By RICHARD McKENZIE
Director of career services at Sangamon State University, he has been involved with career planning and student employment for over 13 years in Illinois, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

How to market yourself to get the job you'll be best at

Demand for 1976 college graduates will increase moderately, survey shows. Job-hunting involves more than just knocking on doors. Need to inventory abilities, then familiarize yourself with the possibilities. Talk to friends, relatives and others, and use the Yellow Pages for leads DEPENDING on whose figures you believe, 1976-77 is going to be a period of continued job scarcity, or a period of limited recovery. According to Frank Endicott, former director of placement at Northwestern University and author of an important annual survey of employment prospects, the demand for 1976 college graduates will increase moderately; up 9 per cent for those with bachelor's degrees and 11 per cent for those with master's. But since 1975 was a disastrous year for jobseekers, a 10 per cent improvement only offers the satisfaction that things are not getting worse.

Illinois unemployment has been running at 9 to 10 per cent, compared to the national figure of slightly over 8 per cent. If you live in East St. Louis, Rockford, Decatur or Chicago, you are faced with the highest unemployment rates in the state, averaging 10 per cent or higher. Residents of Springfield are relatively lucky; unemployment there is only 5.4 percent. Two other bright spots are Bloomington-Normal and Champaign-Urbana where unemployment hovers between 3 to 4 per cent.

Limits in Illinois cities
But since the areas with the highest employment are primarily one-industry towns, they may be less attractive to recent graduates than Decatur, Rockford or Chicago. Unless you are seeking a career in government or services to government, the career pickings are pretty slim in the capital city. Champaign-Urbana and Bloomington-Normal are college towns, and education is the major employer. So, in spite of a healthier employment rate, the job market is more limited in Springfield, Urbana or Normal than it is in Decatur, Rockford or Chicago. Employment is more diversified in these latter cities; there are more buyers for a greater variety of talents and skills.

Can you see yourself in this way: as a marketable bundle of skills and talents, as a "product"? You must when you are looking for a job. Conceive of yourself as a salesman with a very specialized line: yourself and your talent. Like any good salesman you should know your market and, of course, your product.

It's the unusual person, however, who at some point in early life takes a personal inventory and surveys the market to locate a buyer — not just a buyer but the best possible buyer.

The product
Before you can do a successful selling job you have to be thoroughly familiar with what you have to sell. Make a list of the things you'd really like to accomplish in your life and keep it dynamic so that your goals can change as you continue to grow. If you really want to do this effectively, check with a nearby college or university. If they work from a career planning approach, they should be able to provide this kind of guidance.

Next, identify your skills. Write up a short autobiography with particular attention to the important events and accomplishments in your life. This should indicate the skills that you have developed either vocationally (talents). or avocationally (interests), or both — skills which can form the foundation of your career. There are job-based skills which relate to a specific occupation, and there are transferable skills which are developed through hobbies, study and jobs which can be adapted to a variety of work situations. The more of the latter you can identify, the greater the marketability of your product.

A job you will like
Finally, consider your personality. What kind of people do you like to be with? Are you aggressive or retiring;

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independent or in need of regular supervision; orderly or disorganized? Do you like change, or is a pattern of regular activity more comfortable? The better you know yourself the better equipped you will be to make a marketing decision; namely, where will you be likely to be happy as an employee?

The market
Once you know your product, the best way to sell it is to familiarize yourself with your market. Once you have determined either specific employers or a general employment area, begin to learn as much as possible about the type of activities they engage in. Consider the kinds of problems they need solved, the job satisfaction of people presently working there, and the opportunities for growth and recognition. Finally, learn what other organizations in your chosen geographic areas offer similar employment opportunities — in case you later want to switch jobs. If you know people who are doing the kind of work that interests you or who are supervising such work, talk to them. If you lack such contacts, ask relatives, friends, university career offices and teachers. If all that fails, go to the Yellow Pages or to the membership directory of the local chamber of commerce, pick out names, and call for an appointment. Remember though, at this point you are surveying the job market, not asking for a job. You want to learn as much as you can about all the possible employers before you select one. Armed with knowledge of an organization, its problems and opportunities and its employee policies, you are ready to show them how attractive you are.

A little bit of luck
Christopher Jenks, the Harvard sociologist in Inequality: A Reassessment of Effect of Family and Schooling in America (Basic Books, 1972), his lengthy study of inequality, education and achievement in American life, concludes that success is primarily determined by personality and luck. If you consider personality to be the way you get along with other people, and luck to put you in the right place at the right time with the right information, then there is every reason in the world to assume that you can command your own success in getting a job.

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