Career Do’s And Dont’s For Recent Grads

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The best advice I received when I started looking for my first job was to always have a growth mindset and to not see rejection as a failure, rather as a lesson and a redirection. Here are a few other things to keep in mind as you step away from academia and begin your professional journey.

Do this:

• Reach out to more tenured employees in the industries that interest you for advice.

• Take care of your LinkedIn profile, and make sure that it reflects the content on your resume.

• Utilize your schools’ resources, career center, career services office / building.

• Take advantage of career fairs and campus recruiting opportunities if you want to get into an investment bank, accounting or consulting firm, or any other large corporation.

• Take advantage of your school’s alumni network.

• Have different versions of your resume to apply to roles you are interested in.

  • If you are looking for an account management role, your resume should look different than if you are applying to a PR and Influencer role!

• Be intentional about the companies you are applying to – make a list of target companies you want to work for.

• Find a mentor.

• Apply to roles that align with your interests.

• Embrace the informational interview.

DON’T DO THIS:

• Use LinkedIn easy apply, your resume will likely get lost in the shuffle.

• Post on LinkedIn that you are looking for jobs without any context on the type of jobs you’re seeking.

• Connect with random people on LinkedIn – make sure your first connections are related to your career.

• Cancel an interview 15 / 30 minutes before its scheduled.

• Don’t lie about your experience, we know you just graduated.

• Ghost your recruiters.

• Apply to manager level roles.

• Feel like you can’t include your extracurriculars and accomplishments on your resume. Include relevant college courses, projects, and seminars – if you’re a media communications major and you did a capstone project your senior year your proud of, speak to that experience!

• Apply to roles randomly - be intentional.

• List out your responsibilities on your resume - try listing out your accomplishments instead.

• Give up if you don’t land your dream job right out of college. Keep applying!

• Apply to roles until you are 2-3 months away from graduation. Recruiters want candidates who are ready to start working as soon as possible!