Career Advice First Time Job Seekers Should Know
By Valarie Chua
Indeed, it is exciting to know the real world after graduating from college. One chapter of your life closes while another one begins. Finding a job can be challenging. It is not easy to transition from being a student to an employee. If you don’t know what to look out for, you can commit lots of mistakes. Generation Z today seeks a collaborative, team-friendly environment and craves positive relationships at work.
Be Flexible
Flexibility is similar to trust—it must be earned. In applying for a job, make sure that you show the employer that you can contribute significantly to their expectations. The best employee that companies hire is one who can adjust to different people, schedules, and work ethics. He must know how to solve a problem quickly, especially during times of emergencies.
Be Proactive
Be proactive and take control of your career. Create a plan on how you can meet the possible employers’ expectations before they ask you about this. For instance, taking the time to learn skills that can be useful in your future workplace.
Create Connections
Before graduating, be sure to make as many connections as you can in your chosen field. This will improve your chances of getting hired. Those who know someone in the area can have a bigger chance of landing the roles that they want than those who apply via job advertisements.
New graduates who don’t have any connections can still compete with other candidates, although they must work double-time to land their ideal job.
Determine the Things That You Want
It may seem odd to you, but you must determine what you want or value in your life. This will help you in your career and create a link between you and the interviewer.
Next, be sure that you understand what you want to do and be clear about it. If you are a newbie who is searching the job market, ask yourself a question, “What kind of job do I want to do?”
Get Yourself Ready to Work
One of the issues employers have with their fresh grad employees is that they tend to spend time to teach them how to be good employees. Dress up, report on time, prepare for meetings, and complete the work within the deadline—these are all basic steps, but being adept with these could help you top your job.
Indicate All the Experience You Have in Your Resume
In your resume, do not put only the best work experiences relevant to the position that you are applying to. Even placing something as mundane as babysitting and restaurant jobs in the past tells something about your tenacity and outgoing attitude.
The more experience you include, the more chances that the interviewer will notice you and add you among the list of possible candidates.
Keep and Maintain a Journal
If you want to take note of your experiences or something new that you have during the day, make sure that you keep a journal. You can write it online on your phone, tablet, laptop, or write it on paper to stop wasting time.
Each entry that you have must start with yesterday. From there, you can review what happened in your life and formulate your plan for tomorrow. Remember, there is no fast rule to learn everything.
Look for a Mentor
One of the best ways to accelerate your career is to look for a mentor. With this, you will be guided by someone knowledgeable about your career until you grow and possibly have your own business.
As you get interviewed by the companies, see to it that you determine the type of leadership styles that they have. Sometimes, it is easy to focus on the brand of the company or the money that you may earn. But don’t forget to remember that your job is continually evolving and being tutored by an expert in the field can help you significantly.
When you have determined a person that you can trust, this will help you navigate the twist and turns on the job.
Show the Employer That You Want the Job
Spend some time to learn the job you’re applying for and ask questions. Let your employers know that you are hungry for new knowledge to kickstart your career. Offer your services so you can assist with the projects. Come in early at work, take the challenging assignments, or propose a new project to the team.
Even if employers shut you down, show that you are still excited to be part of the company. Be eager to go the extra mile.
Use the Different Social Media Platforms
Employers look for potential candidates at different social media platforms too. Thus, make sure that you build a strong profile and indicate your achievements on sites like LinkedIn. List all the successes that you have in the past.
About the Author:
Valerie Chua is a Content Specialist at Manila Recruitment, a company providing headhunting solutions for the recruitment of executive, expert, technical and specialist positions in the Philippines. Follow Manila Recruitment on Twitter @MNLrecruitment or connect with them on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Social Hire
We won't just do social media strategies. Social Hire will work collaboratively with your team to ensure your business gets genuine value from us and that your team gets the most out of the service. Our experienced social media managers are motivated to make a enhancements to your social media marketing and reaching targets in a way that realistically makes a difference to your business goals.
What the Social Hire gang loves is making a difference for our clients, and we don't want to waste your, or our resources on campaigns that aren't right for your organisation, if it doesn't get your organisation the difference you need - we prefer a better approach. When your business utilises social media management, Social Hire get your brand the exposure it needs and offer your business the lift it needs to improve.
The social media marketers in our company are the best in the business at helping our partners enhance their online marketing. We outline and implement cutting-edge social media marketing plans that help our customers realise their organisational objectives and further their social media presence. Our experienced team of digital experts do your social media strategy creation and management in an uncomplicated monthly plan that is cost-effective and is genuinely useful, whatever results you demand from your marketing team.
Our group of specialists are an organisation that helps our clients boost their online marketing by offering social media management services on a monthly basis.
You might like these blog posts 74% of Your Employees Are Thinking About Quitting. Are You Ready to Stop Them?, Starting Up Part 2: Conquering the Lean Startup Phase, Apprenticeship Programs: A Solution to the Skills Problem?, and 5 Ways to Turn Performance Review Feedback into Goals for Improvement.
