I posted a link to this on twitter a while back, but the massive stupid of this suit didn’t really reach me until I had the chance, just now, to read the article in its entirety.

I thought that this case of Trina Thompson was odd; suing your college because you can’t find a job a year or two later, and they’ve promised a 100% placement rate or something. Something substantive.

However, it seems that Ms. Thompson graduated three months ago.

She graduated with a Bachelor of Business Administration in IT (Monroe College program description). The course description sounds pretty similar to the Computer Systems Technology diploma course I started on in Red Deer. It’s odd to me that it’s filed under Business Administration, though rather than under science or arts, but maybe that’s normal in the area. Systems Analysis, database design, logic… sounds okay.

The thing is, you don’t get hired easily as a developer, database admin, or systems analyst fresh out of school. If you’re looking just in a limited geographic area, you’re also going to encounter hurdles in finding anything.

If you further restrict yourself by only applying to the companies that your school lists on their job search board, you may as well just go work at Starbucks. The school’s listings are a starting point, but there are so many other resources; monster.com, jobshark, linked in, facebook, craigslist, etc etc.

My most recent job is one that I applied to in March 2009. I started in mid July. Four months. Four long months.

Four months of interviewing, talking to people, sending references, and taking tests at recruiting firms. Four months of smiling while recruiters who could barely spell IT, expressed their disappointment that I didn’t have some outdated PhD from ten years ago to back up my skills.

In that time I was talking to a number of potential employers, agencies, and recruiters. For the firm I eventually accepted the offer from, I talked to a half dozen different managers and peers over the phone, exchanged emails, and eventually flew out to meet with them.

Sure, I’m not fresh out of school, and I am a senior level analyst with certain earning expectations, and I have something of a specialized skillset. This might help extend the time that it takes to find an offer with a company, but a couple months and a couple interviews for a fresh graduate are a bare minimum.

One thing a lawsuit like this might do is make you more popular. Popular in the sense of the word where HR people will know your name as a result of this action, and may choose not to call your litigious ass back for an interview.

How many resumes did Trina send to get those two calls from employers? tend? hundreds? So many applications go into a big black hole; get used to it. At that early stage, you’re not special, and you’re not unique. I’m going to assume you make the standard mistakes that newbies make; bad resume format, with bad data.

You get maybe a couple seconds to make an impression based on your cover letter and resume; if you’re not getting callbacks, change the way you’re applying. Go with a skills based resume rather than a chronological one, for a start. Detail interesting projects you did in your Cisco labs, or detail in depth what kind of projects you have managed, and the challenges you faced in working on assigned teams.

Nobody cares about your attendance or GPA in the real world, so unless you have a solid 4.0, don’t even bother putting it on there. Attendance? Please. I went to school with morons who attended every class; didn’t help them in the real world very much.

If what you’re doing isn’t working, change what you’re doing. If you can’t understand dynamic systems, then stay the hell out of IT. You’ll just break something and then blame someone else. I sense a career with Payless in your future.

Alumna sues college because she hasn’t found a job

NEW YORK (CNN) — A recent college graduate is suing her alma mater for $72,000 — the full cost of her tuition and then some — because she cannot find a job.

Trina Thompson, 27, of the Bronx, graduated from New York’s Monroe College in April with a bachelor of business administration degree in information technology.

On July 24, she filed suit against the college in Bronx Supreme Court, alleging that Monroe’s “Office of Career Advancement did not help me with a full-time job placement. I am also suing them because of the stress I have been going through.”

The college responded that it offers job-search support to all its students.

In her complaint, Thompson says she seeks $70,000 in reimbursement for her tuition and $2,000 to compensate for the stress of her three-month job search.

As Thompson sees it, any reasonable employer would pounce on an applicant with her academic credentials, which include a 2.7 grade-point average and a solid attendance record. But Monroe’s career-services department has put forth insufficient effort to help her secure employment, she claims.

“They’re supposed to say, ‘I got this student, her attendance is good, her GPA is all right — can you interview this person?’ They’re not doing that,” she said.

Thompson said she has fulfilled her end of the job-search bargain, peppering companies listed on Monroe’s e-recruiting site with cover letters, résumés and phone calls. But no more than two employers have responded to her outreach, and those leads have borne no fruit.

Her complaint adds, “The office of career advancement information technology counselor did not make sure their Monroe e-recruiting clients call their graduates that recently finished college for an interview to get a job placement. They have not tried hard enough to help me.”

She suggested that Monroe’s Office of Career Advancement shows preferential treatment to students with excellent grades. “They favor more toward students that got a 4.0. They help them more out with the job placement,” she said.

Monroe College released a statement saying that “while it is clear that no college, especially in this economy, can guarantee employment, Monroe College remains committed to working with all its students, including Ms. Thompson, who graduated only three months ago, to prepare them for careers and to support them during their job search.”

Thompson says she has not hired an attorney to represent her because she cannot afford one. When she filed her complaint, she also filed a “poor person order,” which exempts her from filing fees associated with the lawsuit.

Asked whether she would advise other college graduates facing job woes to sue their alma maters, Thompson said yes.

“It doesn’t make any sense: They went to school for four years, and then they come out working at McDonald’s and Payless. That’s not what they planned.”

The quoted bit above is from CNN, who also have the full text court filing (pdf) online.

Trina Thompson; proving that a degree doesn’t necessarily teach you anything at all.