5 Tips for Graduating Seniors Entering the Job Market

The entire world is going through a really crazy experience.

For some, that experience might be magnified tenfold due to other life moments, such as graduating college and entering the job market for the first time.

I've put together a few tips that will help you or someone whom you may know that is navigating these uncertain waters.

5 Tips for Graduating Seniors

1. Don't stop learning. Just because you're done with school, doesn't mean that you should stop learning. Now more than ever, it's important to continue investing in your development. Audiobooks, podcasts, ted talks, interviews, online courses, etc. Anything that will help you sharpen your skills or learn something new that you can apply in your personal or professional life.
2. Develop a plan for job hunting. This can be something as simple as "every day I will apply to 3 new jobs, reach out to 2 people to learn about their roles and listen to one podcast episode about ___(insert the field that you're interested in)__.
3. Network. I mentioned this in the previous tip, but it is crucial to reach out to people in your network and outside of your network. Find people on LinkedIn that have jobs that you're interested in and shoot them a message. Some people may not respond, but if you send 100 messages, someone will have a virtual chat with you. Don't underestimate the connections that you've made in school either. Check-in with your friends and find out what is working for them, keep those networks warm.
4. Put yourself out there. This one might seem tough for people that are more introverted, but you can start small. The more that you share with people what it is that you're interested in, the more top of mind you will be when one of those types of opportunities arise. If you want to start small, maybe share one post per week about your job search journey and what types of jobs you're hoping to learn more about. If you wanna go big, treat your job search like a full-blown campaign, like my friend Koka did here.
5. Think outside of the box. If 99% of the people are applying to jobs and stopping there, think what else you can do to stand out.

Here's how I would apply these steps if I were entering the job search as a recent grad and wanted to get a role as marketing coordinator.

• 90 mins of learning per day. Most likely via LinkedIn learning, Podcasts, or Audible.
• 10 job applications and 5 reach outs to people in the roles that I'm interested per day.
• Host 2 Zoom networking event per month for marketers. I'd reach out to people and ask them to be guest speakers, host a few sessions targeted to different marketing focuses like social media, copywriting, email, etc. Aside from this, I'd also be attending 4-5 online meetups to connect with other people in the marketing field and probably join about 5-10 online groups (LinkedIn and FB are good for this).
• I'd commit to sharing at least one update per day on one of my social channels and keep people up to date with my journey. I'd also create a weekly blog and maybe even a video series to keep people in the loop on the progress and key learnings for others to keep in mind as they search for a job.
• If I found a job at my dream company and I thought that I had a good chance at getting an interview if I could just get noticed, here's what I would do to stand out: Create a website showing some of the marketing projects that I've done and paint the picture as to why I love marketing. I'd also find a way to add value to the company -- maybe develop a social media plan for promoting one of the company's products that I love most. Finally, I'd record and edit a short 2 min video that describes why I'm a top applicant for the role and how I could add value to the company with my experiences (both professional and personal, like being a Latino, DJ, athlete, etc.). Then I'd try to get people from the company to see this video, either by sharing on LinkedIn and tagging a few people or tracking down the recruiter for the role and sending it directly to them.

Good luck out there. Just remember to try and control what you can control. How and what you invest your time in.

You got this.