Freshman Year Tip 2: Professional Voicemail

by Marissa Bell


Today’s tip requires an anecdote to start it off, otherwise the tip itself will make no sense.

There I was, a naïve 18 year old, innocent to the cruelties of the real world (who am I kidding, I still am), and applying for summer jobs. I had sent out many an application, and when people called me and followed up, I was available and picked up my phone. However, there was one time when I was in class, saw an unknown number calling me, and sent it straight to voicemail, without another thought. An hour later, I listened to the voicemail that had been left and this is what I heard:

“Oh, Hi. This is *Carly* from *Insert Company Name of Choice Here*… Uh. Just wanted to let you know that the position has been filled. Thank you for your application.”

*Names have been changed

But something wasn’t right. The person on the phone sounded bizarre, like telling me I wasn’t going to be receiving an interview wasn’t the original plan. I was left confused, but later forgot about it. Until the exact same thing happened again 2 days later. A prospective job called, I was in class, let it roll to voicemail, and then when I listened to the voicemail, the same confused voice telling me that a position had been filled. I was perplexed. I mean, not to toot my own horn, but they were simple retail positions that I had been being denied for; I didn’t understand why I wasn’t a good candidate?

And then it hit me. I remembered a Friday night 2 months ago that I thought it would be hilarious if I made my voicemail a 2 minute long pseudo-Public Service Announcement about a fabled war going on in Alaska between Narwhals and Unicorns, urging anyone who listened to donate millions of dollars to the cause. Yeah, your reaction is probably about the same as mine when I realized what was chasing those potential employers away.

And so, the clear moral of the story is: Professional Voicemails are your FRIENDS. It’s something no one ever thinks about when they’re applying for jobs. They change their names on Facebook to make sure employers can’t find them, erase their 4th grade embarrassing email address and replace it with a new one, and yet the voicemail is something that just slips people’s mind because it seems so unimportant. A professional voicemail can be as simple as, “Hi, this is *insert your name here*, sorry I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave me a message and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks!”

Yes. It’s not as fun as you and your friends’ rendition of Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” sung in falsetto, but the second you start applying for jobs, just know that even if you look like the perfect candidate on paper, even the slightest things that make you look unprofessional could make the difference between getting that interview, and having to hear those dreaded words, “The position has been filled”.

Making a New Year’s Resolution and Sticking to It

Written by Oleg Ignatenko


Every year we are presented with a chance to make a Resolution. For some, it may be to stop smoking, lose weight or start a family. Let’s take an educational approach here and set resolutions such as to get an internship for the summer, to raise the GPA to above 3.5 or depending on the Graduation date, to get hired by an employer in your field of study. But the question remains, “When to start the process of realizing and accomplishing this resolution?” The best answer is “Now!” The majority of people tend to wait before starting something new such as a project or some sort of commitment just because we are natural procrastinators. But that doesn’t have to be the way. Telling yourself that you will begin next week is just an excuse to push that responsibility off of yourself and delay it further. Instead, surprise yourself and begin today, now, at this very moment. If it is something that you have your mind set on and you know that eventually it is something that has to be done, then, there is no reason to wait any longer.

Depending on what type of a resolution you have set out to accomplish, most of all you will need to develop a plan, a sense of patience and the will to persevere. As quoted by Winston Churchill “He who fails to plan is planning to fail.” By not having a plan, you are setting yourself up for disaster. Just as a football team trains and prepares themselves for a specific opponent or a business employee who readies to present a PowerPoint presentation to their company, both need to develop a plan, a strategy that will allow them to succeed in their trials. “Patience is the greatest of all virtues” – Cato the Elder (234 BC – 149 BC). Patience is something that a lot of people lack and need practice to control. Lack of patience might be the single greatest reason that many get frustrated and give up their ambitions and dreams. We all know that spending an entire day at the gym is not going to instantly make you lose 20 pounds. Realistically speaking, to accomplish something great and worthy of being proud of takes time and hard work. “Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another” – Walter Elliot. Hard work and perseverance go hand in hand. The will to finish something, to not leave it incomplete, to refrain from giving up is what hard work and perseverance are all about. It is this type of mindset from which ordinary people achieve extraordinary results.

The best way to plan out your strategy for accomplishing your resolution is to make short term plans. When walking down a stairway, you don’t jump the entire thing; otherwise you’ll probably break a hip or a leg. Instead you take one step at a time. This is a similar scenario. Begin by making weekly goals and monthly goals. The weekly goals will allow you to make small but significant strides in your progress and the monthly goals will summarize what you had to accomplish in those past four weeks. The monthly goals will act as a check-up system, which will make sure that you remain on track and do not fall behind with completing your weekly goals.

Patience is also something that takes time to accomplish and needs to be practiced by steps. The biggest problem with Resolutions is that you don’t see the result for a while (depending on your resolution). What you do see is progress and it is very crucial that you remind yourself of your goal and how it will affect your life in a positive way after you will accomplish it. These self-encouragements will allow you to continue your hard work and eventually persevere.

The main thing to remember is that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose from this. By accomplishing your resolution, you will prove to people and most importantly yourself that you are capable of achieving any goals that you set out in front of yourself. You will know that you possess the qualities of planning, patience and the will to persevere. There is nothing more satisfying than accomplishing a goal that you have set out for yourself. You will feel a great sense of pride, achievement and dignity. At the end of the year you can look back at what you have achieved and rejoice. With this accomplishment you can now feel confident to set out other goals and know that you have the necessary qualities to accomplish anything.


“It is time for us to stand and cheer for the doer, the achiever, the one who recognizes the challenge and does something about it” – Vince Lombardi.