According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), close to 1.9 million students in the United States will graduate with a bachelor’s degree in 2016. Unfortunately, many of you who are graduates will apply for jobs using résumés with the types of mistakes that can severely hurt your chances to obtain the job of your choice. Why? Because most recruiters and hiring managers spend fewer than 15 seconds visually scanning a résumé, and are on the lookout for ways to screen out the ones who won’t make the first cut. Here are 5 things that can “kill” your résumé: The e-mail address creates the wrong impression. While “KegKing.com” may seem cool to your college buddies, it does not convey the best image, nor does it send the right message to potential employers. Solution: Evaluate your e-mail address through the perspective of a potential employer. Using a respected e-mail provider, such as Gmail, create an e-mail address that uses your full name: e.g., chris.taylor@gmail.com. You can’t tell what s/he wants to do. As a recent college graduate, you are at somewhat of a disadvantage: you may not have a great deal of relevant work experience, and your college major may not indicate a career direction. The challenge – and what’s most important – is for you to lead the reader’s thinking in a particular direction. For example, if your major was Finance and Accounting, it would be fairly easy to assume that you want a job in Finance or Accounting. If, however, your major was in Sociology or English, the career path or identity may not be as obvious....
Career transition is a difficult thing to go through. It tests your self-esteem, your courage, your faith, your self-discipline, and sometimes your endurance. The job has ended. There’s no work to get up for, no place you must drive to, no desk or workstation awaiting your arrival. What do you do? Well, now it’s up to you to create that reason to get out of bed. It’s up to you to create a new workspace and a new work routine. Fact is, you do have a job! It may be the toughest job you’ll ever have. Your job is to find a new job. The best thing you can do is to treat your search for new employment like a job. Set regular hours, determine where your new “office” will be, and get to work. Motivation is the most important thing. When you work for someone else, you have a company and a boss to report to. Like it or not, having a job to do every day provides forced motivation. Your job requires you to do things you like and some things you don’t like. All jobs are like that. You do them all because there are incentives if you do and disincentives if you don’t. The biggest incentive to do your job is the paycheck you receive on a regular basis. Disincentives include performance write-ups, punitive assignments, and admonitions from the boss, just to name a few. So, you are “forced” to find the motivation to get the job done. But wait . . . now those “motivators” are gone! There’s no paycheck and no one to...
One common mistake made by those in career transition, especially first-timers, is to underestimate the difficulty of a job search. A second common mistake is not to treat a job search as a full-time job. If you question how I would know that, let me share my credentials with you. Today, I spend a lot of time helping others to conduct successful job-search campaigns, but for much of my career, I was a player in Corporate America; my game was Training & Development in all its many, derivative forms, from leadership development to organizational development and everything in between. When you are the highest-ranking individual responsible for providing training and development opportunities within an organization, it means you are the most highly compensated “corporate trainer.” It also means that when there is a need to trim corporate expense and a reduction in force is under consideration, you carry a large-dollar target on your back. Translation – my corporate career endured five instances when my position was eliminated. Being a cost center, rather than a profit center made that somewhat inevitable in a volatile economy, as companies merged, struggled to survive, or reorganized. So what’s my point? The point is I’ve walked in your shoes. I’ve been a client to each of three major players in the career services industry. I’ve experienced it all – résumés, cover letters, networking, business cards, interviews, follow-ups. You name it and I did it. Now, I help others do it. Career transition and conducting a job search isn’t easy. It requires dedication, persistence, and attention to many details. If your search is not being...
As someone who has lived through multiple career transitions, I know and understand that it can be a frustrating process. As someone who has survived – and also thrived – following career transitions, I also know and understand that there is hope and that, amid the many questions, there are answers. I’ve put together my personal “recipe for success” during this time, one that is founded on my personal career journey. I call it the S-M-A-R-T path to career success, and I’m pleased to share it with you. S = Support. It’s not possible to navigate successfully through the waters of transition without a support team. Whether it is family, friends, a colleague, a former college roommate, or a group of like-minded individuals who meet weekly (such as our Monday morning LINKS), you will better be able to ride the waves of uncertainty, fear, concern, joy, and hope with a network of people who unconditionally support you (the operative word here being unconditional). Let others hold you up, as you will hold them. It is a noble effort on anybody’s part. M = Motivation. There are times, and moments, when you may feel that it’s difficult to keep moving forward. You didn’t get the interview you wanted, or the job went to an internal candidate. Or you didn’t have the energy to get up and out. I subscribe to the 10-minute whining rule: you can whine for 10 minutes, and then it’s time to move on. You can move on to anything, but it must be something. Someone knowledgeable once said that you must do the most productive thing at any...
Remember prom? Those four hours that flashed in front of you like a speeding bullet train? All 4 years of high school and the final culminating event is over before you blinked. Now that you are in college, I’m sure you are wondering, “how is it already spring break? ” Even though the days of college seem long, the years are short. Four years of parties, friends and (sometimes) classes will pass in an instant- suddenly you will have 2.5 kids, a dog, and a mortgage. Although the future may seem so far away, start preparing for what happens after you remove the cap and gown TODAY with these easy steps. Networking – The best tool/method to land a job always has been and continues to be networking. This is how the ancient Greeks found jobs, and this will be how your future great-grandchildren get work. Everyone you come in contact with is a potential employer or a link to an employer, so remember that and start connecting with people today. By-pass FaceBook and head right to LinkedIn. Build a strong profile that showcases you as a student leader and visionary of tomorrow. Add everyone you meet to your network (reminder – this is NOT FaceBook, so it’s OK if you casually know them or are only affiliated by the same class, fraternity or extracurricular activity). Treat LinkedIn professionally and be kind to your connections, showing them only the professional side of you with proper profile photos, posts, and updates. Melonie Dodaro was kind enough to post an article on LinkedIn Etiquette, which you can find here. Your parents...
