Below is a very long post to help you with your job search in the RNR (Roanoke and New River Valleys). For more, click here.

A Management Degree at 21 Years Old is Not Billable Having a management undergraduate degree at 21 years old does not produce immediate billable skills. These college graduates may have good skill sets, but not billable skill sets – and billable skill sets are the primary reason an employer is going to hire a person in the private sector because they want to make a return on their investment. In other words, employers want to make money off their employee’s time and skills. You cannot bill management skills at 21 years old. This statement hurts, but it is reality. If you are young and inexperienced with a degree in communication, political science, management, marketing, psychology, history, philosophy, physical education, art history one will struggle in finding suitable employment in the local economy. It’s not the common refrain, “there are no jobs in Roanoke”, but it is employees do not have the skill sets to become employable in the regional economy. If you are in engineering, health care, information technology, accounting, architecture, trades, then you will have a much easier time finding adequate employment. If you are struggling with one of these degrees, then your job search strategy is flawed or you simply are not trying hard enough.   Food Service Job v. Job You Expected So if you do not have a billable skill yet want to stay in Roanoke, where do you work? If in the short-term money is important to you because of student loan repayments, and other cost of living expenses, then a job in food services may be appealing to you. You can earn more money as a server with flexible hours than working for less money with more rigid hours trying to establish a career in your field of study. There is certainly nothing wrong with a career in food service, but most college graduates do not say I am going to college so when I graduate I can be a server at a local restaurant. This UNDERemployment workforce is operating in a short-term mentality and eventually will catch up with them to the point they are cast to a specific industry. The next time you go to a local restaurant and the server is younger ask them if they are a college graduate, you will be surprised.     No one wants to sell So if you do not have a billable skill set and have a business degree, then you probably will be contacted by companies offering sales jobs with little, if any, guaranteed income. Most people are turned off by such positions, but it makes sense if you think about it. They are giving you an opportunity to turn your potential into success. Just because you have a degree does not equate to business success, but the degree does show potential. This entitlement comes in play as folks shy away from sales jobs because they are not comfortable selling or think they deserve more. However, in reality if billable skills are required, and you do not have any, then a sales career is the perfect role in proving your return on investment to the company offering the position. This is your chance to validate yourself.  Differentiate Yourself from the Crowd To prevent yourself from having to take a job as a server or be forced into the sales profession, you have to do everything you can to differentiate yourself and make yourself unique. Personal networking is the number one way to do this! Perhaps it is in how you apply for the position such as overnight FedEx your application and resume. Maybe it is your personality or rapport you build with your initial point of contact. These tactics are how people get the high demand jobs where competition is stiff. Whatever the tactic, be different, stand out and take a chance. You have nothing to lose. 80% of Jobs are Never Advertised and Uncovered by Networking For the local market and most markets as a whole, 80% of all jobs are never advertised. You never know anything about these jobs, but typically these are the good jobs. They are uncovered through personal networking – relationship building. Most recent grads do not search through relationships because their default is the Internet and they do not have established relationship with people who can help them with their careers. Monster.com, Roanoke.com and other talk about the effectiveness of this passive model; however, only 10% of people gets jobs through the internet, and a majority of local firms, aside from their company websites, are not on the big internet job boards. 500 Hours of Job Searching to Find the Job You Want A couple rules of thumb have been used to estimate the amount of time it will take to find the job you want. One is for every $10k in salary, it will take one month. The other rule of thumb is it will take three months of job searching 40 hours a week to find the job you want. The math equates to 500 hours of job searching. Further if we know about 10% of jobs get filled on the internet, then spend only 50 hours online. If up to 80% of jobs are received through networking, then spend 400 hours establishing, building and nurturing relationships.  Most Local Small Companies Do Not Attend College Job Fairs Further, because most local firms are small companies, they do not have dedicated recruiters at college job fairs because they only hire 1-2 persons at a time. Nor do they have a dedicated recruiter who can spend an entire day away from the office and spend $500+ to attend the fair. It is just not an effective use of time and resources by small companies, but that does not mean they are not interested in hiring college graduates. Finding creative ways to identify these small local companies and the needs they have is critical.  What are you doing to make yourself employable in the local labor market?  The common saying among knowledge base workers is “there are no jobs in Roanoke and that is why I move to larger metro areas”. However, if the place you live is more important than your job or profession, then perhaps one would have seen the demand for skill sets in the region before deciding on a plan of study. Instead of saying there are no jobs in Roanoke, which is a myth and inaccurate, the true response should be, “what are you doing to make yourself employable in the Roanoke labor market?” There are plenty of companies with a lot of jobs to fill, but what skill sets does a job seeker bring to the company? A job of $40,000 a year is not an entitlement for a college graduate. Recent college graduates have been fooled by society that a degree will automatically result in a job, and that is not necessarily the case, especially with degrees in non-billable skills.  The Un-Serviced Workforce If you define yourself with any of the following characteristics: ·        UNDERemployed; ·        Some form of higher education;·        Do not have a billable skill sets, but other good skill sets;·        Typically a member of Generation X or Y;·        Have potential in the workplace;·        Are looking to make $30-$50k a year in a professional job, then Who is available to help you in your job search? Great question. Unfortunately, there are not many and here is why.  Private sector headhunter firms are typically only going to help this segment of the workforce if they know they can make money off of you – that is an employer will pay the headhunter 20-25% of the first year starting salary. Typically, local companies will not pay $8-10k to fill a $40k position. Also, local companies have their pick of candidates for these jobs because it may not require a certain expertise to complete the job.  Public sector entities like the Virginia Employment Commission, to their own admission, have said they are not equipped to help a college educated person. You are not reaping the benefits of these state-funded programs because of the prevailing myth – a college graduate does not need help in finding a job.    Therefore, the Un-Serviced Workforce has few places to turn. Ultimately, these people are contributing to the region’s brain drain phenomenon.  Trailing Spouse Hires The region is blessed with a lot of high-profile companies who hire people from the outside for their specialized fields (i.e. health care and higher education). As a result of the success and growth of these entities, there are a significant number of trailing spouses who are looking for good solid positions. Often times the lead spouse will not commit unless there is a career opportunity on the table for the trailing spouse. Virginia Tech has hired a person to handle job searches for all trailing spouses to help close the deal on the lead spouse. Carilion and Radford University also mention this as an issue in recruiting their top talent. Assisting these larger enterprises with their trailing spouses helps secure more economic and population growth for the region. However if the trailing spouse does not have the billable skill set desired in the region and private entities are not financially motivated to assist, then this may affect hiring the lead spouse. Ultimately the lead spouses of these entities, which are driving the regional economy, will not be hired and thus further stunt regional growth.   Job Depth For these primary spouses who move to the region for the unique position at a company, job depth always is an issue and actually prevents some from coming. The thought pattern is if this position does not work at Company A, where can I do X at another company? This is a good point, especially if you are moving a family; you certainly do not want to do it a year later if the job does not work out. Similar industries must collaborate rather than compete so that the whole region can benefit from landing these outside workers.  Are employers too picky? Employers want the perfect candidate. Someone who will produce immediately with no training. These people just do not come along every day. As a result from waiting for these people, the company does not expand, it stays in hold mode. Instead hire someone with potential, take a little risk, train this person and in the same amount of time you are waiting for the perfect candidate, you have created the perfect candidate.     Do local companies want to grow or are they content?  We talk to HR folks at the SHRM meeting and they say they are having a hard time finding talent. The NCTC Tech Council says there is not a good supply of IT talent with 5-15 years work experience. We see many qualified people who want to work in the region, and we connect them, yet the companies do not pull the trigger. Why? Some of it is organizational cultural differences. Some companies just do not want to grow. Others are not operating with a sense of urgency. Still others are looking for the perfect person before pulling the trigger. Still others are hesitant because of their background, appearance and family ties to the region. This mentality has been tolerated for years because the employer has had the power in the employer-employee relationship. They could afford to be picky. However, now that is beginning to change as employers must compete for talent.   Entrepreneurship is not encouraged. If efforts to attract new companies are not at level we want and when these efforts are successful, it often does not bring knowledge-base jobs… If existing businesses are not growing at rates we want… Where will job growth come from?  The only answer is entrepreneurship development. The challenge is entrepreneurship development is a long-term strategy and solution and the other two are short-term fixes. No doubt we need a balanced and diverse portfolio of job growth activities, but what mix is ideal? It seems the short-term fix has been the dominant strategy perhaps because people in those activities have more short-term mindsets because of their age and risk level as it related to their own lives and careers. This mindset is probably not beneficial to future generations. An aggressive and long-term commitment to an entrepreneur development program is badly needed and for whatever reason as been absent for far too long.