How To Land Your First Job
Trying to find my first job out of college was
probably one of the most depressing times of my life. After going
through five years of college, I felt completely worthless and as if
college did absolutely nothing for me.
If you are reading this, my guess is that you are likely in a similar
situation. Or have at least been in this situation before.
Having
spent 3 months battling through everything you are dealing with right
now, I'm here to give you some lessons that I learned which will
greatly improve your chances of landing that first job. These tips are
what I feel ultimately
led to me being hired and starting my first career.
Know What Career You Are Looking For
When I first started job searching, what I found myself doing was
looking for a job without any clue as to
exactly what I was
looking for.
For
some of you, this may not apply. If you have a teaching degree, you
probably already know that you want to be a teacher. If you are an
accounting major, you probably already know you want to be an
accountant.
But for many of you (including me), I wasn't exactly sure what my job
title was going to be.
During
my first job search, it seemed like I changed careers a hundred times! One
day, I applied for every possible job under one title. The next day, I
was going after jobs with a completely different job title.
My advice is to know
exactly
what you want to be before you ever start looking
for a job. How do you do this?
First, you can pick up a job book that is related to your major. For
example, I bought the book
Great
Jobs For Computer Science Majors.
A book like this will give you a nice list of some of the popular
careers people have with your degree. It will also
tell you what qualifications you need and how to get them.
Another area you can look is in the
Occupational
Outlook Handbook. It's a completely free online resource.
When I was hunting for my first job, I spent
several hours
looking at this site. It basically tells you everything you need to
know about every career!
It
tells you what you would be doing, what qualifications you need,
average salaries (my personal favorite), and what the job outlook is
like in the years ahead. It's simply a great, great website that I
highly recommend.
Treat Job Searching Like A Job
I
won't elaborate too much on this one because you have probably heard it
before. But seriously, treat job searching as if it is your current
job. It's a very low paying job. But it
is a job.
Understand
that job searching is nothing more than a numbers game. The more people
you get a hold of, the more interviews you are going to get. The more
interviews you get, the better the chance that somebody is finally
going to say, "You're hired!"
As you're job searching, know that the more your current activity helps
you get an interview, the more valuable it is.
Playing
around with your resume for days doesn't get you close to an interview.
Sitting around depressed doesn't get you close to an interview either.
Do whatever it takes to speak with and get in front of the person in
charge of hiring!
Look At Places Other Than Job Boards
First,
if you don't know what job boards are, they are places like Monster,
Career Builder, Hot Jobs, etc. I know that stings because that's
probably where you have spent all of your time looking, but it's hard
to get a job posting your resume to places like this.
Why?
Because
everybody else on the planet is doing the same thing! If you want to
land your first job, you need to break from the pack a little bit. When
you send your resume for a job at somewhere like Monster, you are
usually competing with
hundreds
of other people. And when you are
constantly competing with such a large number of people, it
simply means it is going to take that much longer to beat out that many
people.
So where do you look when you try to land a job? What I did was use
Google
Maps
for companies in my area. If you are a programmer who lives in Ohio,
type in something like "software columbus ohio". If you are an
accountant from Nebraska, type in "accountant omaha nebraska".
Go to these websites and visit their contact us page. Either call them
(best
method) or email them your resume. It doesn't matter if they have any
job postings available. For my first job,
the company was "thinking" about
hiring someone. And when I had already sent them my
resume, I was first in line for an interview.
A
majority of the 5-6 interviews that I had came from using this method.
By finding companies that didn't have job postings available. But were
simply companies that I would have liked to work for that were in my
area.
The reason this works more than job boards is because
instead of competing with hundreds of people, you are only competing
with a few.
Those better odds will lead to many more interviews. And ultimately,
your first job.
Use The Telephone
i
know this is scary, and you are probably going to want to ignore this
advice, but get your phone and start calling people. Understand this...
Everyone else that is job searching is scared too!
Nobody
wants to pick up the phone and call total strangers begging for a job.
But those that have the courage to do so are the ones that are getting
jobs.
Believe me, I know how incredibly difficult this is. I
know how stressful job searching can be. Those three months were the
worst three months of my life. Here is what I did to give myself
the courage to pick up the phone.
1. Remind yourself again that it's a numbers game.
The
more phone calls you make, the more interviews you are going to get.
Period. If you call 100 companies and give the absolute
worst persuasive speech imaginable,
I promise you will
still
get at least one interview. If you submit your
resume to 100 job boards, chances are high that nobody will ever read
it!
2. Call with the attitude that you don't care if you upset someone.
Will
someone be annoyed that you are calling and asking for an interview?
Sure! But guess what, if they don't like you, hang up the phone and
call up the next person.
What I found in all of the calls I
made is that people are much nicer than you would expect. Everyone has
been in your shoes at least once in your life. So the fact that you are
facing your fears and making calls is saying something to them. And a
majority of the people will try to do whatever they can do to help.
3. Choose the positive attitude
There
are two ways to look at making phone calls. You can have the attitude
that it's the worst thing imaginable and that you hate it.
Or, you can have the
attitude that it's fun and exciting.
Find
some way to choose the second attitude. Enjoy speaking with several
different people a day and tell your friends and family about all of
the interesting people that you spoke with. Brag about talking to the
CEO's. Laugh about the human resources person that pronounced your name
funny.
Find some way to make some fun out of it.
Possibly My Best Job Search Advice
The biggest secret I think I learned when job searching is the
following...
Go hard after the jobs you really like instead of simply posting your
resume one time to every company you can find.
When
I first started job searching, I had the attitude that I was going to
post my resume to a million people and hopefully someone would call.
What happened with this strategy is one of two things:
1. The places I hoped would call, never did.
2. The places I didn't really care about did call.
Here's my advice, spend more time on the places that you think you
would really like.
The first job I eventually ended up getting, I emailed them 4-5 different
times before anyone ever responded back! I suggest you use this
strategy.
Email a company you like and send them your resume. If
you don't hear from them in a few days, email it to them again. If you
don't hear from them again, email it to them again! Keep sending it to
them until they finally give you a call and tell you to either get lost
or to come in for an interview.
Persistence goes a long way when
it comes to job searching. People that get the jobs are the ones with
the "never quit" attitude.
If you find a job that you really
want,
go after it hard. Spending time going after the few jobs that matter is
ten times better than going after the hundreds of jobs that are just
OK.
This strategy, I promise, will work if you follow through
with it. It worked for me, and I know it will continue to work
if I ever have to go down that path again.
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