10 Tips for When You Cant Find a Job After College

10 Tips for When You Cant Find a Job After College In an ideal world, every college graduate would find their dream job immediately. However, this is simply not the case and many students find themselves struggling to find work. With student loans to pay back and living expenses to cover this is a stressful situation to find yourself in, which is why we’ve put together these tips for what to do when you can’t find a job after college. 1 – Reduce Your Living Costs If you can’t find a job after college, one of the most pressing issues is going to be your financial situation. How are you going to feed yourself and keep a roof over your head? The first step is to look at ways to reduce your living costs. You might want to think about moving back home if it is an option as this will drastically reduce your living costs. You can also defer your student loans and work out a strict budget for the next few months to make the money you do have last. 2 – Apply for Job It might seem like a bit of a no brainer, but you won’t find work if you are not applying for jobs. It is easy to get disheartened and give up after a few rejections, but you must keep your eye on the prize. Apply for every single job that comes up. You should be sending out resumes and filling out applications daily. If you dont have job experience, you should read some tips on how to write resume with no job experience. Dont forget that its a good idea to ask professionals to write your resume. Also, don’t forget to write multiple cover letters suited to different jobs. 3 – Give Yourself a Social Media Audit One reason why you can’t find a job after college could be that your social media profile is putting potential employers off! It is increasingly common for employers to look up potential candidates on social media. If your profile is littered with drunken snapshots at the dorm parties, then you could be giving the wrong impression. Take a little time to remove anything that could be potentially off-putting and start sharing some of your other interests. 4 – Spend Some Time Networking Sometimes, when it comes to finding a job its not what you know, its who you know! If you can’t find a job after college then you need to start networking. Attend career fairs, college alumni events, networking luncheons and conferences. It is also a good idea to join LinkedIn if you haven’t already. Start getting to know the movers and shakers in your chosen industry and they might just thrown you a bone when a job opportunity arises! 5 – Consider Staying in School If it is beginning to look like you are not going to find a job when you graduate, you do have the option of returning to school for some additional qualifications. This may not be an ideal situation, but it could pay off in the long run. 6 – Broaden Your Job Search If you can’t find a job after college then you may need to broaden your job search. If there is nothing available in terms of your dream job, think about other jobs within the same industry that you might also enjoy. Sometimes working within the industry of choice can get your foot in the door. For example, even taking an admin role in a pharmaceutical company could potentially put you on the road to a laboratory job. 7 – Work Part Time If broadening your search within the industry doesn’t work, then you may need to cast the net even wider. You may not have envisioned working part time in retail or fast food after completing your degree but taking a part time job will at least allow you to bring in some money while you search for the dream job. Part time hours also mean you still have plenty of time for job hunting. If you are lucky, maybe you can find something part time that relates loosely to your ideal career which will give you something to build upon. 8 – Volunteer to Gain Experience Another common reason why you can’t find a job after college is that many employers want people with experience. This creates a catch 22 situation where you can’t get a job without experience, but you can’t get experience because nobody will give you a job. The answer is to volunteer! Offer to work for free in your chosen field either as part of an internship or just given up a few hours a week. This will get you experience in the industry which will help strengthen your resume. However, you should know that there are more benefits of volunteering besides getting experience. 9 – Start a Blog Sometimes, you just need to find ways to put yourself out there. If you truly have an interest in the industry you want to work in, then why not start a blog about it? Get your name out there and position yourself as an expert in your field. It may take a little effort to grow your audience and build a healthy following on social media, but once your name is out there you may well find job offers coming to find you rather than you having to hunt them down. However, a word of caution. This is not the easy route to finding a job. It takes hard work and dedication. 10 – Start Your Own Business Finally, if you have exhausted all other options and you still can’t find a job after college, why not consider starting your own business? Think about the skills you possess and how you can market them. If you are a great academic writer, you could try freelance editing or journalism. Computer wizards might start their own IT company. The possibilities are endless. Heres a small guide on how to become entrepreneur while youre still student. In conclusion, if you can’t find a job after college, try not to be too hard on yourself. It is not always easy to get started in your chosen career and you may need to make a few changes along the way. One thing to remember is that your lack of employment is not necessarily your fault. Do not give up hope, a little persistence is sure to pay off in the end and you will soon find your way in life. Good luck!

Dong Son Drums - Symbols of a Maritime Bronze Age Society in Asia

Dong Son Drums - Symbols of a Maritime Bronze Age Society in Asia The Dong Son Drum (or Dongson Drum) is ​the  most famous artifact of the Southeast Asian Dongson culture, a complex society of farmers and sailors who lived in what is today northern Vietnam, and made bronze and iron objects between about 600 BC and AD 200. The drums, which are found throughout southeast Asia, can be enormousa typical drum is 70 centimeters (27 inches) in diameterwith a flat top, bulbous rim, straight sides, and a splayed foot. The Dong Son drum is the earliest form of bronze drum found in southern China and southeast Asia, and they have been used by many different ethnic groups from prehistoric times to the present. Most of the early examples are found in northern Vietnam and southwestern China, specifically, Yunnan Province and the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The Dong Son drums were produced in the Tonkin area of northern Vietnam and southern China beginning about 500 BC and then traded or otherwise distributed throughout island Southeast Asia as far as the western New Guinea mainland and the island of Manus. The earliest written records describing the Dongson drum appear in the Shi Ben, a Chinese book dated from the 3rd century BC. The Hou Han Shu, a late Han dynasty book dated to the 5th century AD, describes how the Han dynasty rulers collected bronze drums from what is now northern Vietnam to melt down and recast into bronze horses. Examples of Dongson Drums have been found in elite burial assemblages at the major Dongson culture sites of Dong Son, Viet Khe, and Shizhie Shan. Dong Son Drum Designs Designs on the highly ornamented Dong Son drums reflect a sea-oriented society. Some have elaborate friezes of figured scenes, featuring boats and warriors wearing elaborate feather head-dresses. Other common watery designs include bird-motifs, small three-dimensional animals (frogs or toads?), long boats, fish, and geometric symbols of clouds and thunder. Human figures, long-tailed flying birds and stylized depictions of boats are typical on the bulging upper part of the drums. One iconic image found on the top of all Dongson drums is a classic starburst, with a various number of spikes radiating out from a center. This image is immediately recognizable to westerners as a representation of a sun or a star. Whether that was what the makers had in mind is something of a puzzle. Interpretive Clashes Vietnamese scholars tend to view the decorations on the drums as a reflection of cultural characteristics of the Lac Viet people, early residents of Vietnam; Chinese scholars interpret the same decorations as evidence of a cultural exchange between interior China and Chinas southern frontier. One outlier theorist is Austrian scholar Robert von Heine-Geldern, who pointed out that the earliest Bronze Age drums in the world come from 8th century BC Scandinavia and the Balkans: he suggested that some of the decorative motifs including tangent-circles, ladder-motif, meanders and hatched triangles may have roots in the Balkans. Heine-Gelderns theory is a minority position. Another point of contention is the central star: it has been interpreted by western scholars to represent the sun (suggesting the drums are part of a solar cult), or perhaps the Pole Star, marking the center of the sky (but the Pole Star is not visible in much of southeast Asia). The real crux of the issue is that the typical southeast Asian sun/star icon is not a round center with triangles representing the rays, but rather a circle with straight or wavy lines emanating from its edges. The star form is undeniably a decorative element found on Dongson drums, but its meaning and nature is unknown at present. Long-beaked and long-tailed birds with outstretched wings are often seen on the drums, and interpreted as typically aquatic, such as herons or cranes. These too have been used to argue a foreign contact from Mesopotamia/Egypt/Europe with southeast Asia. Again, this is a minority theory that crops up in the literature (see Loofs-Wissowa for a detailed discussion). But, contact with such far-flung societies is not a totally crazy idea: Dongson sailors likely participated in the Maritime Silk Road which could account for long-distance contact with late Bronze Age societies in India and the rest of the world.There is no doubt that the drums themselves were made by the Dongson people, and where they got the ideas for some of their motifs is (to my mind anyway) not particularly significant.   Studying Dong Son Drums The first archaeologist to comprehensively study southeast Asian drums was Franz Heger, an Austrian archaeologist, who categorized the drums into four types and three transitory types. Hegers Type 1 was the earliest form, and that is the one called the Dong Son drum. It wasnt until the 1950s that Vietnamese and Chinese scholars began their own investigations. A rift was established between the two countries, in that each set of scholars claimed the invention of bronze drums for their resident countries. That split of interpretation has persisted. In terms of classifying drum styles, for example, Vietnamese scholars kept Hegers typology, while Chinese scholars created their own classifications. While antagonism between the two sets of scholars has melted away, neither side has changed its overall position. Sources This article is a part of the About.com guide to the Dongson Culture, and the Dictionary of Archaeology. Ballard C, Bradley R, Myhre LN, and Wilson M. 2004. The ship as symbol in the prehistory of Scandinavia and Southeast Asia. World Archaeology 35(3):385-403.  . Chinh HX, and Tien BV. 1980. The Dongson Culture and Cultural Centers in the Metal Age in Vietnam. Asian Perspectives 23(1):55-65. Han X. 1998. The present echoes of the ancient bronze drums: Nationalism and archaeology in modern Vietnam and China. Explorations 2(2):27-46. Han X. 2004. Who Invented the Bronze Drum? Nationalism, Politics, and a Sino-Vietnamese Archaeological Debate of the 1970s and 1980s. Asian Perspectives 43(1):7-33. Loofs-Wissowa HHE. 1991. Dongson Drums: Instruments of shamanism or regalia? Arts Asiatiques 46(1):39-49. Solheim WG. 1988. A Brief History of the Dongson Concept. Asian Perspectives 28(1):23-30. Tessitore J. 1988. View from the East Mountain: An Examination of the Relationship between the Dong Son and Lake Tien Civilizations in the First Millennium B.C. Asian Perspectives 28(1):31-44. Yao, Alice. Recent Developments in the Archaeology of Southwestern China. Journal of Archaeological Research, Volume 18, Issue 3, February 5, 2010.