Graduation to Employment - A Roadmap
Posted: Thursday, May 21, 2009
by Lesa Caskey
Brick Elm LLC
Congratulations, graduate! You've accomplished a lot over your student career and you're ready to reap the rewards of a hot-off-the-press degree. The studying and homework are over, right? Wrong! You'll need to use your same dedication and hard work to identify and land the job that will pay the bills and ideally launch your career.
Most people would advise you to start by writing your resume. I disagree based on the assumption that you don't have any professional experience. Working part time at Starbucks or Denny's doesn't count as professional experience in my book and I highly recommend leaving those kinds of jobs off of your resume entirely, if possible. I recommend you start by reading as many job descriptions as you can get your eyes in front of to get a feel for how employers address their needs and how they word the requirements for each job. To find descriptions to review, use any of the job boards such as CareerBuilder , Monster , HotJobs , etc.
To put you in the correct frame of mind for job searching, let me start by bursting your bubble a bit: employers don't care about your degree unless you are qualified to fill the position you are applying for. Put another way, if you don't have professional experience getting paid for doing a job similar to what the employer is looking for, then your resume will not be considered, regardless of your education. I know it's hard to accept, but it's the truth so the sooner you embrace the search for the challenge that it is, the quicker you will find a position that will satisfy your expectations.
Let's visit the topic of expectations for a moment so that you can know what to expect and prepare yourself accordingly. Odds are you can expect the following to be true when potential employers consider your resume:
You will not be considered for positions that manage people outside of the fast food or retail industries
You will not be considered for senior level positions within a team that has multiple levels of positions (i.e. junior, associate, senior, etc.)
You will be considered for junior level positions
It will be assumed that you will accept less money because you are a recent graduate
It will be assumed that you will work harder than the rest of the team because you are a recent graduate looking to prove yourself
It will be assumed that you will offer more value in the areas of computer and information skills to offset your lack of professional experience
Now that you know what employers see in a recent graduate and you've taken a look at the available jobs and resumes of people actually qualified to do those jobs, you're ready to start putting together your resume. Be sure to have your contact information prominently displayed so that recruiters and managers don't have to hunt it down (Go ahead and put it at the top where we all expect it to be; you won't lose creativity points for it). I recommend not doing an "Objective" section because there's no good way to phrase your desire to be compensated for working and contributing in a fun, creative environment without sounding like you're registering at some store for your graduation gifts. Instead, create a "Qualifications Summary" section where you'll list the skills you possess that will be attractive to an employer such as leading brainstorming sessions, creating processes/procedures, delivering a completed product or project, etc. You can create this section as a bulleted list or in paragraph form.
Since you're focusing on your value as opposed to your experience , you'll want to use key phrases gleaned from job descriptions and other resumes (not plagiarized) to present your attributes and knowledge in a like manner.
Search the job sites mentioned above as well as the employment office of your college and search the web for local/regional job boards in your specific geographical area. Get creative with your search words and leave no stone unturned. Make sure your social media sites are clean no profanity or nudity, and definitely keep your messages grammatically correct whenever possible. Stay focused on your search and before you know it you'll be off to your first day of work.
Good luck!
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)Great article. Well done.For us in the UK this article could not have came at a better time as people school leavers have just left. I think you have some solid advice.Thank you for the nice comments!
I agree that not everything you have done in the past should be put on a resume. I am retired from the airline industry and now work in a funeral home. I did not put much detail on my resume about my airline experience, because why would a funeral home care about that. I did say that I worked in customer service, that I was a problem solver and could work under pressure. But what I focused on was that I had attended Bible College, that I was a lay preacher and had led Bible studies. For some reason Funeral Homes are more interested in that type of experience. I was hired fairly quickly and now have a job I love.I somewhat disagree with your statement that the employer doesn't care about your degree unless you are applying to work in your field. If I was the employer I may not care what the degree was for, but I would be interested to know that the candidate was determined enough to get a degree. This shows me that they finish what they start, and if it came to deciding to hire a person with a degree or one without, the one with the degree would probably get the job.David -
Thank you for your thoughtful and well written comments, especially providing your real world example.
I don't believe that I specifically said that the "employer doesn't care about your degree unless you are applying to work in your field". Most people (something like 70 or 80%) do not work professionally in the area of their degrees. My point is to emphasize that if a candidate doesn't have experience in the area to which they are applying, then it doesn't much matter what kind of degree they have unless it is an entry level position. If it is in fact an entry level position, then the degree will have a greater value and make a a huge difference in who gets hired, as you stated.
Again, thank you for the great comments!
Lesa
Lesa, good advice for the recent college graduate and anyone looking for a position in their current or another field.
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