Catherine Hayes and I are often asked by local women graduates, “What’s the best way for me to find a job?” While it’s still true that the field of IT is dominated by men, we have some practical tips for female IT graduates in their search for that first post-college job:1. Tap into your network: The majority of available IT positions aren’t posted online or printed in the newspaper. Find out about unpublicized jobs by using your personal connections. Talk to your network of friends, family, acquaintances, college professors, and advisors about your job search. And make sure to use your current contacts to develop new connections.

2. Join IT industry organizations: Find out where employers seeking IT professionals like to mix and mingle. In Southeast Michigan, organizations like the Ann Arbor IT Zone, Digital Detroit, and Automation Alley are great places to meet company representatives, as well as IT professionals.

3. Cast a broad net: Over 90% of IT workers work for non-IT companies. Make sure your job search covers a wide range of employers including IT and non-IT companies of all sizes, as well as colleges, universitites, nonprofits, and government agencies.

4. Market yourself (not just your technical skills): Make sure your resume clearly captures your technical proficiencies. At the same time, employers also look for someone who has good “kindergarten” skills. Promote your personal traits that are valuable to employers - like attitude, reliability, communication skills, time management.

5. Polish your interview skills: Expect that interviewers will ask questions to determine how you interact with a team, how you communicate with clients, and how you solve problems. Don’t be afraid to ask lots of insightful questions during your interview. Employers (my company included) like to hire people who show genuine interest and inquisitiveness. And remember - you are evaluating the employer at the same time s/he is evaluating you.

6. Promote previous experience: If you’ve already held an IT position, then promote related accomplishments. However, you may have gained relevant experience as an intern, volunteer, or with a school project. Promote any IT projects you’ve worked on, as well as training and certification programs. And be sure that while you are searching for a job, you’re keeping up with IT trends and new technologies.

7. Freelance while you’re searching: Just because you haven’t landed a full-time corporate gig doesn’t mean that you can’t earn money for your expertise. Since my company is smaller, we don’t hire full time employees too often, but we’re always looking for good freelancers to fill in with coding, programming, and design. And many of our current employees were initially our contractors/freelancers. It made perfect sense to hire them since we knew they did good work and we knew we worked well together.

ICM is a women-owned firm, established in May 2001. We’re proud of that status, especially when we saw the stats that show women-owned businesses are growing at a rapid, healthy pace.

The number of women-owned businesses grew much faster than overall businesses over the latest period studied, a report released in late 2006 by the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy says.

During the five years between 1997 and 2002, women-owned firms grew by 19.8 percent while all U.S. firms grew by 7 percent. The report also found that, in 2002:

> Women owned 6.5 million nonfarm firms (28.2 percent of the total).

> Women-owned firms that were employers had an annual
payroll of $173.7 billion.

> Women-owned firms accounted for 6.5 percent of total
employment in U.S. firms and 4.2 percent of total receipts.

> Significant proportions of women-owned businesses were in professional, scientific, and technical services and in health care and social assistance.