Mark Your Calendar for the Business Fellows Showcase
Mark your calendar for Monday, April 23, from 4 to 6 p.m. for the Business Fellows Showcase. The showcase will be held in Cardinal Hall in the Student Center . The showcase will provide an opportunity for the Business Fellows teams to present their projects to the Ball State campus and the local community. Each project team will be responsible for creating a display or poster presentation to portray their project. Business Fellows students will staff their team's display and be able to describe their project and answer questions from campus and community guests. We will send additional information about the showcase and creating the display to your faculty mentor.

Your Job Search and Facebook.com
The Facebook.com phenomenon has now fully swept the college landscape, with an estimated 85 percent of students at more than 2,000 colleges using the Web site to chat with friends, meet new people, find parties, hook up, gawk, judge and, occasionally, help with academics. According to an article in the Chicago Sun Times , the free site now has more than 6 million members, about 67 percent of whom log on at least once a day. Each day, between 10,000 and 20,000 new members sign up.

Most of you know about this online directory that connects people through social networks at school and is open to a lot of schools. You can use Facebook to look up people at your school, see how people know each other, and find people in your classes and groups ( www.thefacebook.com ).

Facebook accepts new members only if they have e-mail addresses that end in ".edu," allowing the site's operators to more-or-less restrict entry to students. However, alums with old ".edu" addresses or with alumni accounts ending in ".edu" can sign up as well. Therefore, in addition to your friends and family being able to request your friendship on Facebook, a lot of employers through recent grads are tapping into this popular site to obtain information about potential hires.

According to a study conducted by Purdue's Center for Career Opportunities, 22.9 percent of employers screen candidates using social networking sites and 68.6 percent of them said what they found influenced their hiring decision. Employers screen candidates by looking at such Internet sources as Facebook because it contains information straight from the job seekers themselves as well as from their friends.

So the big question is, what is included in your profile that you would want an employer to look at? As you set up or edit your profile, be sure to include only information that represents you positively.

From Student to Professional
The way you portray your experiences on your résumé or in interviews will either forge links from your student-based activities to a professional career or leave employers asking, “So what?” Help employers see you as a potential colleague and contributor to their organizations by using some of these tips by Marianne Green from the University of Delaware to effectively interpret your experiences and reveal their career-related implications.

• Acknowledge the fact that your experience counts. Brag about your accomplishments in jobs, internships, and projects. You should start thinking of yourself as a young professional who has taken the first steps toward active participation in a field.
• Use the vocabulary of your chosen field whenever possible in your résumé and in the interview. Every occupation has a unique set of words to describe tasks and activities; therefore familiarize yourself with these phrases and buzzwords, introducing them whenever applicable.
• Examine and narrate your out-of-class experiences through the lens of your career goal. Use your résumé as a marketing tool and include all your internship and class project experiences. Definitely include your Business Fellows accomplishments.
• Convey what you learned as well as what you did in your internship or other related experience. Even if your role in the organization was limited to observer, you probably gained some critical information pertinent to your field. Maybe you attended the board of directors' meeting or shadowed the manager as he or she worked on some reports. The insights you may have gained about that particular organization and working environment can be communicated on your résumé and during the interview process.
• Quantify your actions whenever appropriate. Use numbers to vividly portray your experiences. For example, include the number of team members that you worked with; if you published articles, talk about the number of articles that you published.
• Control the way your information appears to employers through sequencing and amplification. In some cases it is best to cluster your career-related experiences in a separate category labeled “Professional Experience” rather than lumping all your experiences into one general “Experience” section. Put this category toward the top of your résumé to ensure that it is seen early in the review process.
• Take credit for your contributions. What value did you bring to your team, internship, or job? How did your actions and tasks contribute to the mission of that team or internship? What part did you play on the team or at your internship or job? Do not hesitate to claim credit for the role you took within a particular project or internship.
• Take stock of occurrences that spotlight your personal attributes. Be prepared to provide information to employers that demonstrates how you have dealt with problems on various projects, overcome obstacles, managed people, met deadlines, and multi-tasked.
• Showcase your skills and talents with a portfolio. Assemble documents that demonstrate skills relevant to your career choice such as writing, coordinating, public relations, budgeting, designing, and computer skills. Include letters of thanks and recommendation.

Source: Job Choices Diversity Edition

Fun in Indiana
Are you looking for fun things to do in Indiana during the coming months? Here are two ideas for outdoor lovers.

Hilly Hundred Weekend
The Annual Hilly Hundred Weekend, a classic bicycle event designed for the touring bicyclist, will be held October 12-14, 2007. If you like a bicycling challenge that includes entertainment and includes more than 5,500 bicyclists from more than 40 states and several foreign countries, the Hilly is for you.
Visit www.hillyhundred.org for more information.

Bill Monroe Memorial Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival
You might not have thought that Indiana was the bluegrass capitol of the world, and you would have been correct, but the state has a history with this genre of music. Bill Monroe, know as the father of bluegrass music, moved from Rosine , Kentucky , to Bean Blossom, Indiana , after coming to the area to play at a jamboree in Brown County . He started an annual bluegrass festival in the 1960s that eventually became what is known today as the Bill Monroe Memorial Bean Blossom Bluegrass Festival. The festival is held every year in mid-June and spans a couple of weekends. This is the longest running bluegrass festival in the world. It will be celebrating its forty-first anniversary in a couple of months. Bean Blossom is about ten minutes from Nashville , Indiana , and Brown County State Park . You can find out more information about Bean Blossom and the festival at http://www.beanblossom.com/ .

Diversions
As finals draw near and projects and assignments come to an end, many of us need to take some time to relax. Here are some relaxation links recommended by the Ball State University Counseling Center .

1. Secret Garden —guided meditation for calmness and peace of mind.
   http://www.meditainment.com/free_guided_meditation/
2. Free Relaxation Session — help alleviate stress and anxiety. http://www.hypnotia.com/hypnosisdownloads/health/sample-relaxation.html
3. April Sun — de-stress with 60 minutes of blissful music.
   http://www.silenciomusic.co.uk/relaxation_healing/pages/pure_music.htm  
4. Calming Words — instant relaxation tool.  
   http://www.calmingwords.com  
5. Flute Meditation Music — soothing relaxation music.
   http://www.radiosrichinmoy.org/free-online-music-radio/free_relaxation_music