The universities that I've been to only do your letters of recommendation (of which I have none).

As for making copies of the unofficial transcripts, ok - but how am I supposed to send them when the applications are all online?

But, Bruyere, the school will charge her for each copy of the "official transcript" they send out--the school won't send out a zerox, they really can't. Besides, the university wants to make money by selling the transcripts.

I've interviewed and hired people, and I've accepted zeroxed transcripts with an application. When the person is finally hired, they provide an "official" copy with the university seal, if that is necessary for the personnel record. The zerox is fine to go along with the initial application.

Can you fax a copy of your transcript? Or can you scan it in to go along with the application?

How do they expect the transcript to be send?

Don't you have professors who will write you glowing letters of recommendation? That's typically what new grads rely on. They can extol your virtues, even though they can't document your work experience. Every little bit helps. And you can send out zeroxed copies of those letters too--doesn't have to be an original when you are doing a mass mailing of applications.

LadyM, this is a situation where you should just call the company and ask how they'd like to get your transcript when submitting an online application. You have a valid question that I'm sure they've heard before and can answer easily. I think this is one of those times when just being straight-forward and not treating this one as a huge deal is the way to go! Just ask!

Most academic jobs accept copies of transcripts until the hiring is completed. The new transcripts are tamper proof so when you photocopy them, they have a big Copy thing that appears. The only place that really requires official transcripts is for credentialing purposes or when you're hired already. I have to scan mine and submit them to some of the places I apply to.

Thank goodness you don't have a foreign diploma as some employers require an evaluation service to do it. THat's ironic as most diploma mills are located in the Good ol USA.

No, what I meant was that in the past, and even now, some university career centers offer a service that entails keeping copies of your transcripts, letters of recommendation and credentials if applicable and they'll send it out to a prospective employer for you. This is a real help as when you've had several colleges, it's one stop for you. Also, you don't need to trouble your referees for every single job you apply to. A quick check reveals one of my colleges still does this, first six times is free. It's to their advantage to see you employed, preferably in a publicity friendly job. Ah, another school I attended still does it too.
Your school isn't mentioning it as far as I can find out from the net, but they have some good things in their career development dept.

Perhaps they no longer send copies of the transcripts, but the letters of reference alone being sent from them, means you no longer have to bother your former employers et al, for letters. In my case, two of my former employers passed away suddenly which meant there was no positive record of my employment with them. As you're still in the establishment it's handier to check now while you're there. It will save you money in the end if they do it. Just for the reference letters alone.

Umm, silly question coming up - what is a transcript?

It's a piece of paper from your school saying what classes you took and what grades you got - usually also includes your degree.

As far as I can figure out, US universities are the only ones that have them. But perhaps someone will tell me otherwise.

We work on the credit system at most places though one of mine didn't.
You get a certain amount of credits (usually three or four) to take a class in say, govt, for about a four month semester. You get a grade of F, fail to A excellent. Each grade is worth a certain amount of points. And A is generally four. Thus if you have about six classes, and get straight As, you'll have a 4.0 average and 18 credits or so. You need a certain amount of credits to graduate and get a degree.

Transcripts are printouts of all the classes you've taken, the credits you've earned and the grades and GPA or Grade point average.
They are costly to have sent to places as this is one of the only ways places can ensure you haven't tampered with them.

A recent scandal in California revealed that someone Arnie had chosen for an office had a diploma from one of the well-known 'diploma mills'. These are fake institutions which don't really exist but give out diplomas. Therefore there's a reason places require transcripts and official ones once you're hired.

We also have high school transcripts but they are normally used for university (college) entrance purposes.

LadyM - don't give up - try something totally different to what you think your qualifed for (but really would like to do!) It really doesn't matter what your degree is in' companies don't normally (in the UK) ask (Bsc or Ba will do for starters) Take your "Gap Year". Earn what you can to stay alive and keep all your options open.

One final piece of advice would be - treat your employers as they will treat you - they will have no loyalty to you (despite all their adverts!) so if you get a better offer move on.

Thanks again for all the advice/kind words.

So I thought I'd keep you all updated. I met with a woman from the career center today . She had a couple people's emails (one is a contact in the FBI) who can help me get my foot in the door. She also critiqued my resume and we're meeting again in two weeks for a mock interview.

Also will be meeting with my current boss (at the main career center at the university) tomorrow for some help/advice as well.

Did some applying yesterday - applied for a job as a legislative assistant to a Representative from Texas.

I'll keep you all posted!

Oh, if they don't have transcripts in Europe for college, what *do* they use?

In the UK (and I think in the rest of Europe) we just have a degree certificate. Some places want to see the original, others will accept a copy, and it has our grade on it. We only have a few- 1st (over 70% average) upper 2nd (60-70%) lower 2nd (50-60%) 3rd (40-50%) and no honours, which means you didn't take enough subjects but still got over 40%. There is also an aegrotat if you missed the exams but they thought you would have passed.
The 2nds were only split in two maybe 50 years ago, though Oxford did it far more recently.

I'm surprised you need so much security over there, and you have to pay for it as well! Wouldn't a degree certificate you could just use over and over again be adequate, and I'm also not sure why you need a different transcript for each job. Don't they give them back afterwards like they have to here? We'd pay a lot more than you if they had to write a new degree certificate every time we applied for a job

We get a diploma which just lists what school you graduated from and when. I think maybe adding your grade on there would be a good idea. I mean, do employers really look to see what classes you took and your grades in each of them?

(Then you would knwo if your doctor graduated with a C or an A. )

We get a diploma stating the name of the university and the subject you studied. I'm not sure, but I think it also contains the grade you got for your final thesis. Apart from that you get a list of all classes you've completed including the grade.

We have to get 42 points a year, every point standing for 40 hours of work. The amount of points you get for successfully completing a class depends on the amount of work they think it'll take you. It doesn't depend on the grade you get, as long as it's not a grade that makes you fail the class of course. You won't get a diploma before you've gathered 168 points.

I have one UK degree, and have to justify it. For some employers I must have it evaluated, pay an enormous fee, and though the institution has been there since before the United States existed, it's put into question each time. When I read what they write in their 'evaluation' of the place, it's pretty ludicrous.

Problem is that you can get anything for money, which means that people fake their degrees. On that Arnold thing, his candidate for the head of the DMV, department of motor vehicles, post has resigned over the flap on the degree. It was from one of the largest 'diploma mills' around. I've also encountered people who faked their US degrees abroad. Quite a few dicey MBAs out there folks.
I caught one out on a candidate for one of my employers as it just didn't seem real, it wasn't. The man had never set foot in the institution he supposedly had frequented.

A transcript describes the specific coursework you've done which might not lead to an actual diploma however. If you've done educaton coursework to fulfill requirements for your work, you need to show those, though it may not be for a diploma per se.

Another expense for our Ladymacbeth if she pursues this governmental career area is going to be fingerprinting and processing to see if she clears those checks.
I've just paid out about two hundred dollars for mine out of my pocket as I'm seeking employment on my own. It's taking about four months to process, during which time I can twiddle my thumbs.
One childcare job I thought of taking in the interrim, required a medical exam plus fingerprinting at my expense, plus a drug exam. I couldn't take it as the salary wasn't even high enough to justify it.
You'll have to weigh the pros and cons of some of these jobs you take to live out the shaky periods.

I've held government jobs, and also worked as a consultant to government agencies that required fingerprinting. I was never required to pay for my own fingerprinting. It was done by the government at their expense.

Fingerprinting is mandatory for many jobs now, especially teaching and a quick check reveals that more and more places require the employee to pay for this procedure.
California is apparently not alone in it either. I just found references to several states and very few seem to be paying for it. It was spelled out in black in white on their websites. At least it's not just in California.

Livescan costs 25 dollars in some areas and I paid 68 dollars in mine at the Sheriff's office. There is a backup for four months just now.

Working for a childcare center proves to be quite a costly prospect as one center requested me to get a drug test, physical, fingerprinting and FBI check for 8 dollars an hour job and not full time. The job did not include any benefits of any kind and quite a few risks in terms of liability. I declined.

This means that many jobs that people might occupy while waiting for a better one, aren't viable prospects if they require costly tests.

Now I know why younger people work at that big coffee chain whose name shall go unmentioned.

I didn't realize you were back in the U.S., Bruyere.

Some things are necessary expenses, or investments, when you are job hunting, and it is very rough if a person doesn't have the funds for such expenses. It might well limit their options, but so might a lot of other things. Job hunting, unless one has a special skill or service that is in high demand, is a grueling ordeal--particularly in the current economy.

I wish you luck--because I think luck is always needed--and I do hope you land a job soon.

Just had a luncheon with a lot of folks in their later career years and retired. Apparently it's not just those public jobs that require people to pay for the tests, it's any parent volunteers or senior volunteers as well.
So any volunteer that wishes to work in jobs with the public has to pay for the tests. I'm just giving a few watchwords to people starting out that, even volunteering might be costlier than you might think. "What Color is Your Parachute?' goes into it in greater detail however. It's the all time best seller in the States too and for good reason.

I too had the stock answers to the US job hunting thing, but, am surprised at all the budget cuts and how hard it is getting to actually get a part time job until something better comes along. My street alone has about ten people like me, in an age bracket that is difficult to place again. If I had to pay for tests in order to occupy a volunteer job, I simply couldn't do it. I do know there is a valid reason for this testing and more power to them, yet, seems as if the person hiring you should help with the costs.

Beth has the advantage of her college experience being fresh and she can make it work for her. The career offices have lots of things going for them and hers seems pretty good from what I could tell on their site. It's to their advantage to see you gainfully employed Beth, you paid plenty for that service too. Get those letters kept somewhere so you have a nice array and can have the service get them out when you need them. Things change, faculty members move around in America, therefore get things on paper.
I know I have two former referees who are now deans, but that was risky of me not getting a letter before I left the institutions, they could have gone out in disgrace or something. Never know.

In Europe, I think that the countries with which I'm familiar, Italy, France, Germany and Monaco, they all have work medicine offices and you are not charged for the exams.

If you are a nurse in the States, you can work just about anywhere you like, and my hairdresser tells me she's never been unemployed for more than a day.

The best thing I can advise anyone is to be flexible. Learn 'transferable skills' as Bowles calls them in his book, and if you don't know what that is, do his worksheets, and you'll feel like you're not such an oaf after all.

Well, some good news - have an interview next Monday with a temp agency!

Fingers crossed.

Ok, Gillyharold sent me this PM and said I could share the article he found here...

Why Can't I Find A Job?

A survey of personnel executives at 200 of the Fortune 1000
companies provided the following unbelievable but true examples
of job applicant behavior.

"The reason the candidate was taking so long to respond to a
question became apparent when he began to snore."

"When I asked the candidate to give a good example of the
organizational skills she was boasting about, she said she was
proud of her ability to pack her suitcase 'real neat' for her
vacations."

"Why did (the applicant) go to college? His reply: "To party
and socialize."

"When I gave him my business card at the beginning of the
interview, he immediately crumpled it and tossed it in the
wastebasket."

"I received a resume and letter that said that the recent
high-school graduate wanted to earn '$25 an hour and not a nickel
less.'"

"(The applicant) had arranged for a pizza to be delivered to my
office during a lunch-hour interview. I asked him not to eat it
until later."

"(The applicant) said she had just graduated cum laude, but she
had no idea what cum laude meant. However, she was proud of her
grade point average. It was 2.1."

"(The applicant) insisted on telling me that he wasn't afraid
of hard work, but insisted on adding he was afraid of horses and
didn't like jazz, modern art, or seafood."

"She actually showed up for an interview during the summer wearing
a bathing suit. She said she didn't think I'd mind."

"He sat down opposite me, made himself comfortable, and proceeded
to put his foot up on my desk."

"The interview had gone well, until he told me that he and his
friends wore my company's clothing whenever they could. I had to
tell him that we manufactured office products, not sportswear."

"(The applicant) applied for a customer service position, although,
as he confided, he really wasn't a people person."

"Without asking if I minded, he casually lit a cigar and then
tossed the match onto my carpet-and couldn't understand why I was
upset."

"On the phone, I had asked the candidate to bring his resume
and a couple of references. He arrived with the resume ... and
two people."

I bet there's more than a grain of truth however on very rare occasions, an offbeat answer works better than something someone has memorized for all the possible questions you might be asked.

I've managed to get jobs by answering in a way they never expected.
Recently, a chain of coffee shops gave me this standardized interview that was really rather grand for the place you were going to be working, but when asked why I'd like to work there, I said that I found that the trend towards cafes in the States was good as it meant socializing didn't just go on in bars and nightclubs with loud music that prevented conversations from occuring. Instead, the conversation was more civilized and didn't encourage people to become wasted to have fun.
Good answer.

One guy asked me why I wanted to work for him, I didn't really want to, but my family needed the money, so I managed to say, 'well, I really enjoyed the product demonstration with the program in 3 D and all the little guys on the screen etc, it was really fun.'
Good answer, got a job.

I'd say if at all possible, find out something about their product or service before you go. Not to try and act like a know it all, but just to show them you have a positive view of it.

If you're really really nervy, like I have had to be in the past, you can even say, 'thanks for seeing me, and if I'm not exactly the person whom you're seeking, then feel free to recommend me to someone else.'
I got a job the next day on that one from someone they recommended me to.
That would be if it really wasn't going to work for some reason like two hours drive or something else.

Well, at least when i get going, I usually can get past the nervousness. (I guess those 2 years as a theatre major didn't go for nothing!) And at least this is for a temp agency - so it's not like my first interview is for my dream job. At least this way if i mess up, ok, so I messed up, it's not like I just ruined the chance of a lifetime.

Some tips (all genuine as I'm in a very good mood today):

1. There are some questions that always come up and which it's very easy to answer. For example, 99% of job interviews include the question "Why do you want to work here?". The best way to deal with this is to come up with some quality of yours which fits whatever public image the company is trying to promote. For example, if your temp agency is selling itself as being able to fill a wide variety of roles, you say that you're very adaptable, or very quick to learn new things, and then back this up with some examples. If they're trying to plug themselves as international you mention your language ability or somesuch. The answer should never be a genuine reason why you actually want the job - it should be a chance to show off why you're good for the job.

2. Tongue in cheek answers can sometimes be helpful. If you are asked "What's your greatest flaw", a less than serious answer could be called for. I'm not suggesting you make a joke that your greatest flaw is a conviction for embezzlement, but saying something like "I've got a terrible singing voice" can go down quite well (provided you make it look spontaneous, then appear to think about the answer and say something like "I have a tendency to stay late to get things done, which my boyfriend says is a flaw ..."). I know it sounds like nonsense, but job interviews are a nonsense format.

3. There are tons of websites setting out typical questions, but in my experience it's rare that an interview goes by without the following:

- What's been your greatest challenge?
- Do you see this a a longterm role? (Hint - the answer is yes. Always)
- What do you do to relax?

4. Think through what the job actually involves. This sounds simplistic but many an interviewee loses a job because it emerges during the interview that they don't know what they would actually be doing.

Best of luck.

Islingtonian,
wish you were interviewing me...oh what I wouldn't give to have someone with a sense of humour. Come to think of it, my best bosses were people like that.
I think the best ones were the ones I tried to convince I was the wrong person, but I could find them someone more qualified. Worked every time.

I just had to pick what image represented my personality for a very basic clerical job...it was one of those psychological profiles...I gave up and picked column of light, why not go for the divine?
I had the choice of a brook, a cloud, wind in the trees...a bunch of things.
Five more minutes of that and I'd pick a clown, honest.
Honestly though, after filling out a long detailed application where they actually asked me my age (voluntarily I suppose as this is illegal in the States), I had to pick out this sappy image. This isn't Miss America here, it's a clerical job.

You're right on all of those counts on the typical questions though.
However, my own enthusiasm at answering those questions is waning. Isn't there someone who accepts the premise that you're not going to lie and say you want to work at a clerical job your whole life and you need to feed a family or yourself?