramen all night.

Some of our users have asked why we are not a non-profit. We seriously considered it. But our view is that the most sustainable way to stay around for the long term is to incorporate as a for-profit company. We want to offer job videos to everyone, ideally without charging the people who watch them, for many years to come.

We’re on the board of various non-profits. We know how difficult it can be to kept them running! As a for-profit company CareerEagle can generate sufficient revenues to stay afloat and expand – raising money to market the site and let a wider audience know that we have the best (and only) career navigation videos on the web.

But we may eventually create a non-profit arm. If you have experience with a joint for-profit/non-profit organization, let us know. We’d love your input!

Things are looking up for teens seeking summer jobs between school years. According to a report by Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., teen employment was up by 13% this summer as compared to 2010. Between May through July of this year, teen employment grew by 1,087,000 vs. just 960,000 one year ago. Granted overall summer employment for 16-19 year olds has not yet rebounded to pre-recession levels, but we still think the 13% increase is reason to celebrate.

Summer employment is a great way to gain important professional skills and build your resume. Colleges and employers look at summer jobs as an indication that you are responsible, have direction, and know how to manage your time. Plus, if you’re able to land a summer job in an industry that you find interesting, it could help you make strong connections that could serve you when you’re looking for a full time job. A summer gig is also a good way to test out a potential job to see if it could be a good fit. Not sure if you want to be a hair stylist or graphic designer? Try to spend half your summer working the front desk at a neighborhood salon and the other half doing a graphic design internship. You’ll be surprised what you learn!

We know it’s not always easy to find the perfect summer job at the perfect company, but start thinking about your goals now and start the search process early to give yourself the best chance. Come February or March of next year, tap into friends, family members, teachers, local business people, etc. to see if they know of any openings for the 2012 summer. And be sure to clean up your resume and brush up on your interviewing skills to help you land the right job.

We considered a wide variety of business models to serve job videos to people who are making difficult career decisions. While we might make more money by offering the videos for a fee, we made the decision to make the videos as widely available as possible.

Indeed, given that the videos are intended to help both socioeconomically disadvantaged high school students as well as college students, we needed a way to give access to people who don’t have the money to pay. We also believe that the best consumer facing websites give their content away for free.

So our videos are free. All of them. For now. We’ve brainstormed various ideas to monetize the videos without directly charging our users. But to make this work, we need people to upload videos, lots of them, without being paid to do so. They need to make videos about their jobs out of altruism – because they want to help kids make better career decisions. If you want this project to succeed, without charging our users, then we need you to make a video today!

Also, we welcome your ideas/suggestions/criticism. Please email Aaron at amichel@careereagle.com with any feedback that you have.

Today most Americans are in jobs they dislike. A poll a year ago suggested that only 45% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. (http://nyp.st/5BWNzv) And for those people who have chosen jobs in the wrong industry, in the wrong role, their work probably isn't likely to get better anytime soon. Once you choose a career path, it's remarkably difficult to make a switch - particularly in today's economy.

High school students are dropping out and landing in a pool of poor job options that last a lifetime. College students are graduating without an understanding of what their options are. Adults are stuck in jobs and careers in which they have no interest, without a clear way out.

You can help.

You don't have to give a dollar. You just have to volunteer your time, make a career video and you can change lives. That's the power of CareerEagle. With 3 minutes of your time, you can help young people understand whether your career path is the right one for them. Isn't that worth it?

The other day I received an e-mail from a former coworker who had moved on to a new company. She was looking to hire someone in her group and had vetted several resumes to get down to a list of folks she wanted to interview. Her next step? She checked out each of the applicants on Facebook to see what she could learn about them. The reason she e-mailed me was because she saw that I was a friend of one of the candidates.

In today’s plugged in world, there are few private places online – especially when it comes to social media where you have publicly available information that recruiters can easily access. If you are conducting a job search, it’s easy to remember to have a great resume, a compelling cover letter, and to look sharp and be well prepared during your interview. But don’t let Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and YouTube slip your mind. According to The Protocol School of Washington, 86% of recruiters are using social media to help them assess candidates.

So what should you do to clean up your act? First, watch what you’re saying. Do not use profanities or post things on your wall or Twitter that you wouldn’t want to say directly to your interviewer’s face. Second, make sure your profile picture is appropriate and professional. That’s not to say it can’t be fun or show off your personality, but just be sure it’s not showing you doing or wearing something you’d be embarrassed to do or wear in the workplace. Third, set up privacy filters wherever possible to make sure content you don’t want public isn’t out there for anyone to see. This of course isn’t a surefire fix since a recruiter could see your private information via a common friend or acquaintance, but it helps. The best solution of course is to just untag yourself from questionable pictures and take down content you don’t want out there.

That was a lot of don’t – but no fear, social media can be used to your benefit. First, it’s a great tool for getting in touch with former colleagues and networking with friends of friends (LinkedIn is a great tool to help with these things). You can also expand your network by being active in communities and on forums that pertain to the industry you’re interested in. Second, “like” the company you want to interview with and start following them on Twitter – it’ll keep you up to date on company news and will let them know you’re really interested. And finally, make sure your profile on LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. is up to date with respect to your education, career background, and accomplishments. You never know, a recruiter at a company you hadn’t even considered may stumble across your awesome social media “resume.”

Just last month, 85.6% of Internet users in the U.S. watched videos online – that’s 178 million Americans! According to a comScore press release, there were 6.2 billion viewing sessions, an all time high and the first time the figure crossed the 6 billion mark.

We think there are a number of reasons why online videos are such a popular medium for getting information. The most important one is that you can pack a lot of information into a few minutes of video. Apart from just words, videos reveal body language and intonation. These provide valuable context and information that may supplement, or sometimes negate, the actual words used. Videos are also more personal and engaging than simple text on a page. When it comes to learning about different career options, we think all this is critically important. A bullet point list of job responsibilities provides significantly less information (and is a lot more boring) than a real person authentically and candidly speaking about their own career. Check out our videos – we think you’ll agree.

Recently, I received an email from my alma mater regarding a disappointing decision made by the Regents of University of California (UC) to increase undergraduate tuition by 9.6%. This is on top of the 32% increase passed in 2009. Together this will bring the in-state student tuition to an insane level of $12,192 per year - more than twice what it cost in 2005.

I started to think – Whom should we blame? This year, after Jerry Brown’s final budget cut, the UC will be receiving the same level of State funding as in year 1998 while serving nearly double the amount of students 12 years ago. In a situation like this, here’s really only two things they can do – cut classes and teachers or increase tuition fee. Comparing the two options, a fee increase might be the better decision since cutting classes will keep students in school longer and cost them more money to earn their degree.

Nowadays, not only the students at UC have to suffer, public universities around the country have been announcing their tuition increases. For example, University of Wisconsin announced to increase tuition by 5.5% yesterday and Penn State made the decision of 3.9% tuition increase last Thursday.

The students are powerless to fee hikes like this and the only decision they have is to choose either graduating with more debts or not going to college at all. Here’s why students should use CareerEagle as a tool to understand their options and explore their future:

Option #1 - Going to college

• If you know your ideal career ahead of time, you won’t repeat the same mistake a lot of people make – switching your major half way through your education. Each time you switch to a different major, you will be spending more years in school and accumulating more debts. Therefore, it is important to know what you want to become, take the right classes, and plan to graduate college in four years.
• Watching the career videos on our website will help you understand what it takes to be successful in the field you want to enter. Our videos provide free career information, education information and advice from working professionals. You will find out what class and/or internship will be beneficial for you to help you get a job upon graduation.

Option #2 - Not going to college:

• Not having a college degree doesn’t mean that you will never get a good job. If you work hard, you will be become as successful as everyone else. There are many companies offering management training that only promote from within. Our videos will help you explore the different career paths you can take with your current degree and show you paths to success.
• If a four-year college is not for you, have you thought about going to a technical school (trade school)? A little bit of training can bring you to a different path and transform your life. In many cases, a tech school can match with you a job in your field upon completion. For example, a friend of mine completed one-year of training to become an Emergency Medical Technician and he was offered a full-time job right after he earned his license.

While the universities are making their decisions to keep the schools running, the students should start making decisions about their future.

Our team at CareerEagle works hard to provide free career information to the students to help them make the right decisions. There might be many career websites out there but there’s only one place to find real career advice from real working professionals – www.careereagle.com

~Alex

We’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about why people would upload a video on our site.

We work with colleges and trade schools to get videos of their alumni on the web. It gives the schools an opportunity to help their current students determine an optimal career path by giving those students the best possible career information –straight from people who were in their shoes and faced their decisions. It also helps the schools put their best foot forward to prospective high school students looking for colleges and vocational schools.

But we want job videos from everyone. Not just alumni of our partner schools. We’re building a massive database and we’re impatient to reach our first 1,000 job videos - and our first 10,000 job videos. So we’ve come up with the 3 Minute Campaign. It lets people know that with just 3 minutes of their time they can help young people make wiser choices. It doesn’t cost them anything to make; equally important, it doesn’t cost the students anything to watch. We’re helping people find a way to be altruistic with their time without having to give a dime to do it. This is the first note about the rollout of the 3 Minute Campaign. More to come!

Aaron

Ideally, each time we find a job opportunity that seems like a good fit, we’d get a chance to stand in front of HR or the hiring manager and tell them why they should hire us. But the vast majority of the time, it’s a piece of paper that’s doing the talking for us. This is why spending time to craft a strong resume is such a critical part of your job search. You need your resume to tell a good story and say the things about you that you wish you could say in person.

There are a few basic tenants to keep in mind when it comes to writing a great resume:

• Keep your resume to one page. Unless you have 35 years of experience, 6 patents under your name, and 15 publications, it’s hard to justify going over one page. Of course this doesn’t mean jam-packing in words and shrinking your margins to 0.1”. Instead, really think about what needs to go on the resume and what is just “extra stuff” that doesn’t add much to your story. For example, as you gain more experience, start letting things drop off your resume. If you are a college freshman applying for a summer internship, it might make sense to keep a high school job on your resume. But if you’re ten years out of college, no need to have that job take up space (unless it is HIGHLY relevant). Plus, having adequate white space on the page makes your resume appear cleaner, more professional, and easier to read.
• Limit your bullet points. Have no more than 8-10 bullet points on the page. This will force you to come up with more robust points for each job you held rather than creating a laundry list of tasks completed.
• Proofread, proofread, proofread (and then have someone else take a look too)! Careless grammatical, spelling, or formatting mistakes indicate to a recruiter that you may not be taking the process seriously.

Once you’ve got the structure down, spend time thinking about what story you want your resume to tell. This is more art than science, but here again are some things to think about:

• Consider 3-4 major characteristics or skills that would make you successful at the new job. Write your resume (or edit an existing one) to make sure that the majority of your points are speaking to these specific characteristics or skills. You want to leave the recruiter thinking, “wow, this person is ambitious, technically savvy, and has experience managing big budgets…they’re perfect for this job!” That said, don’t let this make you repetitive. If you did a similar task in two different jobs, write about them differently (repeating sentences makes it look like you were lazy in writing your resume) or only include the more impressive project.
• Under each job you list, have about 2-3 bullet points and always lead with the bullet point that is most impressive and relevant to the job you’re applying for.
• Include a section at the end for your personal interests – listing these makes you look like a well-rounded person and can provide fodder for interesting questions during the interview.
• If you are changing industries, be careful about using too much jargon that the recruiter may not understand and try to craft bullet points that help the recruiter understand why your work at your old job would make you successful in the new industry.

One final thing that is extremely important: ensure that everything you write about is true and defensible. If you get an interview (and hopefully your awesome resume will help you do so), anything is fair game for questioning. You don’t want to be stuck trying to explain a point that you don’t remember or over exaggerated. Plus integrity in the job process is always critical.

I just watched the documentary Waiting for Superman, which looks at education in America. It had me in tears. The situation was so bad as to seem almost hopeless. But as the movie pointed out, there are models that clearly are effective at helping k-12 students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in school. Kipp and Geoffrey Canada's programs are chief among those models.

The documentary also points out that kids who don't graduate can't find jobs, let alone long term careers. My hope is that CareerEagle can play a small role in helping drive the process of positive change forward, by offering career and educational videos to people who have not yet been trained to recognize the opportunities around them.

Students at America’s top colleges gain a great liberal arts education. They learn how to think, how to interact and socialize, and they broaden their horizons. These are important ends and are critical steps in building the great minds of tomorrow. But often these students lack something critical to their future: a vision for what comes next.

The student who graduates from University of Chicago with a degree in English Literature does not have a clear career path ahead of her unless she is certain that she wants to pursue a job in academia. She and many students like her across America may wake up one morning their senior year and look ahead to their graduation with a sense of intense trepidation because of the looming question “What am I going to do now?” No job awaits. How should she navigate the treacherous terrain ahead?

The answer lies in her Career Services office. Most Career Service departments at top schools and colleges across America are staffed by smart, dedicated men and women who are there specifically to offer this kind of guidance. They have a wide range of tools at their disposal. And CareerEagle is the latest (and we think the best!) tool in their toolbox. With CareerEagle they can send students to watch 30 CareerEagle job videos - informational interviews on video - over the course of half an hour!

CareerEagle makes the informational interview process and the corresponding career navigation process much more efficient. As a result, we make the lives of Career Services professionals around the country just a little bit easier.

-Aaron

Finding the right career isn’t always easy. There are hundreds of options to choose from, and without good career information, it can be hard to get a true sense of how the options differ. Conducting informational interviews is one helpful way to further your career exploration efforts.

When it comes to landing a job, your level of preparedness is key. Potential employers want to know that you have done your research about the company and the career. Why? First, it shows that you care – showing that you put time into learning tells the company that you are committed. Second, it shows that you know what you might be signing up for – and this is important because if a company makes you an offer, they want to at least feel like you might say yes!

Of course sometimes an informational interview might prove to you that a career path you thought was good isn’t actually the right fit for you. That’s okay! Remember – crossing something off your list is almost as valuable as adding something to it.

Here are some tips for conducting good informational interviews that will set you on the path to finding the right career:

1.  Do the interview with a person who is in a similar position to the one you hope to interview for eventually.

2. Come prepared with questions – What is the company culture like? What does the person do on a day-to-day basis? What are the major challenges of the job? What types of skills does it take to succeed?

3.  Follow-up with a thank you note.

4.  If you like what you hear and get a job interview, bring up what you learned during the informational interview – that will really impress the company!

One final thing – it’s probably not possible to conduct hundreds of informational interviews to find out about every career out there. That’s where CareerEagle fits in. We offer career videos on a wide range of jobs to help you learn more even if you can’t speak to someone in person. Information is power when it comes to your job search – so keep learning!

With the rising costs of traditional colleges/universities, uncertain job market and time to complete a degreegrowing, what other options exist for students? Trade schools provide students with specialized technical or vocational training. Graduates are often ready to enter the workforce at a fraction of the time and cost that takes to complete a traditional four( if not five year now) program.Typical programs include but are not limited to nursing, automotive technology, art, IT, criminal justice, HVAC and food service.

Check out these highly rated schools complied by eHow. Read more: Top Rated Trade Schools | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/list_6634769_top-rated-trade-schools.html#ixzz1PIK8CzAo

Americans today are facing extraordinarily difficult times. In some states, 50% of students don’t graduate from high school. Their job and career options are brought to a standstill. The problem receives short shrift in the media. For many who have great jobs and reasonable pay, the problems of the millions of Americans who are out of work are invisible. They live in segregated suburban communities and never have to interact with those who are having difficulty launching their careers.

Trade schools are starting to spring up to fill the gap. As more and more people look for new ways to support themselves, many seek to learn a trade. As a result, trade schools have sprung up to train people in everything from electrical work to dog training. The opportunities that these schools can open up for graduates can literally change their lives.

CareerEagle was founded in part to help top tier colleges, middle tier and community colleges, online universities and great trade schools – giving them a way to reach potential students and giving people in search of an educational and career path a way to find it. CareerEagle serves a number of needs but one that we’re particularly proud of is helping people find schools that can make their lives better.

I’m an intern with Career Eagle. My work at my college’s career center brings me into contact with a variety of different students. Some are freshmen ready to dive into their preparation for life after college while others are seniors coming in for the first time one week before graduation. On-campus career centers are there to help students get prepared for life after college and figure out the next step, whether it is graduate school, a full-time career, or a complete 180 from their current degree. No matter your year in school, it’s best to know about the career center and take full advantage of the service.

1) Begin using the career center as soon as possible.
Many students are under the impression that the career center is only for those who are in their junior or senior year and are about to graduate. Those who use the career center in their freshmen or sophomore years have a leg up on the competition because they are provided with more information about “real-world” careers than those who make (sometimes) inaccurate assumptions based merely off of what they learn in their classes. Even if you are just attending the career programs and not yet meeting with an advisor, the earlier you start the better your chances will be post-graduation.

2) Get your resume in order.
A majority of career centers provide free resume critiques for all students and alumni. This is the one thing everyone needs to have ready as soon as possible. Even if the only experiences you can list on your resume are part-time jobs from high school, if the basic framework is complete it will be easier to add new positions and experiences as you obtain them in college. Since a resume is the first thing most employers see, it is best to make sure it is in the most presentable manner. It is possible to build a resume using only online guides, but it is always best to use a real advisor to get the best results.

3) Meet with an advisor.
Every degree program has different requirements and different post-graduation options. Professors are able to provide some information, but at times it is best to speak with someone who is trained to prepare students for the “real-world.” Advisors are also able to teach students about different career options that they can pursue with their degrees which professors may not be aware of. Whether they are advising you about taking a gap year or going into a different career field than what your major is in, a career advisor can help a great deal.

There are many other beneficial uses of career centers than what I’ve listed above. This is just an outline for those who may think career centers are only for job placement and not necessarily for simple career help. When provided with a free resource with trained individuals who are there to help, it is best to take full advantage of the opportunity.

We’re fired up to be launching the Career Eagle alpha site! Our small team - Aaron, Dan, David and Monica - have collaborated to give you free access to the premier career navigation tool on the internet.

Conversations with hundreds of students, teachers, guidance counselors and career counselors has brought us to a single conclusion: people are regularly making major life decisions about their career path with little to no information to guide them.

Career Eagle is our attempt to solve that problem.

We’re basically a YouTube and social platform focused on careers. On the site people can give honest, candid assessments of their jobs and career paths and students and others can view those videos, engage in conversation and find the path that’s right for them. The site also gives you the ability to easily connect with schools and institutions (starting with trade schools) that fit your needs.

You spend more time at work than doing just about any other activity in your life. Choosing a job and career is a huge decision. We hope CareerEagle makes that decision a little bit easier and makes you a little bit more informed.

Aaron