5 Things You Should Do to Land Your First Job After College

If you’re reading this, I’m assuming that you dedicated the past four years of your life studying for your degree and you want to know how to land your first job. Is that a safe assumption? Listen, I understand; I was once a recent college grad too and had the same questions. Small world right?!

Yes, it can be intimidating to try to land your first job after college; if you watch the news, it seems that every other story is about job loss and college graduates struggling to find meaningful work. Fortunately for you, I’m going to teach you five practical tips you can use to land your first job.

Read on to learn more.

1. Prepare Your Resume

The starting point of landing your first job after college is to prepare your professional resume.  For those that don’t know and for whom the college has clearly failed, a resume is a document that summarizes your skills and accomplishments. Essentially, you want the hiring manager to pick up your resume and see that you are clearly a good fit for the potential role you are applying for.

A great resume will be tailored to the position that you are applying for and shows off all of your applicable skills. For example, if you are applying for a sales job, you want to show all of your past accomplishments with sales. If you are applying for a nursing job, you want to show off your clinical experience and nursing-related experience. A good idea is to craft several different resumes that focus on different skills and use each one accordingly.

2. Have A Plan

Now that we have your resume, let’s make a plan. Throughout the course of human history, most successful people typically utilized making a plan before they began starting a new task. Why? Plans are great at providing you with a sense of direction and force you to focus on your goals.  When it comes to landing a job after college, I want you to make a plan.

Plan to apply for a minimum of 10 jobs per day and stick with it. Over the course of a week, that equates to 70 jobs applied for, which dramatically increases your likely hood of landing a job. Save your time and energy and only apply for jobs that interest you and you qualify for.

3. Apply for Jobs

If you want to land a job, you need to apply for it! Common sense right? Use the plan that you made and apply for jobs.  As suggested, only apply for jobs that interest you and jobs that you qualify for. This will help you to make the most out of your valuable time. When looking for jobs, be sure to leverage your network, (as in asking everyone you know about job opportunities) and look on a Varity of platforms. LinkedIn, Craigslist, Indeed, etc.

4. Follow Up

Following up with the jobs that you applied to is where you begin to separate yourself from the rest of the crowd.  After you submit your application, wait a day or two and call the HR manager of the company you applied to. When you call in, you should introduce yourself, tell HR that you applied for an opportunity and that you are eager to learn more about the company and the potential role. HR professionals eat this up! Why, because it shows that you took the extra initiative, and you’re the type of person to go the extra mile.  Chances are, you’ll have the opportunity to interview.

5. Interview

This is it! If you made it this far, pat yourself on the back; you’re nearly there. When interviewing I want you to do a few things. You need to research the company and be able to intelligently speak to what they do, what role you’re applying for, and how you can benefit the company. Keep in mind that when you are interviewing, please know that the company wants you to be the person that they hire.

Companies typically don’t enjoy bringing in new people because the hiring and orientation process takes weeks, if not longer. Dare yourself to be confident in the interview and show the company that you fit the needs they are looking to fill. After the interview, be sure to send the interviewer a thank-you email.

That’s it, if you follow my steps, you’ll be well on your way to applying for the UAB Online degree you earned.