Three Career Tips for New Graduates
College graduations are upon us! In a few short weeks new graduates will be completing their college journeys to embark on their next adventure: launching their careers. It's an exciting time full of both opportunities and uncertainties as each graduate will carve a unique and personal career to meet their goals.
We wanted to share three tips to help new graduates build rewarding and meaningful careers.
1. Define your options proactively
College experiences can be dramatically different for each student. But one thing that they tend to have in common is structure. Colleges force you to make decisions on certain timelines such as:
When you leave college, you will have much less structure forcing you to make decisions. There is no set schedule to think about your next job. You may only be forced to make a decision if you are part of a layoff.
At Whomi, we encourage people to be proactive about defining their options. Whether you love your job, hate your job, or don't have a job, chances are high that you will have another one at some point. The earlier you define what those types of roles might be, the better you can build the skills and experience to be ready for them.
Action 1: Define 3 options for what you might do for your next job.
2. Target your resumes and experiences
Once you define your future options and recognize that you have the potential to do more than one role, you will want to build targeted resumes for each role.
We have worked with engineering graduates that recognized their skills could be used as a software developer, as a sales engineer, or as a services consultant. While their skills would allow them to do all three jobs, the capabilities that hiring managers wanted to see for each were different. The developer might focus on writing and documenting code, the sales engineer on explaining technologies to customers, and the services consultant on integration with different systems.
Take the time to build role-specific resumes for each of your options focusing on what each hiring manager wants in their ideal candidate. Remember, your resume is not your generic personal history. It is a summary of your qualifications for a specific role.
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If you realize you have gaps in your experiences, find ways to fill those gaps before you apply for a job. Volunteer to help with a project. Take a course and then apply your new skills to help a friend's business. Find a way to demonstrate that you have the capabilities and experiences that hiring managers want.
Action 2: Create a targeted resume for each of your next role options
3. Engage your network
Networking becomes more important the more senior you become in your career. The more people that know about the roles you are considering for your future the more likely they will be to think of you if they see those opportunities. When recruiters call someone about a job opportunity, it's always helpful to have other names to give them if you do not want the job.
One great way to build your network is to ask for advice. Most of us are happy to give advice if we can do so easily. As a new graduate, find alumni from your college that are in the roles you are considering. Reach out and ask them simply for the Top 3 things they think make people successful in those roles.
As you enter these conversations, you will be more top of mind for the people who will hear about opportunities before they are even posted. Don't forget to ask how you can help them in return!
We'll share a future post about the different between reaching out to your Inner Circle Network and your Extended Network and the types of questions you can ask each.
Action 3: Ask at least 3 alumni from your college for their advice on success factors for one of your target roles.
Conclusion
Embarking on your career can be one of the greatest adventures of your life! You've worked hard to get here, we want your next chapter to be even better!
You can follow all of these steps on your own, or try our free career acceleration platform at Whomi.com. Our 10-day Career Accelerator Challenge can help you get started.
Congratulations on your graduation! We can't wait to see what you do next!