1. Beginning your senior year with your career in mind from Heather Huhman and Entry Level Careers Examiner:

For those of you in your senior year of college, the “real world” is looming not too far ahead. Some of you might be thinking, “Thank goodness I have 10 months until graduation. Maybe the job market will bounce back by then.” Others might be focused entirely on class, not even thinking about what lies after graduation.

Your senior year is time to be on the offense instead of defense. There are many ways in which you can be proactive and still get your schoolwork done (and yes, attend those parties). In a recent interview with Susan DiTullio, manager of college recruiting at VistaPrint, she provided 10 tips to help prepare you for landing a perfect job and beginning the next exciting chapter of your life:

• Plan ahead
• Draw from past experiences
• Career Services is your advocate
• Keep your résumé current
• Network, network, network
• Attend career fairs
• Do your research
• Dress for success
• Working inside the process
• Don’t be afraid to ask for help

2. Intelligence Means Squat: Study Shows One Trait Predicts Success BETTER from CAREEREALISM:

…When it comes to predicting who is going to succeed, you gotta ask yourself one question:

“Got GRIT?”

The study shows people who focus on a goal and stick with it long-term seem to achieve more professional success than those who jump around . Duckworth explains this in a recent Boston Globe article as follows:

“Grit is very much about the big picture,” …“It’s about picking a specific goal off in the distant future and not swerving from it.”

3. Three Tips For Writing Your Personal Bio from the Brand-Yourself.com folks:

• Keep it short and sweet. Brevity is the soul of wit, as Shakespeare says, and the people reading your bio will be relieved if you stick to this idea. They are on your website to get a quick idea of you, not to read a novel.  Stick to the same rule-of-thumb as for your résumé: include all essential information, but keep it concise and to-the-point.
• Call him Ishmael. Remember to write your bio in third person.  After including your full name once, it is fine to refer to yourself by your first name for the remainder of the bio.  If, however, your career path requires a more formal style, use your surname for the rest of your bio instead.
• Be yourself. You are not writing a research paper on pelicans or economics, so resist the urge to revert back to college composition class (where you wrote a certain way because you needed an A).  Your personal bio needs of course to be readable and grammatically correct, but don’t confuse a need for professionalism with a reason to stay bland and generic in your writing.  Allow some of yourself to show through your words.