I have recently graduated college and I am moving toward the “real world”. The nine to five world if you will. People have told me that the job market is getting better and that my chances of employment are high, but that doesn’t mean a job will jump out at me. Of course, there are people who are lucky. They get a job right away. They get a connection right away. They get the high paying job, their dream job, right away. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for all of us. We have to continue putting in the effort for months, whether it be sending out resumes, going to training, or attending career fairs. However, don’t feel discouraged. In this article I want to provide you with some tips that have been given to me along the way in my job search that will hopefully assist you along the way.
- Get organized. It will be helpful if you create a list or spreadsheet of the jobs that you have applied to. On the list you can include company name, job salary, job type (full time or part time), whether or not you have followed up or need to follow up, etc. Being organized in this way will help you keep track of the jobs that you have applied for so that if you see a posting on Linkedin and Indeed you only apply once. It will also help you nudge the recruiter or interviewer along the way. It also shows them that you are interested in the position.
- Get extra eyes on your resume. After finishing your resume it is helpful to get other people to look over it and get some feedback either from someone in your industry or a professional. This ensures that your resume looks great when you apply for jobs. There may be alignment issues that you don’t see that an expert or a friend could spot. Furthermore, we are prone to listing our duties for the job, but we need to focus on listing how our actions resulted in company success. It’s important to show the company that you get the big picture and that you are results oriented.
- Get interview prep. It may sound silly, but it could be helpful if you are one to slip on your words when nervous. Interview prep has proven to be helpful for me. It helps take the pressure off of interviewing and I have been more relaxed in interviews. Ultimately, you learn that the interview process is a two-way street. You need to be asking questions just like the interviewer. You want to make sure that you’re a right fit for the company, but also that they are a right fit for you.
- Get as many applications in as possible. The average of numbers is real. The more applications that you send out the more likely you are to get a job. You can’t expect to get a job if you only submit four applications — submit as many as you can as often as you can. Consider this, if you only apply for four and get a rejection from all four it will lower your confidence, but if you apply for 50 jobs its likely that you’ll get at least a few interviews. As Bob McKenzie said, “You miss one hundred percent of the shots you don’t take”.
Searching for a job can be tiring, and it gets old after a while. However, there are ways that we can find jobs and get the dream job that we want.
Queen Media Collective 