Many post-secondary graduates are woefully unprepared for the realities of finding a job in today’s workplace.

And business leaders, parents and post-secondary institutions must do more to help prepare these freshly-minted grads, says Ron McGowan, author of the recently reissued book, How to Find Work in the 21st Century.

The Vancouver writer and entrepreneur has penned an informative new chapter called Guidelines for College Seniors that shows grads how to plug themselves into a new way of finding meaningful, rewarding careers.

Today’s workforce is totally unlike the one their parents entered, he says. “The ‘hire me and take care of me’ mentality is history.”

Ron McGowan

McGowan points to a September 2003 report from York University that says nearly 40 per cent of Canadians earning a living do so as temporary help, part-timers, contract workers or self-employed consultants.

McGowan has operated Executives for Rent (www.efrcanada.com) for the past eight years and places contract workers in a variety of industries. He also ran the continuing education program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology for four years and proudly boasts that he’s successfully survived two downsizings.

In the past year he’s expanded his half-day-long job-finding workshops to include sessions at post- secondary institutions. “Today’s graduates must be more entrepreneurial and sales-oriented than grads in the past,” he says, “whether they are comfortable with it or not.”

“If I was still in that (post- secondary) world, I’d give every student a package the first day of classes saying, ‘This is what you have to do, starting now.’ ” The package would include instructions on:

* How to write a marketing letter.

* How to create a one-page resume that focuses on activities the applicant has done that would interest a potential employer.

* How to make a simple two-sided brochure.

* How to design a personal website or PDF.

“The day is closer at hand than people realize when an employer is going to say, ‘Send us your URL,’ ” he says.

In his chapter for college seniors, McGowan sets out a 15-point action plan for students serious about finding work. It includes the notion of creating a “work search” group where student peers, who want to find meaningful work, band together and invest the necessary time to search and succeed.

Traditionally, students wait until the end of their final semester before they begin thinking about applying for jobs. “That’s completely inappropriate for today’s world,” he says.

Instead, students should being working on their marketing plan at the beginning of their final year. That includes being clear on what they have to offer, having an understanding of where they want to go and an idea of how to sell themselves.

By February, students should be ready to market themselves.

“They have to understand that there’s only one thing a potential employer is interested in: ‘If I hire this person, how will this person make my life easier?’” says McGowan. “That goes for contract work, or hiring them as employees.”

In his book, McGowan advises grads – and anyone between jobs – to spend 90 per cent of their time developing a strategy around the companies they want to target and being clear on what they have to offer. Spend the other 10 per cent of the time sending out marketing materials and following up. Most people, he notes, have the process reversed.

McGowan adds that many recently downsized adult workers, and student graduates, view the concept of contract work in the worst possible light.

But they’d better get used to it. A study from the University of San Francisco notes that just 33 per cent of trend-setting California’s workforce has traditional jobs, he says.

Students must realize that the odds of easily finding a good job are slim – unlike their parents, many of whom literally fell into careers when they graduated.

And he stresses that parents, business and post-secondary institutions have a role to play in helping students cope with the new reality.

If they haven’t been through the grinder of downsizing in today’s workplace themselves, parents had better educate themselves.They must support their children, and make them aware that they’re unlikely to be given guarantees of lifetime jobs “with all the bells and whistles.”

Local chambers of commerce, if they don’t already, should be opening doors to student members. Groups such as the Canadian Federation of Independent Business need to get closer to post-secondaries to clearly express what their needs are, he adds.

And more small businesses should be attending post- secondary job fairs.

“One of biggest weaknesses is that colleges and universities tend to bring in big companies to these fairs. It’s somewhat ironic because the vast majority of the opportunities out there are with small companies.”

At the post-secondary level, McGowan says, too many instructors and professors have been insulated in their jobs for 10 or more years. They are out of touch with the work environment into which they’re sending their students.

Post-secondary employees “in their heart of hearts” want their grads to find jobs, he allows. But if they haven’t experienced today’s workplace, they just don’t have a clear understanding of the challenges.

McGowan suggests that institutions hire more contractors, instructors who can pass current information on to students.

The fundamental challenge for these institutions is that for generations they’ve been turning out employees – now, he believes, they are going to have to start turning out entrepreneurs.

“I’m not saying they (students) have to graduate and start a business, but they will have to walk out of those places with an entrepreneurial mentality about marketing themselves, and about meeting the needs of employers.

“Today, right now, they don’t have those skills.”