Walkthroughs for Life

I'm not going to lie - I am a walkthrough person. My roommate and I watched one of our friends play a game last night and I found myself consistently shouting 'Google' every time he got stuck and didn't know what to do. Granted that should have been our cue to stop procrastinating, we nonetheless persisted and eventually beat the game - two hours well spent doing nothing. If life were that simple, I'd be able to land a job in Australia and the visa to go along with it in two hours.

I was browsing the Career Services page and found a lovely guide to getting jobs abroad so I decided to actually sit down and answer the questions. And of course, it turns out that I'm pretty clueless about what I want to do. All I know is that I want to go to Australia because 1) they speak english, 2) they have an accent(!), and 3) they have koalas and the largest rock in the world (why else would you want to go to Australia if it weren't for the rock?). Of course, I also want to do environmental policy and Australia is a very environmentally-oriented country. And according to the International Job Search Guide on the Career Services page, I should assess my options and develop a strategy. So let's assess:

• It's important to clarify what you are looking for: I want to work in a non-profit or an environmental organization so that I can gain some experience for grad school/life.
• What kind of opportunity are you pursuing? A year-long opportunity. So that would probably fall under long-term because short-term in my mind means 3 months.
• Skills & experience? I speak Chinese - not really. But I do speak English so I think I'm all set for Australia; No technical skills unless Excel counts. I will be a Cornell graduate though! And I've had several internships with non-profits, doing everything from stuffing envelopes to developing fundraising strategies to grant-writing.
• What is the market like? I spent a good while in the A&S Career Services Library last week so I learned that, like the US and probably everywhere else in the world, citizens get preference over foreigners for job opportunities. But I did find this amazing link to environmental organizations in Australia and I'm still in the process of going through the site.

That was relatively painless. The next step, according to the International Job Search guide, is to develop a strategy. And that's the hard part so I'm just going to slack off  and leave that bit for next time. Maybe by then someone will have created a walkthrough for my life and I can just do a Google search every time I'm stuck. ~Jessica