Putting students first – Linda Pardy wins UFV’s Teaching Excellence Award

Dr. Pardy receives awardWe’re very pleased and proud (but not surprised) to report Dr. Linda Pardy has won UFV’s Teaching Excellence Award for 2012-13. The official announcement came out on UFV Today, but we couldn’t pass up the chance to offer our congratulations for the well-earned honour to Linda here at the CMNS blog.

Linda’s dynamic and engaging teaching style, innovative course offerings and incredible rapport with students  have been well-known within the department since she started teaching for Communications in 2007, and now her stellar reputation for excellence in the classroom has been recognized by the university as a whole.

Congratulations to Dr. Pardy for this well-deserved award.

A Toast to our 2013 Toastmaster’s Award Winner

“I was moved by her speech and story and felt she showed a real ability to connect and be responsive to the audience.” This quote from Oral Communications instructor Raymond Welch says a great deal about some of the reasons why Katherine Palmateer’s classmates nominated her for the Rise and Shine Toastmasters’ Annual Achievement Award; and why the selections committee agreed.K_Palmateer

From each May until the next April, the students from every course section of Communications 235 (Oral Communications) take the time to nominate one of their own to represent the best in public speaking practices and skills. Students learn how to capture and keep the attention of their audience, backup their information with credible sources, put arguments together in a way that makes sense, and continually practice speaking clearly and confidently (among many other things).

If you’re interested in perfecting your oral presentation and speech-making skills, you can get ahead of the game by signing up for CMNS 235. The  course is designed using the same proven methods that Toastmasters International has developed and championed since 1924. Even if you don’t have the time to take the course (or end up too far down the waitlist) you still have the opportunity to benefit by joining the Rise and Shine Toastmasters club, which meets on campus at UFV (Fridays from 7:20 to 8:20 am in A225). Katherine did both – and it paid off (literally).

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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.

Fifty shades of research ethics: A communication perspective

The Professional Guinea Pig book cover

What do group decision making, professional human guinea pigs, natural disasters, and scientific misconduct have in common? These were the topics that stood out to me at the Canadian Association of Research Ethics Boards 2013 National Conference: Fifty Shades of Research Ethics.

Presenters on these topics spoke passionately about the role of communication and language practices that can help or hinder researchers from conducting research in ethical ways.

Making decisions is complicated

Ivor Pritchard
Ivor Pritchard from the US Department of Health

Ivor Prichard from the US Department of Health has conducted research investigating why different Research Ethics Boards (REBs) respond differently when presented with identical research ethics applications.

Drawing on Barry Schwartz’s work from the book, The Paradox of Choice, Ivor highlighted some of the communication-related factors that may influence these different decisions.

“REB members, like all humans, tend to make decisions based on loss aversion,” he said.

“When people are faced with situations that are framed in how many people will survive, they are less likely to make a decision involving increased risk. But when situations are framed in terms of the number of deaths that could occur, people are more likely to accept increased risk.”

Ivor also found that words like ‘should’ and ‘shall’ in review guidelines invoked the desire for more deliberation in some REB members, in comparison to words that reflected ‘reasonableness’ or ‘a favourable balance’ of benefits and risks.

REB members can also influence each others’ decisions through processes such as reciprocation.

“If I agree with you now, you might feel obliged to return the favour and agree with me later on,” he said.

“Social proof, also known as ‘monkey see monkey do’ influences decisions. You can see this mimicry in practice when you watch street crossing behaviour. One person goes and the rest follow, even though a light may not be green.”

Ivor also discussed the human tendency for people to defer to authority and agree with people they like (or like the look of) as issues for REBs to be aware of.

Selling their bodies for science

Roberto Abadie, author of The Professional Guinea Pig spent years tracking people who make their living as volunteers for human drug trials in the United States. He found that these ‘professional human guinea pigs’ could earn a good living by ‘selling their bodies’ in clinical drug trials in comparison to what they could earn in other professions available to them.

The Professional Guinea Pig book cover
The Professional Guinea Pig was recently published by Duke Press

“The financial benefits outweigh most of the perceptions of risks for these professional guinea pigs,” said Roberto.

He found that some of the professional volunteers saw the Ethics Consent Form for these trials as their job contract, rather than an informative document (describing the risks and benefits for participating in the research).

“Once it [consent form] was signed, they [volunteers] would be paid to work in the study. They would essentially know their job conditions.”

Roberto also found that some of the professional guinea pigs saw the consent form as a hurdle to jump. The form described the expectations of the researchers in relation to the participants as well as the risks but once it was signed, participants could forget about it.

These attitudes to Participant Consent Forms were a surprise to me. Participants need to be fully informed about the risks and benefits of a study to give truly informed consent. But if large sums of money are involved then this seems to override almost all other considerations. I was so impressed by this talk that I bought a copy of Roberto’s book (just published by Duke University Press).

Putting the community first

Anna Pujaidas Botey from the Alberta Centre for Child, Family and Community Research spoke about research she was involved in after the Slave Lake Fires in 2011. She and her collaborators visited the Slave Lake community in August 2011, only three months after one third of the town was destroyed by fire.

The team were interested in researching community resilience and rebuilding after the event, but received some initial resistance from a Slave Lake Council member to conducting the research.

Slave Lake fires
Aerial image taken taken of the town of Slave Lake during the May 2011 fires. Retrieved from http://www.slavelake.ca/live/Photo+GallerySL/Fire___Recovery

“We spent a few weeks in the community, talking to people and working with Councillors and Emergency Planning staff, before starting to interview anyone,” she said.

“The needs and priorities of these affected communities have to come first in this research. Without direct benefit to them [community], it [the research] is not ethically sound.”

Anna and the team also invested research funds into making sure that the findings of the study would contribute to future emergency planning in the community—and involved those who would be most affected.

The group gave public presentations, wrote pieces for the local paper and other media outlets and posted the study findings on a website.

Retracting science

Adam Marcus, a journalist and cofounder of Retraction Watch, has been tracking scientific misconduct since 2010. He said he started the site with Ivan Oransky, MD as a way to give people a widow into the scientific process.

“Science takes pride in self correcting but it has no process for talking about that when it comes to the demise of a paper,” said Adam.

Adam and Ivan decided to create a blog rather than a print publication on retractions because they thought the blog was “more nimble”, less expensive, and more transparent.

Contrary to what researchers have believed, the majority of research paper retractions are due to misconduct rather than mistakes. Adam supplied examples of researcher misconduct ranging from plagiarism and falsifying images to poor graduate student supervision and ‘losing’ data once a paper has been published. Some researchers made up research participants or ignored the need for ethics approval.

“Researchers are under enormous pressure to publish, but we all need to represent ourselves fairly and honestly to people who are actually paying us and supporting us,” said Adam.

Retraction Watch screen capture
Not everyone is pleased with the Retraction Watch blog. Retrieved from http://retractionwatch.wordpress.com/?s=damn+business

Not everyone is pleased with what Retraction Watch is doing. Adam said he has encountered resistance from some journal editors when he has inquired into the nature of a retraction.

“Just because we are seeing a rise in retractions doesn’t mean science is crumbling,” he said.

“The numbers of retractions are still small compared to output. Scientists are human, with human desires. Perhaps we are looking more closely at this issue than we were in the past.”

Retraction Watch is read by scientists and policy makers but is also useful for Research Integrity Officers, funding bodies and REBs.

Producing a good research poster isn’t easy

Last week’s UFV Student Research Day got me thinking about research posters and the work that goes into producing a good one.

Tyler_Schilbach_155Poster_2013
Tyler Schilbach, presents the research he conducted in CMNS 155 with Marcella LeFever at the UFV Student Research Day

I was a judge for the Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts posters at the Student Research Day, so in this post I’ll talk about poster viewing situations and the difficulties of communicating complexity and substance in a research poster.

It’s all about the situation

I know, I know – you already understand that ‘communication is all about the audience’, but researchers producing posters need to think about the two situations where viewers will come into contact with their poster. Firstly, when a researcher is standing with their poster and secondly, when the poster stands alone.

When a poster is used as a visual aid during a poster session, viewers are more interested in talking to the researcher rather than focusing on the poster. The poster becomes a visual aid for the researcher to get their main points across and answer viewer questions. Informative visuals (diagrams, maps, graphs, tables etc.) are essential for making key points.

Eye level visuals
Poster placement might make it difficult for you to know if your visuals will be at eye level for viewers.

Viewers will only spend five minutes or so at a poster. Can the visuals help viewers get the gist of the research in a few minutes? Will viewers put their back out bending down to see a visual? Keep visuals at eye level where possible. The presenters of the three winning posters in my judging category at the UFV Student Research Day all used prominently-placed informative visuals (top left or top centre) to get their main findings across: a map of broad-leaf maple tree poaching areas identified in the Fraser Valley, a map of Blackfoot oral history sites using Geographical Information Systems (GIS), and a graph depicting financial returns on Chilliwack seasonal agricultural enterprises.

Posters also stand alone. There will be times when the researcher won’t be there to ‘interpret’ their poster. Poster design needs to take account of attracting viewers and helping them navigate through the poster by themselves. Obviously, a title that can be read from 2-3 metres away and contains key words about the research (e.g. maple trees, Blackfoot, GIS, seasonal agriculture) is going to attract viewers interested the research subject. Specialised poster sessions allow researchers to use more technical terminology, but general poster sessions require generalised titles. I heard comments from some of my fellow judges last week that some of the posters on the Student Research Day contained too much text, and that the text was too small to read at a distance. In stand-alone situations, posters need text in a good size font and plenty of white space to encourage a viewer to move in closer to engage. It is tempting to try to say too much, but resist.

Posters can stand alone
What will encourage someone to stop and engage with your research poster when you aren’t there?

Indicative visuals (that guide viewers) become more important when posters stand alone. Two of the three winning posters last week used the traditional three column format and all three posters were designed to be read up-down, left to right. The information was broken up into smaller, manageable sections. Descriptive section headings are essential so viewers can ‘scan’. I have seen some good posters formatted in a circle that take viewers through the poster sections in a clockwise direction. If you think viewers might be confused, consider using arrows to guide them.

Complexity and substance

A visually-appealing poster is not a good research poster without engaging research content. Researchers attend poster presentations to meet other researchers and add to their own state of knowledge about research – they want to see something new. All three winning poster presenters tackled significant issues for particular communities. The student researchers conducted some original research on an issue, presented some data or interesting findings, and discussed the implications of the work for the affected community and/or other researchers.

Until very recently, research posters were considered the ‘poor cousin’ to the research presentation. But with technology making it easier to produce a professional-looking product, and the flexibility offered for viewers to come and go in poster sessions, this format is gaining in popularity. One thing to keep in mind is that posters can only convey so much, and not all research content is ideally suited to posters. For example, some research in branches of philosophy, literary studies or history (that traffic in theoretical concepts) might be difficult to translate easily to poster form. If the information in each section takes more than a few seconds for a viewer to adsorb, then it may not belong on a poster.

What can you bring along to complement your poster? This year’s AVP Research – Humanities & Social Sciences prize winner, Steve Clegg, brought along some maple wood samples to show the kind of ‘chunk’ that poachers take from trees. He put a piece of this wood up to the light to show viewers the attractive wood grain finish that poachers were after. For me, this made the presentation more memorable than the poster text alone.

Paul Foth
Paul Foth (left) won the UFV Dean of Science prize for his poster, Synthetic Steps of GFP Chromophore Analogue.

If you decide to produce a poster for a research day or conference, remember to include the names of your supervisor/s or collaborators, institutional affiliations and your contact details on the poster. If the poster is an advertisement for your research, viewers need to know who is involved and how to contact you for more information.

Never been involved in a research poster event? Check out the first half of MarCom’s video of UFV’s Student Research Day 2013 to see what one looks like.

I also drew on Anu MacIntosh-Murray’s 2007 article on poster presentations in the journal, Science Communication to create this post.

 

Communicating Professionally: Scott Varga

1. When did you graduate, and what did you study at UFV?

I graduated in 2012 with a Bachelor of Arts, double extended minors in human geography and visual arts.

2. What is your current role, and what are the main forms of communication required of you?

Varga1I am currently a graduate student at the University of Alberta in the department of Human Ecology, and a Research Assistant in the City-Region Studies Centre. Since graduate school is largely intended to train future researchers, formal and informal writing are the main forms of communication I use on a daily basis. Effective oral communication is also important as my work and school activities require me to discuss ideas, concepts, theories and convictions. To better illustrate and offer a progressive level of defense to my ideas in the form of written and oral communication, I integrate visual communication elements into my work as well. Effective visual elements make it possible to succinctly describe and defend oneʼs work to a broad range of audiences. In particular, well-illustrated documents and presentations are more accessible to the general public and thus better received.

 

3. Which CMNS courses (or course materials) stand out for you as applicable to your current studies/position?

CMNS 375: Understanding Design for Print Publications  and CMNS 125: Introduction to Workplace Communication, as these classes allowed me to creatively integrated visual forms of communication into documents and taught me the value of presenting information in a clear, concise and logical way that is easy for an audience to follow.

4. Can you describe one highlight from your experience taking CMNS courses at UFV?

I found the Communications practicum course, CMNS 412, extremely useful. Working on a practicum project with the District of Mission  allowed me to put into practice the communication skills – written, oral, and visual – I had learned through interactions with a variety of stakeholders. My role required that I present ideas in a clear and logical manner and respectfully defend my position when it was challenged by people from the community.

5. With the wisdom of hindsight and experience, what communication-related advice would you offer current UFV students as they prepare for graduation and/or employment?

Strong writing is essential. The quality of the written form is being degraded and its authority is often underestimated. When you put something in writing, you become the owner of it. Consider the composition of an idea or concept as similar to the start of an invention or patent. You are marking your territory.

Your writing reveals a lot about your conceptual grasp of information and knowledge. The clarity of these two pieces is essential to success. In the work place, people often have nothing but a written document from which to form an opinion of your work, and by extension of you. Similarly, if you develop strong written communication skills, your oral communication skills will benefit from your ability to create logical, well-organized arguments in preparation for speaking opportunities and presentations.

Be aware that effective communication through writing is often about the absence of writing as a result of good editing. In other words, the finished product is not the first draft! We have all read pieces where we felt sentences, if not entire pages, could have been cut. Good editing also enhances another aspect of written communication by enabling the writer to revise and improve the logic behind their position.

Finally, I have learned from experience that strong visual communication abilities impress almost everyone. This is where you can really add value to a project, a team, or an application. If you strive to push the boundaries on visual communication you will almost certainly set yourself apart from the rest.

6. Is there an aspect of communication you would like to see added or covered in greater depth at UFV?

I would like to see greater emphasis on argument and rhetoric added in the CMNS curriculum – not in the sense of pure philosophical reasoning, but rather as a means to encourage CMNS grads to better understand ʻwhyʼ and be able to persuasively explain ʻwhyʼ.

I also believe the topic of visual communication needs to be investigated at a deeper level. CMNS 375 does a good job as an introduction, but in all honesty it should be a 100 level course – not because of its subject matter, but because students should gain those skills in their first year so they can be applied to all of their subsequent documents and presentations.

 

Research and Scholarly Activity: The Connection to Teaching

WPFaculty and administration at the University of the Fraser Valley have been deep in discussions over the last few years about how research and scholarly activity fit into our designation as a teaching intensive university. AS part of a recent discussion here are some of the ways that faculty highlighted how their research contributes directly to the success of students in the classroom. I thought it was worth posting.

*Incorporate into classroom teaching/learning practices
*Integrate in class structure to maximize success in attaining Institutional Learning Outcomes
*Use in designing curriculum
*Involve students in instructor research
*Use as examples of research in teaching
*Demonstrate to students real world application of research
*Use to encourage students to participate in research days
*Provide students with research data to manipulate with statistical analysis
*Teach research methodologies/process by involving students in own research
*Employ work study research assistants
*Support student career development
*Explore the role of research during teaching
*Introduce students to new concepts developed from instructor research (such as use of indigenous methodologies) in preparation for use in courses later on
*Improves ability to have latest information in the discipline available for student exploration
*Develop new questions to explore in class discussions
*Better able to increase student success through own research on teaching & learning
*Model lifelong learning for students
*Assist students to author/co-author papers
*Assist students to enter and be successful in graduate school
*Teaches students collaborative work skills
*Assists students to attain awards
*Students get first-hand information/results from research
*Gain exposure to other researchers and research institutions
*Utilize visual representations from research in class lecture
*Provide case studies from own research for students to examine
*Configure class content around own research areas of expertise
*Have students relate theory/method to their personal lives

Please leave some comments if you know of some things that can be added to this list.

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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.

Applied Feminist Theory: Working the frontline against violence against women

dec-6-You can kill me as soon as you like, but you cannot stop the emancipation of women!

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This statement was made by a woman called Tahiréh in 1852 in Persia.

Tahiréh (the pure one) also know as Qurratu’l-`Ayn (Solace of the Eyes). These names were tributes to her character and to her beauty, but these were not all that she was. Her noble heritage, her renown for her intelligence, her knowledge of Islam, and her talent as a poet were paled by her audacity in challenging the strictures of Persian society in the mid 19th century. In fact, halfway around the world from the Seneca Falls New York Convention of women suffragists in 1848, Tahiréh removed her veil publicly as a sign of the need for the liberation of women in that part of the world. In 1852 she uttered the words I stated earlier as she was executed for her beliefs.

I didn’t know about the story of Tahiréh in 1989 when 14 women were murdered in an engineering school in Montreal but I was an avowed feminist at that time – and since my high school years in the early 1970s.

In 1990 I started a new job, coordinating a safe homes program for the women’s center in Golden, BC and it was in the first year of my employment that the first December 6 commemoration was held. It was in that job and at that point that being a feminist became a reality and not just a theory.

Over the next 10 years I learned what it meant to put theory into action as my colleagues and I advocated for and worked with women experiencing violence (and murder) for the simple fact that they were women. We didn’t tell women what to do, we supported them and provided as much information and resources as we could to give them the tools to make the decisions that would work for them. There are many stories I could tell you about fear and heartache but there are also many I could tell you about spirit and life affirming actions by women who had been held back and held down.

The emancipation of women will continue, as Tahiréh so rightly stated – but it is my hope, and I am sure all of yours that it will not long require the deaths of more women to bring it about.

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Dr. Marcella LaFever (University of New Mexico, 2005) is an Associate Professor in the Communications Department at the University of the Fraser Valley. She specializes in intercultural communication and brings that expertise to various subjects such as communication for workplace, instruction, social media, team and public speaking contexts.

Communicating Professionally: Kevin Renso

Why study communications?

K-R1. When did you graduate, and what did you study at UFV?

I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree from UFV in 2009.  While at UFV, I concentrated on Communications courses, but also took Business, Information Technology, and History courses.  In 2011 I completed a Master’s degree in Educational Technology at the University of Calgary.

2. What is your current role, and what are the main forms of communication required of you?

Currently I am instructing at UFV, and I am also working as a Systems Implementation/Training Consultant in the global trade and logistics industry.  The main forms of communication required from me (in the corporate world) are communicating project tasks and duties to assigned resources, communicating project deadlines to customers, and keeping customers up-to-date on deliverable and deadline progress.  Usually the information is provided via email or some sort of scheduled automatic reporting system that updates customers through email or FTP file sharing.

3. Why did you decide to complete a minor in Communications?

I started my educational career in General Business Studies, as I wanted to find a program that I could get excited about. UFV does not yet have a Communications major, so I could only minor in Communications.  I felt (and still feel) that communication in business is one of the biggest issues in North America, and may be the field that, if “tightened up,” would increase productivity – and profits – for corporations in general.  The tools I learned at university were highly applicable to business situations, and I attribute most of my success to how I took the skills I learned in CMNS and implemented them in the corporate world.

4. Can you describe a highlight from the courses you took in CMNS?

Two words: the instructors.  Taking Communications at UFV was definitely a turning point in my career.  The first couple of courses in Communications were “eye-opening”; the instructors kept us motivated and created an enjoyable and open learning environment where we were exposed to valuable skills that are necessary in the workplace, and it continued until I completed my undergraduate degree.  I always looked forward to my Communications night classes at UFV, and never felt as if I was “going to work” while attending UFV CMNS classes.  I could see the direct correlation between success and skills learned in the CMNS program.

I left UFV with confidence and the skills to succeed, and that’s thanks to the instructor team, and when I’m teaching courses at UFV, I look for ways to generally improve student’s careers the way that instructors in the Communications department improved mine.  The instructors were extremely approachable. I remember being at a crossroads in my career, and asking David Thomson for advice and direction after class one evening.  His excellent advice steered me in the right direction, and this one example will always remind me that even a small extra effort by an instructor can make a big difference to a student.

When it comes to how I instruct classes, I try my best to create a productive and enjoyable team atmosphere comparable to the one that Linda Pardy creates in her classes at UFV.  Linda Pardy is the most genuine person I’ve met. She tells you how it is, and teaches the course material the way that Communications needs to be taught, objectively and outside-of-the-box.  Linda is the reason why I decided to become an instructor at UFV. She will never give up on a student, and she will make the extra effort to fight for the underdog.  If I were a professional boxer, I would want a person like Linda to hold the towel in my corner, give advice and direction on how to adjust during the fight, and cheer me on despite the punches that are inevitably going to land on my face.

Last but not least, Madeleine Hardin was a great teacher to experience at UFV (although I unfortunately only was able to have one face-to-face class with her at the end of my program).  Madeleine is a great person, directly responsible for raising over 10 million dollars for great causes; she not only knows how to “talk the talk,” she “walks the walk” and shows by example how to advocate successfully.  Advocacy was a skill that I didn’t expect to be important in my life and career before I got into the CMNS program at UFV, but I’m very glad that I learned about it.

I worked with many other great instructors in other Communications courses who had a great influence on me, and I think that shows the depth of instructional talent and teamwork in the department.

5. With the wisdom of hindsight and experience, what communication-related advice would you offer current UFV students as they prepare for graduation and/or employment?

Always ASK for what you want – always – and be sure to get the response in writing.  Never be afraid to fight for what you deserve.  Take advantage of what you are given, or what is possibly within your reach, and then reach further!

For example, almost all of my post-secondary costs were covered by corporate tuition reimbursement programs.  There are hundreds of employees entitled to the “free money” offered by such programs, yet only a handful actually make the effort to use them.  This means either the benefit of post-secondary education is not being communicated properly to employees, or the obvious skills obtained through post-secondary education are not being sought-after by managers in government, business and industry.  And if you don’t have a tuition reimbursement program, ask your employer to pay for your tuition anyway!

Be the loud employee, the one with the confidence to ask for what you deserve – and if you lack that confidence, do what I did and take Communications courses at UFV!

6. Is there an aspect of communication you would like to see added or covered in greater depth at UFV?

I would like to see more attention paid to the updated/advanced Web 2.0+ aspect of communication.  The idea of how to communicate has changed. Thanks to the Internet it’s possible to post your material online and people will seek you out. It’s a huge grey-area in communication right now; we need to study the strategies that work and discard the ones that don’t.

7. What is the one communications-related skill you feel is most valuable to you in the workplace?

Keep it short and sweet.  Understand this psychological truth: people tend to zone out after a couple of sentences.  Be direct with the other party, and don’t over explain/describe.

Two other communication skills that I’ve found valuable are: 1) follow up after an initial message if you don’t hear back, and 2) document everything.  In short, don’t take “no” for an answer, and when you finally get a yes, be sure to get it on the record.

Many thanks, Kevin, for taking the time to respond to our questions. We’re happy to see you’ve found success, and still happier to see your career path has brought you back to us as a colleague!

 

Note to job-hunters: Keys to making a good impression remain unchanged

On September 26 the UFV Career Centre invited recruiters and employers from around the Fraser Valley to a breakfast meeting and asked them about the qualities they hope to find in recent graduates. Some students and a couple of instructors from the university were also invited to provide their perspective.

I was present mostly to hear what employers are saying about the job applicants they’re seeing these days. In particular I paid attention to their comments about the role communication plays. What struck me, to be honest, was how much the concerns voiced at the event echo the conventional wisdom around the employment search. The basic principles appear to be the same.

Mistakes on a cover letter (errors of facts, typos) immediately wreck the applicant’s chances

Obvious errors sink your application not so much because the reader is particularly finicky, but because they suggest the writer’s ability to get it right – to pay attention to detail when it really matters – is deficient. Or, perhaps, sloppy writing in a cover letter or résumé simply reveals the applicant isn’t all that motivated to gain the advertised position. Either way, a carelessly-crafted application is an immediate red flag for recruiters and employers.

The right attitude can open doors

Several voices around the table expressed frustration at generic application letters and résumés that didn’t address the actual position. Evidence that you spent time crafting a specific application for a job opening and informed yourself about the organization prior to an interview counts for a lot, as such steps immediately suggest enthusiasm, interest, and curiosity – traits everyone agreed are desirable. As one recruiter put it, someone with the right attitude can be trained, but without a willingness to rise to a new challenge, it’s very unlikely they’ll be a good “fit” for a new organization.

It’s important to be professional even in situations where you decide not to accept an interview offer. One recruiter commented on the amazing number of people who are invited to an interview and then fail to show up without any explanation. Not only does that behaviour close the door to future opportunities with that contact, it might get communicated to all the other potential employers and recruiters in that person’s network.

You have 8 seconds to make an impression (no pressure!)

In an interview the initial few seconds are critical. People – including interviewers – are wired to make snap judgements and subsequently rationalize their initial impressions. Even though this is recognized as a problem, recruiters and employers around the table admitted they came to conclusions about potential hires very early in the interview process.

Relevant volunteer experience is taken seriously

The “how do I get experience when I have no previous experience?” problem was raised by a couple of the student participants. Consensus around the table was that volunteer opportunities are everywhere, and in a volunteer capacity you are often given a chance to do real, important tasks like keep the books, maintain a computer system, develop an information campaign or lead workshops – all tangible demonstrations of skills that can find their way into a résumé and cover letter. Creativity, initiative and a willingness to learn: a person who can show to a prospective employer they have these qualities can compensate for a lack of direct work experience.

Social network sites are not your friend

The most contentious topic was the use of internet research to dig up background on an applicant. Recruiters and employers at the table disagreed on the potential upside of an applicant’s use of Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media. Some pointed out that, depending on the job, it might be necessary for the person to show familiarity with these popular services. Others argued that although it might be an important part of someone’s social network, a Facebook profile could do nothing positive for a new graduate seeking employment. Everyone agreed on two things, however: 1) It is increasingly likely a recruiter or potential employer will use the internet to look for information about an applicant, and 2) Images that show you using drugs or alcohol, or comments linked to your online profile that suggest prejudice or poor judgement will NOT do you any favours. Is that fair? Probably not. Is it true? Those at the table all agreed that finding such online material would influence their perception of a job candidate. The message to recent graduates was simple: be aware of what you’re making public when sharing comments and images on sites like Facebook!

On a final note, there was agreement that new graduates tend to overestimate their potential worth to an organization, and may have unreasonable expectations for salary and responsibility right out of the gate. Employers continue to value demonstrated experience over aptitude and potential. A bit of humility, and recognition that your colleagues and supervisors will grant trust and respect after they’ve had a chance to see you in action, should temper your sense of initial worth to a new employer.

In short, nothing unpredictable came out of this most recent round-table on employment. While the expectations voiced by the participants seem familiar, it’s reassuring to know the process of finding employment after graduation hasn’t changed dramatically. In addition to the basic background skills required for a particular position, there’s strong demand for people who can communicate enthusiasm and a positive attitude towards new challenges.

Stay in school

Now that the fall semester is underway anyone second-guessing their decision to return to school might want some reassurance. Post-secondary education is expensive, after all, and it represents a real opportunity cost if you are sitting in a classroom instead of out in the workplace somewhere getting paid.

And yet – it turns out the economic benefits of a post-secondary education are big. As Felix Salmon, a writer for the Reuters news agency put it recently, “[T]he only thing which has been rising faster than college tuition costs is the wage premium that college graduates receive over those without a degree. A degree is becoming more important, not less, in our digital economy. And so while the cost of going to college is rising, the cost of not going to college is, arguably, rising even faster.”

US employment by education level

Salmon is writing about the US situation, but it’s almost certainly the same on this side of the border. And it’s not just the wage premium upon graduation. Employment rates for those with a post-secondary education are much better than those for workers with a high school diploma or less. Canadian figures from 2009 indicate that “82% of the adult population aged 25 to 64 with a tertiary [post-secondary] education were employed, compared with 55% of this age group with less than a high school education.” Not only are college or university graduates more likely to be employed, they’re most likely paid better to boot. So relax and enjoy your time in the classroom. It’s time (and money) wisely invested.