How to Get Hired When Youre Just Starting Your Career 1. If your résumé is sparse, think creatively about what experience you can include. While work experience is best, you can also add volunteer work, extracurricular leadership positions, community involvement, blogging and other activities that demonstrate your work ethic and skills. 2. Add to your experience even though you dont have a job. Volunteering doesnt just help out organizations in need. It also expands your network, adds something to your résumé and puts you in contact with loads of new people who will now want to help you. 3. Learn how to job search and dont just wing it. Dont be one of the hordes of inexperienced job searchers who send out terrible application packages and make inadvertent missteps, like not preparing for common interview questions or forgetting to prep their references. There are plenty of resources for job seekers online, covering everything from writing a strong résumé to how to ace an interview. Read as much as you can find. 4. Write an amazing cover letter. Dont fall into the trap of using your cover letter merely to summarize your résumé; thats a waste of a whole page of your application. Instead, youll stand out if you write about why you want this particular job (not just a job) and why youll excel at it. And dont be stiff or dry; show some personality so that employers can get a feel for who you are. 5. Connect with alumni. Think you dont know anyone in your field? There are almost certainly people in the field youd like to go into among your schools alumni. Get in touch with your alma mater and ask to be put into contact with alumni in your field. 6. Get over any fears of networking. If you feel pushy or awkward reaching out about your job search to past co-workers, your parents friends and other people you know, its time to get over it. The people you reach out to wont think youre doing anything odd; networking is normal and most people want to help if they can. So dont let the fact that its new or nerve-wracking stop you from doing it. @Internitup on Twitter
Posted on: Tue, 06 May 2014 06:00:01 +0000
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