Category Archives: Careers

These posts have advice about career transitions for Corps members and alumni.

06.19.09
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Supporting Your Corps Members’s Career Transitions

Next week at NCVS, in addition to blogging & helping staff the Idealist Career Center on the Third Floor Exhibit Hall, I’ll be offering a workshop for service corps program directors and team leaders called “Incorporating Career Transitions Throughout the Term of Service.”

My workshop will take place first thing Wednesday morning as part of the NCVS events at the Moscone Center — and I am looking forward to seeing a room full of wide awake, rearing to go participants. I hope you can join us!

The idea behind the workshop is that preparing corps members for their career transition out of your program benefits both your program and the members themselves. With this workshop, participants can explore the components of an effective career transitions support strategy, and share effective practices with each other and me.

Because I learned how to train people as a Peace Corps Volunteer in China (where I taught English Continue reading →

05.16.09
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Med School Tuition Help for Former Corps Members

601TV's Flickr StreamIn response to the projected shortage of doctors in the coming decades, and the prohibitive costs of medical education, Rep. Michael McMahon (D-NY) has introduced a bill to make medical school affordable for former civilian service corps participants.

The Future Physicians Serving America Act of 2009, co-sponsored by Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) and Rep. John Sarbanes (D-MD), would grant tuition assistance for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and former AmeriCorps members studying medicine.

According to the proposed legislation, for each year of service, former service participants would earn two years’ worth of tuition assistance. The assistance would amount to between 50 and 100 percent tuition costs. For former AmeriCorps members, the amount of the med school assistance would replace the amount of the regular Education Award. Also, Continue reading →

04.13.09
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Career Tip: Timing Your Job Search and Supporting Yourself During the Transition

April To-DoIf you aim to move onto a salaried job after your service term ends, you may be facing some big logistical challenges — when do you start actively looking for your next job? If you don’t have something lined up when your term ends, how do you support yourself till you land that job?

When to Start Your Active Job Search

Regardless of your service corps, your term probably has a definite end date.  If that is the case, lining up a job can pose tricky questions, such as when do you start applying for jobs? And when, during the application process, do you let the hiring team know your availability limitations?

When to start your active job search—sending in applications—is a little fuzzy. The typical job search takes about six Continue reading →

04.03.09
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Your Service Networks Really Can Help with Your Career Transition

A story about how networking during Peace Corps reaped rewards after my service term ended.

I’d been back in Atlanta for six months, living off of my $5,075 Peace Corps readjustment allowance—at my parent’s house, of course—and also the pocket change I made working at an amphitheatre during the 1996 Olympics, and a very unpleasant week as a temp (who knew you needed office skills to work in an office?), before I scored my first job interview. It was for a Program Assistant position at an education non-profit in Atlanta.

I had never worked for a non-profit before and I would never have looked in that direction had it not been for connections I’d made while in Guinea.

I’d met Charles soon after arriving in Guinea two years earlier. He worked for USAID and lived in Conakry, Guinea’s capital city. A former Peace Corps Volunteer (PCV), he understood the travails of volunteer life, so he let PCVs house sit whenever his work took him elsewhere.

For two years, I’d lived in a small village roughly seven hours north of Conakry. Although my house was only 15 kilometers off the main road, it took an hour — via bush taxi or on my Trek mountain bike (that road was so bad, the mode of transportation Continue reading →

04.01.09
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Career Tip, How to List Service Experiences on Your Resume

In addition to talking about your national or international service experience, the job search process forces you to write about it as well. How do you write about your experiences on your resume?

How to craft your resume may raise questions for you. Peace Corps, AmeriCorps, and other service programs are often considered a form of volunteering. You may wonder, will employers take a service term seriously as professional experience? Should you include the name of your service program in your title?

For the resume, it’s a good idea to include both your title or role within your host organization as well as the name of your service corps program. For example: “Instructor of College English – Peace Corps Volunteer,” or “Volunteer Coordinator – AmeriCorps Member.”

In the first bullet point, include a brief explanation of your program: Continue reading →