Good Morning Green Panda Friends. We are well into the winter semester and soon some of us will be applying for graduation. If your college career is almost over you have to decide what you want to do next: will you travel, will you go back to school or will you enter the workforce full time?
Use these 4 tips to get a full time job:
Make sure to have some experience. Good grades are not all that matters in college. We all go to college to get our dream job but in the real world a full course load is not enough; potential employers are looking for new employees who have some relevant work experience or at least some volunteer experience. Being well educated is very important but there is also a social aspect of every work environment. Employer want to know that you can work in a team environment and that you can at minimal get along with other employees in the office or while working on projects together.
Create a killer resume. Your resume will get you the interview but your personality will get you the job. Use your resume as your first impression; your resume should highlight your skills, showcase all of your work experience, list any associations or clubs that you belong to as well as list your most recent professional and academic accomplishments. A killer resume is your first step toward finding a great job after graduation.
Start scouting early. Don’t wait until June to start looking for a full time job or summer internship, the best way to find a job is to start searching early. I worked full time while studying in college and my experience helped me get my full time dream job after graduation. Focusing on college should be a priority but it shouldn’t be your only goal while studying. You should start researching what skills you need for your dream job and make sure that you have them after graduation. If you want to be an accountant find out what types of part time jobs are available for students in the field, what accreditations you need to get an entry level job and start making valuable connections with accounting firms.
Don’t be too selective. I have had a lot of jobs in my life and they were not all glamorous. I didn’t start at the top and neither should you. I am not saying that all college grads will enter the workforce as a personal assistant getting coffee orders every morning, but you have to know that it may be a possibility. I started working at McDonalds when I was 15, I worked in retail sales for almost a decade. After my college graduation and four years of experience working in a call center for a financial institution I finally found my dream job as a financial planner with a major bank. No one said that making it to the top would be easy, but it is definitely rewarding once you get there.
Photo by charles
Tahnya is 30 years old and lives in Montreal Quebec. She graduated in 2005 from Concordia University, and she currently works for a major International Financial Institution. She recently launched http://www.mediamadam.ca/. You can follow her on Twitter @TahnyaP.