Marine Corps Chevron, Volume 5, Number 8, 7 March 1946
Guide to Reconversion: Magazine Offers Practical Advice to WR’s
WR’s expecting discharge In the near future may find the following excerpts of special value as a guide to post-service employment. “Job News,” a bulletin prepared by the Jobs and Future Department of “Mademoiselle,” New York fashion magazine, advises: A JOB CAMPAIGN Keep your objectives well in mind and don’t let slow reconversion panic you into making snap decisions about your education or your career. That is, if your sights are set on a profession—social work, law, journalism—for which you should have at least a B.A.—don’t grab greedily at a job as air-line stewardess because travel is so broadening. Don’t try to solve the unemployment problem by marking time shopping around for interesting courses, just to get your moneys worth out of the educational provisions of the GI Bill. Better to take an exploratory bottom-rung job now and get your schooling later — when you know where you’re going.
PLACEMENT Every city has a USES, and even many Small towns have an itinerant service, visiting a few times a week. It gives advice regarding employment opportunities, further training in the field of your interest, where your service experience will receive school credit, also does placement — and in some states testing and vocational counseling. In bi; cities, go early in the morning. Don’t start your interview or your letter of application with: “I’ve just been discharged from the WAC,” or “I was an ensign in the WAVES.” That is, don’t exploit the fact that you’ve been serving your country. Let it come in naturally, in explaining your experience or special training.
ARE YOU BORED? Secretaries, stenographers, file clerks. . . . You’d like to be in personnel, radio, publishing, television. And why not? You have skills that are very much in demand; use those skills as a wedge into work you’d like. Don’t apply just for a job as secretary. Apply for a job as secretary in a publishing house or the editorial department of a magazine or the advertising department of a department store. Or apply for a job as file clerk in the personnel department. Then take evening courses when you see what you need to realize your aims.
OVERSEAS JOBS The Red Cross needs well-trained stenographers in its overseas work—both in hospitals and in offices of field directors and administrative officers. Applicants should be between 23 and 35, citizens, in good health. A year’s business experience plus a good knowledge of shorthand, typing and office procedures are minimum requirements. Salaries: $165, plus maintenance which varies with the posts. Apply at the Red Cross Area Offices only. To get the address of the one nearest your home, telephone your local Red Cross. Government agencies are sending girls abroad, too. Your local USES will have a line on these jobs, can tell you how to apply.
SERVICE AT HOME Veterans with experience in working with adult volunteer groups may find their place in Girl Scouting. For the post of field secretary, you must be a college graduate and have had at least two years of successful group experience. Executive secretaries need administrative experience. The work is not with adolescent girls, but with adult volunteers. The salaries start at $1800 (field secretary) to $2000 (executive secretary), may go to $3600. Apply to the Personnel Division, Girl Scouts, Inc., 155 E. 44 St., N. Y. 17. Recreational workers who are leaving the services or the overseas Red Cross can use their skill in organizing volunteer groups in the YWCA programs. A college background is the minimum educational requirement—■ preferably in social science or physical education.
MORE SERVICE — CIVIL Women still in the armed forces can apply for civil service posts if they see early discharge looming. They can even take examinations if the CO will grant a day’s leave. Some of the jobs: social worker, librarian in an Army or Navy hospital, nurse for general duty, anesthesia or psychiatric cases, stenographer, arithmetical clerk, junior professional assistant in personnel, public information, economics, statistics, technical agriculture. Beginning salaries: usually $2320 for jobs requiring college background, $1902 for less technical work. Local post offices, or the U. S. Civil Service Commission, Washington 25, D. C, can supply details. Staff workers of many kinds are needed in the Government’s huge program to rehabilitate the disabled: recreational workers, physical education directors, teachers and commercial aides. The jobs pay from $2668 to $3427 for a 44-hour week. Also, staff dietitians, with a bachelor’s degree in dietetics or institutional management, plus a year’s hospital experience. $2100 or $2320 for a 40-hour week.
THE BIG STORE Retailing — that’s everything, including your corner grocery store —needs millions more workers in the postwar years. Currently, opportunities to get a selling job are excellent. Beginning pay in a department store or specialty shop overages $25, and chances to advance are good. Many well-managed department stores rate their employees periodically, give promotions to better jobs on a store-wide basis rather than sticking to departmental lines.
BIG-TIME HOMEMAKING Jobs in hotels and restaurants, clubs, residential halls, institutions, real estate management and housing are definitely “on the up,” says a woman who manages two New York hotels. “We haven’t built any new hotels for the past 15 to 20 years. The modern hotel is still in the incubator—and when it emerges it will offer comforts and conveniences undreamed of before the war.” No one has had a better chance to dream up some of those comforts than the service woman who traveled from one post to another, checking in and out of hotels.
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