From college to career: when start looking for a first job?

You finally graduated college and you feel like you are ready to start earning the money you deserve for all your hard work, but things don’t usually work out like that when you are looking for your first job after you earn your degree.

In this article, we are going to be talking about the things that you should do before you look for your first official job. Once you have done those things, you will be ready to go out there and start looking.

Get an internship ASAP

This is probably the most important thing you should do as soon as you get out of college. You should have done some internships while you attended college, but if you didn’t you might want to look for an internship in a popular location that allows you to gain that competitive edge that will allow you to land a job when you apply for a good position.

Look for an internship at Microsoft, Nike, Apple, Samsung or any large chain regardless of their niche. If you can’t get anything at that level, then make sure that you can get the next best thing. The point is that you should avoid an internship at a small company that no one has ever heard about.

Look for a mentor

This is a very important thing to consider and it could help open some doors for you when you start looking for a job. The best way to do this is to start looking for people who are doing what you want to be doing.

Send them an email and try to setup a meeting to let them know that you are interested in learning everything you can about them and their profession. It also helps to ask your parents or close family if they know someone that they could recommend for you to visit. This could be a great way to approach someone without being too random about it.

Become an active member of LinkedIn

This has become an essential network for anyone who wants to become part of the modern corporate world. LinkedIn opens a large number of doors for people and this is the kind of thing that you need to consider if you want to get the best results. Meet as many people in your area as you can and try to be active in the community.

Do some heavy networking

You should go out to conventions and job fairs in order to get to know as many individuals as you can. This is going to allow you to get the best possible results when you finally start applying for jobs. Meet new people and try to make a memorable impression.

Collect business cards and memorize names. This is going to be a skill that you are going to be able to use in your professional career up until the day you retire.

Clean up your social media pages

If you have too many party photos on your Facebook page, we would suggest that you delete as many as possible. Most companies will require that you become Facebook friends with someone in Human resources because they will want to check the kind of activities you do on Facebook.

Is this a privacy breach? Perhaps some might feel that this is the case, but if you refuse to share your Facebook page, some companies might feel like you have something to hide and that could hurt your changes.

This is the reason why the best thing to do is to be careful and to get rid of the party animal memories that you might have in there.

Conclusion

Once you have done all of those things, you will be ready to start looking for a job, but make sure that you have networked with enough people so that you can make some phone calls and apply for the best available positions.

Never forget that the competition is fierce and there could be hundreds of people applying for the same jobs now. It’s up to you to find a way to shine through and impress the human resources department.

The day you get your first job, you will get a sense of accomplishment that will make all the hard work and the studies worth the time it took for you to get your degree.