Graduating in May? Don’t wait until April to start applying for jobs. Use this article as your guide to landing your first job.
You should first choose a couple of places that you could see yourself living. Choosing where you want to live first helps you look as a variety of different jobs in different industries specific to that location. This also makes tackling the question, “what do I want to do?” a little easier. Because you’re choosing a few places you want to be, instead of an end all be all career path.
After choosing where you want to be, you should look at jobs that pertain to your qualifications. Take a good look at your resume, your interests and your degree and ask yourself where you can apply your skills and be happy.
Next you need to hustle. Jobs aren’t going to call you begging for you to work for them. Instead you need to be calling whose ever phone number you can get multiple times until they agree to talk with you, same goes for email. Now, you don’t want to be stalking/harassing them, but showing just enough perseverance and initiative might land you an interview that no one else would have gotten.
Also, a lot of students forget about the magic of their parents. Your parents can be a great way to make connections. My mom always says, “It’s all about who you know,” and she’s right. And if your parents aren’t in the industry you want to be in, their friends might be, their friend’s kid might be, and any connection you can find will be more beneficial to you than none at all.
All of the above should ideally be done by Christmas break so you can use that time to go on the interviews that you worked so hard for. Interview preparation is almost as important as what’s on your resume. This includes research on the specific companies you’re interviewing with and on the person who will be interviewing you. They want people who want to work there, not people who just want to work anywhere. And even though you may feel that way, don’t let them know that.
After the interview, however it goes, send a thank you email a couple of weeks after if you haven’t heard from them. When they see your name pop up in their inbox they’re instantly reminded of you and how great your interview went.
If in February you still haven’t gotten any offers, follow-up. Don’t just instantly assume defeat. You fought long and hard for an interview, and a position just might not have been open, but one could be now. Remind them of how great your interview went and that you’re graduating and would love an opportunity in their company, organization etc.
The bottom line is that no job is going to work for you; you have to work for the job. The application process, interview and the follow-up are all a testament to what type of worker you are. If you just send your resume, don’t get any offers, and then you just give up and say, “oh well,” then you probably didn’t deserve the job anyway. A company wants you to work hard for their job so they know that you will work hard once you get it.