Dear Joyce: A 30-year-old-woman, I am due to graduate with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering technology from a state university. I am firmly entrenched in a "C" grade point average (G.P.A.). Am I forced to take the dregs of job offers? Or is the market strong enough for me to be at least slightly choosy? -- T.R.

Dear T.R.: The most competitive employment market in decades is strong enough for you to be choosy -- if you compensate for a moderate G.P.A. with superior job-search smarts. Learn how to just say no to being dragged into the abyss of marginality. Some people -- because of age discrimination, personality characteristics, unassuming G.P.A., low-demand skill sets or other reasons -- do get left behind, sometimes drowning, in the career version of a fast-moving speedboat's wake. Marginalized, they understandably wonder why, if this is such a hot market, they're waiting for the phone to ring.

Feeling marginalized causes a variety of reactions, from giving up to underemployment. Some individuals, in desperation, pay commercial career marketers thousands of dollars in advance, only later to run screaming "scam" to law authorities when a good job fails to materialize.

Clients of career marketers and coaches often truly need professional guidance to repair their careers, the foundation of their lives, much as many of us truly need tax preparers. But marginalized job seekers do have options. One alternative, "pay as you go," eliminates a front-end balloon payment.

Another option is free guidance, available from institutions ranging from public to collegiate career centers. Still another option is "do it yourself"' -- today's focus.

The first move I suggest is a free general grounding: Spend time studying America's Career Kit, a comprehensive online career development system sponsored and managed by the U.S. Department of Labor. America's Career Kit has four Web-based components:

• America's Job Bank lists jobs from every state every day.
• America's Career InfoNet lists employment trends, wages and other labor market data.
• America's Learning eXchange offers training and education resources to use for career advancement.
• America's Service Locator finds public service offices with free information on finding a job and planning a career.

While you're online, if you spot jobs you think hold promise, find out as much about the employer as you can. A new free Business Week Online service joins Hoover's and other company research databases.

Next, decide in which areas of job search you could use additional help. Here's where you need books with savvy, adequate detail. I think of free online help as going to college and targeted books as graduate study.

An example: Assume you'd like to work for a technology start-up company. You have visions of getting in during the early days when corporate legends are born and fortunes are made. You may forget to correctly estimate the challenges, risks and unusual dynamics of the start-up workplace. You'll find lots of free online overviews -- some very superficial -- but not the advanced stuff you need to avoid blowing a year on a dot-bomb. Sophisticated data on start-up twists and turns are available in a first-of-its-kind new book by Daniel S. Rippy, a man who's been there and done that several times. The title is "Sizing up a Start-up: Decoding the New Frontier of Career Opportunities."

My advice to anyone who feels marginalized in a job market on fire: Determine that you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about finding and capturing a rewarding job. Discerningly choose among your options to acquire that information. High cost doesn't guarantee quality, but free doesn't guarantee wisdom.

E-mail career questions for possible use in this column to Joyce Lain Kennedy at jlk@sunfeatures.com.

© 2000, Los Angeles Times Syndicate