So you’re out of college - What Now?
So you’re just out of college looking for a job and ultimately a career. Except for the odd summer vacation stint at McDonald’s there’s nothing on your resume aside from your educational qualifications which are going to tell a future employer if you are going to be an asset to his or her company. It’s the classic Catch 22.You can’t get a job because you don’t have the experience and you can’t get the experience because you don’t have a job.
So what to do? Well plenty! Time is on your side. You are young so you have time to experiment and find the job and career right for you.
There is no one method of job seeking which is going to fit all. A shy person and an extrovert will adopt widely different techniques.
There are five basic elements which are ultimately going to determine how successful you are going to be in finding a job and getting your career started or moving it forward. They are- Qualifications, Experience, Attitude, Location, Networking. How you combine and apply these five basic elements will determine how successful you are in landing that hot job.
Chances are that by the time the job is advertised in the local press or on Monsterjob.com the employer has already explored other avenues including personal contacts or headhunting staff from competitors before seeking candidates on the open market. So it makes sense that if you can somehow or other get your resume in front of the employer before they publicize the vacancy then you stand a much greater chance of success for a number of reasons. You are not competing with numerous candidates. The employer may even accept a less than ideal candidate because it avoids having to go through the laborious process of advertising and screening candidates.
Just because the company hasn’t made any announcements that they are hiring people doesn’t mean to say they wouldn’t hire a promising new employee. The trick is to have your resume appear on the desk of a manager moments after he has decided to start hiring.
There is a technique called Skyhooks which can help even the most underprivileged job seeker land that hot job. Skyhooks means being able to operate ‘without any apparent means of support’ which is a situation many students just out of college are facing. Information on this technique can be found on the Internet.
Vincent Waterson spent 15 years in personnel recruitment. He is author of Skyhooks (ISBN 1-4196-1645-5) - A BOOTSTRAPPER’S GUIDE TO FINDING A JOB For 18 to 20 something year old American College students. It is published by amazon.com. Extracts from the book are available at www.jobs-book.com The author can be contacted at vwaterson@aol.com or celfone: 1 808 216 2136 videophone 1 805 643 7041. |
