Alright, well that wraps up our “Get a Job” series. One thing we didn’t really cover but is still important is all of the “normal” stuff. You still need to have a kickass resume and be able to interview well.

Here are our posts in review:

• Introducing the Get a Job Series
• Register Your Own Domain Name and Start Building Your Online Identity
• Point Your Domain Somewhere
• Create a LinkedIn Profile
• Stand Out
• Consider Coworking
• Join XFN, the Social Network You are Already a Part Of
• Doing the Student Business Card

The vast majority – more than 70%, some sources estimate – of job positions are filled by word of mouth or networking. That means no resumes and no classified ads. It means: business cards. Okay, so that was sort of flawed logic, but you still need a business card. The main reason is this: college students like to party. Bars, clubs and parties are great places to meet business partners (and sexual partners), but it’s not exactly the right place to tote a briefcase full of resumes.

It may seem pretentious to have a business card as a student. It may seem even more pretentious to take advice from a film student. But, there’s a right way and a wrong way, and as long as you’re not flipping out business cards like they’re text messages, then you’re okay with us.

Putting Away Pretension – The Content

All you have to do is keep it simple with your design and people won’t think you’re a d-bag. Even if you have a “legitimate” start-up or some sort of small freelance business, don’t put it on your business card. The worst thing you could do is make up a company of some sort just for the sake of the business card.

Here’s why: if you’re handing out cards, especially if you’re job-searching, you are handing out a piece of you, not some faux-business. You’re marketing yourself, not your current/previous ventures.

Read on to your heart’s content »

This post is a little bit more on the advanced level. If you’re frustrated, ask us with an email or look at some lolcatz.

If you’re on Twitter, Pownce, or Plaxo Pulse, you are probably already part of the most unknown social network out there: XFN.

Nuts and Bones

XFN stands for the “XHTML Friends Network.” XFN is a microformat and a facet of data portability. It is a simple way to spice up your standard XHTML to add some powerful functionality.

The basic concept is that everyone adds appropriate tags to links of themselves and their friends on their website. With this information, a search bot can crawl the web following these specialized links and assemble a network. XFN could kill (or at least redefine) address books as we know them.

Read on to your heart’s content »

Life after school for an art or design major is a scary thing. You’re too young to work for the man. Is it possible to make a living without waitressing? The answer for many years has been a resounding unlikely. That is–until–some people started doing a little something called coworking.

You are Cool, Right?

Coworking provides a place for people to go to work. Staying at home in your PJs seems like a good idea, but personal hygiene and interpersonal relationships tend to suffer. Enter coworking facilities. employees can rent space (usually a desk) for an hourly, daily, or weekly rate. Seems bizarre to have to pay to work.

That money buys you something more than just plugs and horizontally aligned pieces of wood. It is your ticket into a subculture. You can still 9-to-5 your face off, but you can also opt into movie nights, bowling nights, and bar nights. It’s like you never left college.

Read on to your heart’s content »

For popular positions, employers will see dozens (or hundreds if it’s Google) of applications. You need to stand out. Making yourself stand out does not mean doing cartwheels around the room.

There are several steps to standing out.

Do Your Homework

Find out as much information as you can about the company and your interfaces within the company. There’s always that point in an interview where someone asks, “Do you have any questions for us?” If you can come up with a question that brings them back 5 years while subtly indicating that you’ve done your homework, you win.

Work Your Connections

Everyone is connected to Kevin Bacon by six degrees of separation. You are probably connected to your potential employer by even fewer.

With past jobs that I’ve applied for, it’s bizarre how connected to the companies I turn out to be. Try casting your nets (or cast some other metaphor that makes more sense in this context) with your business or educational contacts first. How? Just ask. Professors, current coworkers, etc.

Show Up

It pays to show up at the job interview, dur. It also pays to show that you are part of the space the company is in. The most obvious example and the most obvious is the tech world: there are meetups all over the place all the time.

They don’t have to be as big as South by Southwest or Future of Web Apps; they can be as small as Ignite! Seattle or Twiistup (LA). Show your face and start networking. Maybe even hint at your attendance during an interview. Meetup is a great place to look for local events.

This post is part of the Getting a Job Series that we’re running. To see the rest of the posts, go the Summer Internships, Jobs, and How to Secure Them series page.

When it comes to online resumes, LinkedIn is the go to service. If you didn’t point your domain name to an “online business card” yesterday, then you’ll want to point it to your LinkedIn profile.

If you can use Facebook, you can use LinkedIn. Once you’ve filled out your profile, point your new domain there.

Stay tuned for the rest of the HackCollege Jobs Series.

This post is part of the Getting a Job Series that we’re running. To see the rest of the posts, go the Get a Job series page.

Your domain name isn’t going to be very useful it’s a dead end in cyberspace. You need to point it somewhere that represents you best. You have a few options.

(This post isn’t going to talk about the technicalities of domain name forwarding or hosting, since you might have used a different service to register your domain name.)

Option 1 - Host Your Digital Business Card

If you have hosting already, the best thing to do is to make a “digital business card.” Keep it simple. Check mine out: michaelkellysutton.com. It’s nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

If you have hosting, you probably know enough about HTML at least to understand what’s going on here. If you want the “source code” of my page, download it here:

Put that on your site and modify as you see fit. It should be pretty straight-forward.

Read on to your heart’s content »

Many students today are worried about what their top Google results are when someone looks up their name. Will potential employers see pictures of me dominating at J-cup or will they see me carrying away the debate competition trohpy?

To paraphrase what Gary Vaynerchuk said during his keynote at the Future of Web Apps in Miami: It’s over. It’s 2008. Everyone can find out anything about you. Instead of trying to hide yourself, own it.

This doesn’t mean you want pictures of you taking body shots off of topless women (or men) as your first Google hit. But you can’t hide it if it already exists. Instead you need to create page(s) that Google will index higher for you. The first step to accomplishing this is to register your own domain name. Tomorrow, we’ll go over some Search Engine Optimization (SEO) tips and tricks to make sure that your name bubbles to the top of search results.

Read on to your heart’s content »

Over the next few days, we’ll be rolling out our latest HackCollege feature on how to secure yourself a job. We know it’s one of the scariest things a student will have to do. We aren’t necessarily authorities on the subject, but we do enough reading to give you a Wikipedia-esque illusion that we are.

Over the next week, enjoy the posts we’ve written and follow along.

Here’s an oldie by the Offspring to get you pumped: