You’re A College Graduate… Now What?!

Let’s talk about College Grad. First and foremost – if you’re a college graduate, I want to congratulate you. This is a very special time and a great day. It’s a proud day for you, your parents and your family. I’m wishing you the best of luck as now you’re embarking on your professional growth and career.

You’re not alone!

Here’s the deal – you’re not alone! What I mean by that is that you can count how many people graduated your school this year and multiply that number of all universities in the United States. You can already get an idea that there’s a whole bunch of you entering the job market as we speak. It’s really tough.

Employers, hiring managers, recruiters – we know that month of May is when you graduate and that’s when you get hungry. We know that’s when we’ll get a lot of great, potential talent. What does that mean for you? It means that your competition is fierce and at its peak. And there are so many things to be careful about to stand out between the person on your left and on your right.

Look at those people around you – those are your competition. If you’re graduating from the business school, everyone there is going after the same jobs as you are.

Learn how to stand out

The question is –

• how do you stand out?
• How do you beat them?
• How do you get the employer’s attention?
• Why should an employer interview you over the guy or girl next to you? Because you’re prettier? Because you have a nicer name? No!

There are many things you can do right now that you can apply to your job search and how you present yourself to the position you’re pursuing.

The real estate space on your Resume

The first thing that I can recommend is to use the real estate space on your resume wisely. What does that mean? I don’t want you to take up half of the resume to tell how great you are, how you are a multi-tasker, how you work well under pressure, how you’re dependable or loyal, how you have good work ethics etc. I get that all the time. That’s what I call wasted resume real estate space.

Here’s the deal – I don’t believe you. You tell me you’re a multi-tasker – I don’t really know about that until you work for me. It’s the same with other things. All these characteristics that are called soft skills – they don’t mean anything. So here’s a tip for you – don’t put it on your resume. It’s wasted real estate space!

Wherever you’re submitting your resume, they’re getting them a lot. Guess what my job is to do? It is to eliminate you! Yes, it’s basically about figuring out why your resume shouldn’t be passed on to the hiring manager.

I’m looking for reasons why you’re not qualified for the position. The reason why I’m doing that is because there are so many of you applying for the same job. It’s much easier to focus on the negative things because no one actually knows about your soft skills until they work with you. The only thing that I know is what you write on your resume as a fact. Writing your soft skills on your resume isn’t a bad thing but I don’t recommend doing that.

Give me some juice!

What I want you to do instead – give me some juice! Concrete juice! The goods!

Give me stuff that’s going to make me want to talk to you. What are the things that will make me want to talk to you as a college graduate? Let’s say you’re applying for a position as an accountant and you worked at a club at a university and you were the treasurer. Don’t just say “Treasurer for the ABC club”! I want you to say “Treasurer for the ABC club; handled financial statements and journal entries, issued checks, monitored financial activity, raised funding, handled payroll,” or whatever it is that you did. Do you see how all of sudden it changes when you take those skills as they relate to actual job that you’re applying to?

You may not have real experience but it doesn’t matter because we know that when you’re in college it’s much harder to get a real job because you’re a full-time student. So we’re looking for part-time work, internships, club associations and specialized classes that have that work involved. And this is the time for you to tell me that! Don’t just assume that because you wrote “Treasured ABC club” that I’m going to know what you can or can’t do. Especially when there are so many of you applying for the same job. It is your job and your responsibility to make me want to call you.

This is only the beginning!

I know you’re a college grad looking for a job and you’re full of energy but you’re really at the bottom part of your career. Same thing was with college and high school – you started at the bottom and you made it to the senior year. That’s exactly what’s going to happen now with work. You’re coming in at the bottom of the pyramid. And there’s so many of you. And you’re all awesome! I know that! But you have to position yourself. It becomes almost like a marketing strategy.

You’re the product. How do you market yourself? How do you position yourself i the market? How do you get in front of your competition? That’s just some of the tips I’m sharing so that you can beat that competition by making yourself stand out. There are so many more and what I might do is dedicate the month of May to college grad because this is a big month for you. There are also a lot of parents out there that are anxious and worried. I often get calls from parents.

I’m a parent myself – I have a son aged 18 entering the college and we’ve talked a lot about how he should prepare himself for coming out of college. The competition is fierce and just because someone else went to a better school doesn’t mean you can’t compete for the same jobs as them. You can! If you have amazing internships and many side activities that relate to the job, you can get a lot of traction.

Don’t be intimidated about what the future may hold but you definitely have to follow specific strategies and techniques to make sure that your resume gets pulled out from hundreds of hundreds other resumes that are being submitted to the same role.

Remember –

• don’t waste time and space on soft skills on your resume
• put in relevant duties and responsibilities when it comes to clubs or any part time work you’ve done as it applies to the job you’re applying for
• if you’re applying for an accounting position – tell me about your accounting classes, how you did in them, tell me about your accounting roles in that club you were in and so on.

That’s how you use your real estate space on resume. The more you give – the better!

Good luck with your job search!

PS: I just discovered an incredible Artificial Intelligence Resume builder! This takes all the guess work out of writing a Resume and lets the AI do the hard work for you and make you look like the most seasoned, professional and talented job seeker out there - this type of resume will get you an Interview and we already know that without the Interview you can't get the job! Check out the AI Resume Builder Here!

Follow on LinkedIn || Facebook || Twitter || Instagram || Youtube

#revigold #jobhunting #interview #jobsearch #hiring #hire #job #interview #career