Benefits of Attending a Career Fair

Last month I attended the Downtown campus Career Fair and it was a great opportunity for students to interact with potential employers and to ask candid questions. I am specifically interested in federal employment so I talked with the representative from the FBI. She was very helpful in answering general topics with regard to federal employment as well as the best ways to get noticed when applying for a job through the federal employment clearinghouse, usajobs.gov.

The best piece of advice she gave me is that the HR system actually looks for keywords within an applicants answers to the questions during the application process. Specifically she mentioned that keywords in the “Qualifications” section of the vacancy announcement are what they aim for. Her advice was to incorporate those keywords from the qualifications section into my answers, that way I could get the HR system to flag my application for review by an actual human.

Even if I don’t get a job with the FBI this one piece of information could be the difference between my application being looked at versus being thrown in the trash heap with everyone else’s.

SB 1070

This afternoon SB 1070, the tougher of the two potential immigration bills before the legislature, was passed in both houses and is on its way to the Governor. This sets up an interesting political challenge for Gov. Brewer: on the one hand she signs it and deals with the political and legal headaches that will ensue from Democrats. Conversely, if she vetoes it, or refuses to sign it, it will be used against her in her primary challenge for re-election.

If I had to guess, and I’m not very good at guessing, I would say she doesn’t sign it. I don’t think she will veto it but I don’t think she will sign it. That way it will still become law but she will have enough wiggle room to express her concerns with the bill.

In the House

This past Tuesday I had the distinction to hang out in a room in the House that few people get to hang out in. Granted, I have no idea what the official name of the room is but it’s the room directly behind the floor of the House. This is the room House members are lobbied and cajoled. It’s basically a lobby (go figure) with some leather couches, comfortable chairs and the plushest carpet you can imagine.

I can’t speak to the specifics as to why I was there or who I was with but suffice to say it was very, very cool to experience.

Movie Industry Tax Credits

The failure of the film industry tax credit bill, SB 1409, yesterday was an interesting display on how quickly votes can change. Though it went down 11-16 in the Senate according to many of our sources this bill was virtually tied as of yesterday.

While I can’t divulge our sources, or the specific Senators that we believe flipped, it was interesting to see the cascade effect once it was known it was going to fail. Instead of being say 14-13, once Senators knew their votes would not be the “deciding” vote they could jump off (or on, depending on your perspective) the bandwagon.

With Senator Nelson’s vote against it he can now hope to have the bill reconsidered, but given the expiring opportunity to have it heard in a Senate committee (let alone a House committee if it left the Senate) it appears this bill is all but dead.

Civic Duty

SB 1404 would require that 8th graders in Arizona pass a United States civics exam in order to move on to the next grade. My first reaction was that it would never pass the Parliament.

Sorry, that was a bad joke. Still this is interesting. The test will be the same one required by immigrants to become American citizens (the questions are listed at the bottom of the article).

I realize that there is a seemingly ongoing debate about testing in schools, whether it’s regarding the effectiveness of tests results vs. being educated or the potential pitfalls of the construct of the tests themselves. Still, if you read these questions I do not believe this is an overly burdensome test of 8th graders.

Busy Week Down at the Capital

State legislatures are attempting to make this upcoming week the last week for committee hearings. The talk around the Capital is that they want to end this session around the 1st of May; I’m sure in part so many of them can start fundraising in earnest.

To that end, the committees have a busy, busy week. The committee agendas for both the House and the Senate are packed (especially Senate Finance). I feel bad for the staffers and interns down at the legislature as this will be a long, long week for all of them.

Why I Think Sam Bradford is the Worst QB Ever

OK, I don't. That said, as a Detroit Lions fan I need the St. Louis Rams to not select Bradford #1 overall this April in the NFL Draft. Detroit, who has the #2 overall pick, obviously won't draft a QB after dropping $41.7M in guaranteed money to Matthew Stafford last year, but there are teams who might trade up for Bradford.

Detroit has such a terrible team they need help at virtually every position and trading down for more picks would be perfect for Detroit. And that is why I fully anticipate the NFL commish saying this April, "With the first pick in the 2010 NFL Draft, the St. Louis Rams select Sam Bradford, Quarterback, Oklahoma."

This is a virtual lock.