Day Zero: Writing Down a List in Order for Job Hunting

Hey, good luck Brian!

I actually quite like job hunting. Workoplis, LinkedIn, monster.ca, etc are all really good.

What's your field of interest? What's your thesis about?

Hi Wazaroff!

Thanks for your comment and feedback. Thank you for the list of sites.  I will check them out.

I have graduated from the School of Community and Regional Planning at UBC.  I have an interest in commercial and retail planning.  My thesis was on the impact of large-scale entertainment centres on their local communities.   I compared Riverport Complex in Richmond and International Village Shopping Centre in Chinatown.

Hopefully, I can find a job as an entry-level planner.  I will post my progress over time. 

Thanks again for your comment and feedback. 

- Brian

Your thesis sounds really interesting. Is there a way you could post about your thesis, or is it too complicated to boil down for the masses?

City planning is a great example of how changes can affect large numbers of people, either positively or negatively I'd love to know more...

You should list all the attributes of your ideal job: company size, structure, location, your desired role/responsiblities, reporting structure, desired benefits, etc and their relative importance to you.

This has a number of benefits: first, you can objectively evaluate each potential job opportunity. You won't get stuck in the "this one looks pretty good, but this one has more vacation time" trap. Second, it gives you a number of things to ask about during interviews. Your interviewers will appreciate your interest in their company and the job, and you will be in a better position to decide if the job is right for you.

Hi Anonymous,

Thanks for your feedback and comment.  Your feedback is useful, in fact, it brings me back my memory of an introductory planning course that I took.  It was a great course on value-focused thinking and decision making.

The gist of it was that rather than choosing from a list of alternatives available to me, I should establish my objectives and than apply them when evaluating opportunities and making decisions.  Using value-focused thinking would help create a clearer path that I could take and would me to plan for a much longer term.

Thanks again for your valuable comments.

Hi wazaroff! 

Thank you for your comment and your interest.

I have uploaded my thesis onto my job hunting web site.  The URL of the site is: CityPlanners.com.  I have created this site for job hunting and for future use related to city planning. 

The direct URL to view and download my thesis is at http://cityplanners.com/thesis/ .  You will find the abstract of my thesis there.

Here is a succinct summary of my thesis.

First, let's define what urban entertainment centres (UECs) are.  They are large-scale complexes that primiarly focus on selling entertainment to the visitors.  The Entertainment Zone (the theatre section) at Metropolis at Metrotown is an example.

Because they are large-scale centres and they are (were) the latest trend in retail development, they have big impacts on the host communities.  They bring job opportunities, help revitalize neighbourhoods, increase traffic, increase noise pollution, and affect planning policies. 

From literature review, I developed a framework of impacts categorized into four groups: economic, social, environmental, and political/ planning.  Then, I apply this framework to evaluate the impacts of the two case studies: International Village Shopping Centre in Chinatown Vancouver and Riverport Sports and Recreation Complex in Richmond.

As with any large-scale development, they have a combination of good and negative impacts.  They bring positive econonmic and social changes, but negative environmental changes.

I hope that this helps.

Feel free to provide any comments or suggestions to my web site and my job hunting progress.  Thanks again for your interest!

That's excellent. Thanks for the link, great that you were able to nab the URL cityplanners.com. I'm surprised it was still available.

I look forward to spending some time reading your thesis. I think it's a very interesting topic.

Yours,
William