Seeing as its July, most high school and college students have already found a summer job. However, there’s always a bunch who are still looking, or kindof sort of looking while they actually enjoy their summer holiday. How do you show your potential employer you’re better than the rest, a straight shooter, gung ho? Didn’t you know? You use these tips. Duhhh. Us young folks like to broadcast our lives online: we facebook, we tweet, we stumble, we email. The interweb dimension is a place where your potential employer can gain valuable info about you. Who? Yes, you.

Avoid these common mistakes that are DEAD GIVE-AWAYS you’re not hiring material.

Professional email address.  You’re not the only one that created their first email address when they were in the fifth grade. Back then, mollymcfee2cute4luv@hotmail.com sounded like a username you were lucky to get your hands on. Get with it. Employers see things like immature email addresses and smell the reek of unprofessionalism. All it takes is 5 minutes to create a new email address that sounds a little more grown up, like yourname.yourlastname@gmail.com

Email signature. While we’re on the topic, an email signature can be a quick way to jazz up your serious professional demeanour. Only real grown-ups have email signatures, so by having one, you look like one too. This is where you can put your phone number, your Linkedn contact info, and other relevant internet modes of communicating with you.

Twitter. Ah Twitter. Such a cool creation.  A forum where people are so honest about who they are in 140 characters or less can be dangerously tempting. Think of that tweet you wrote at work (when you had a job) about how you couldn’t believe they were paying you money, if your boss only knew you were wasting your day on twitter. If your name is in any way associated to your twitter account, you can be found. Be yourself on Twitter, but realize that those tweets are up there forever for anyone who wants to snoop.

Facebook. If you haven’t done this already then maybe you really don’t want to find a job. We’re talking about limiting your profile so that only your friends can see those pictures of you passed out on the laundry room floor with your shoes still on after a late night of partying. Better yet, make sure you’re not tagged in the pic. The best? Make sure these pictures don’t get online in the first place.

Google yourself. A final test you should run yourself through is the classic boredom/vanity trick of googling yourself. This is a great way to see what would come up about you, if anything, when an employer types in your name. Your facebook page will probably appear. Click on it to see how much a complete stranger can find out about who you are. If you are trying to promote yourself online then it’s up to you to make sure that there is no questionable content about you floating around.

A good thing to ask yourself when going through any content associated with you is: Would I Want My Potential Employer To See That?

Now that you’ve internet proofed your rep and made yourself look like a dapper young professional you can get back to stumbling random snack foods. We all do it. It’s just about cleaning up the crumbs.

With the full results of the study set to come out in July, NACE (National Association of Colleges and Employers) has given us a sneak peak at the top jobs for 2008-2009 based on salary for bachelor majors. Even though these stats are more of a lumping together of numbers and don’t contribute any sort of advice about how you should approach your career path, we all can agree that lists are always fun. Sorry to ruin the surprise, but business majors are doing better than any of the other majors of the 2008 grads, meaning they are getting more job offers.

The six bachelor degree majors they listed are: engineering, sciences, computer science, health care, business, and liberal arts. We don’t suggest you choose your college major based on your starting salary once you graduate, but the kind of paying jobs you can land with your degree might be useful to some who need to choose their majors soon and undecided.
Without further ado…

Engineering majors:

1. Software Design & Development $66,134
2. Production Engineering $65,946
3. Process Engineering (Chemical) $64,527

Sciences Majors

1. Project Engineering $56,553
2. Teaching $36,461
3. Research (Technical/Scientific) $34,103

Computer Science Majors

1. Software Design & Development $66,290
2. Computer Programming $58,312
3. Systems Analysis & Design $51,572

Healthcare Majors (only two were listed)

1. Pharmacist $111,782 For numbers like this you might not mind mind going to school for 4 years to double as a convenience store clerk.
2. Registered Nurse $46,255

Business Majors (by far the category with the most jobs)

1. Investment Banking (Sales & Trading) $57,929 Well maybe not anymore…
2. Consulting $56,754
3. Investment Banking (Corporate Finance) $52,151

Liberal Arts Majors

1. Management, General (Mid to Upper Level) $45,775
2. Law Enforcement $43,806 Read them their Miranda Rights in iambic pentameter
3. Sales $42,677

Something that we’ve stressed in our blogposts is that what you study in college is a personal decision, just like the career path you take. So while these studies may give us something to chew on, don’t take these results as food for thought. Most people end up with jobs that have nothing to do with their college majors. Our advice is to study what you are most passionate about. Check out the full results of the NACE survey when it comes out in July.

This year college applications to military academies have skyrocketed, climbing a whopping 40 per cent at the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Apparently, the fact that America is in a war hasn’t deterred thousands of young men and women from applying to a military academy. For most people, going to college means thousands of dollars of debt. The essentially free ride you get at a military academy is tempting, nay, mouth-watering. Not only is room and board on the house, you actually get paid to go to with yearly stipends from the military academy.

The best though, is that military officials, long known for their obtuse grasp of civvie life, maintain that the economy can’t be the main reason for the spike in applications to military academies. Reason given? School officials said students tended to have very personal reasons for applying to military academies: patriotism, an abiding interest in the military as a profession, a desire to follow in a parent’s footsteps. Awww, patriotism, cute. What did they think, applicants would give their real reasons for applying, the dirt cheap college education hook up? The stipends in the thousands of dollars? For anyone that has written or is planning to write an admissions essay, you know it’s all about seeming passionate and telling them what they want to hear.

Others apparent reasons for the increase in applications seen at every military academy is the declining casualties in Iraq and Obama’s new policies. The military has also been pursuing an aggressive ad campaign, with billboards at major airports across the country.

If you can’t bear the idea of wearing the same outfit as everyone else and you’re not a morning person, then maybe a military academy isn’t your thing, no matter how cheap it is. Lots of non-military schools offer financial aid, you can check out our financial aid calculator to see what you might get. Don’t be surprised if you don’t find a better price. And don’t forget that at a military academy not only do you get a sweet ride financially, you might get to do cool stuff like jump out of planes and shoot people.