Career Tips

3 Essential Strategies For Graduate Job Hunters

Job hunting as a graduate is often built up to be an intimidating process. If you’ve recently graduated or are about to, no doubt you’re being inundated with career tips and advice from well-meaning friends, family and university staff. The fact that many of these career tips are contradictory probably doesn’t help your perception of job hunting as something that’s insanely difficult.

It’s true that you’re in for a steep learning curve when it comes to mastering the art of writing CVs and cover letters, going to interviews, sitting aptitude and personality tests, and sending and following up emails. But hey, that’s just life. Learning doesn’t stop after university – it’s lifelong!

Here’s a fact you’ll be very happy to learn: job hunting really doesn’t need to be complicated with endless career tips and skills tests. If you know what job you want, getting it comes down to proving to potential employers that you’re a better choice than all the other graduates. After all, at the end of your uni career, you’ll all have the same piece of paper in your hands. So the biggest question you need to ask yourself is: “Why should an employer hire me instead of the person next to me?”

Now, let’s get down to business! Here are the five best things you can do right now to prepare to stand out from the flock and land the graduate job of your dreams.

Create the right mindset

We all talk to ourselves. A major key to success exists in what we say to ourselves, which helps to shape our attitude and mindset.

- Darren L. Johnson

Creating the right mindset is undisputably the first and most important of career tips from which all your future success will build. To get the job you want, you need to believe you deserve it because you’ll add amazing value. Even if you don’t have a lot of experience, what you do have is you, and all your positive attributes that will put you head and shoulders above the crowd – if only you can express them to your potential employer.

How can you do this? By expressing them to yourself first! Make a list of all your skills and talents, and repeat them to yourself until you’re buzzing with energy and confidence. It’s truly sad how many people never embrace this self-building approach – all they focus on is their limitations and what they can’t do, so they go their whole lives denying themselves the opportunity to reach their full potential.

So don’t be a tragic statistic – go completely nuts with your attributes list! Write down as many of your positive qualities that you can think of, no matter how “silly” you think they sound. Also write down why each attribute makes you a fantastic candidate. You won’t be able to let your job interviewer know about every one of your great qualities, but your enthusiasm and self-belief will shine through like New Years fireworks.

Any potential employer will sit up and take notice if you value yourself without being arrogant, and aren’t afraid to show how intensely you want to succeed. How many other timid graduates – afraid of their own inexperience, worried about saying the wrong thing, and waiting passively for someone to direct them – do you think your future boss has interviewed that week? Your excellent mindset will guarantee that you are the candidate who gets remembered!

Get in the game early

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better start running.

- African proverb

Will you be the warrior who leads the charge, or the victim who moans later on that “all the good jobs are taken”? Even if you’re still studying, there’s no reason you can’t start preparing for your future career. You know how to use Google, don’t you? Research companies you might want to work for – find out their histories, values and mission statements. Connect with current employees through LinkedIn, and ask for informational interviews to find out what it’s like to work there. Your initiative and resourcefulness will create a positive impression of you that will be invaluable when you graduate and are ready to apply.

Don’t stop with the Internet though – there is a wealth of resources available to you right on campus! See the uni counsellor for career tips, head up all the careers fairs your university has to offer, and try and attend as many career tips talks and lectures as possible. Several of our team members at E-Web Marketing were recruited straight out of university talks and exhibits we put on for O-Week at UNSW and Macquarie Uni.

Be resourceful and determined.

Do, or do not. There is no try.

- Yoda

The last of our career tips could well make the biggest difference between you getting that job or having to look elsewhere. It also ties in closely with the first two career tips: create the right mindset and get in the game early. After all, cultivating an empowering outlook and investing time in your career before it begins are not actions that you can take once and then forget about.

Let’s start with the basic principle of being prepared. You will never lose a job opportunity by knowing too much about the company or position on offer. Google and LinkedIn search the hell out of the company, its products and its people. Take notes and review them leading up to your interview. Facebook stalk ex-employees to get their perspective and advice. Try to get your hands on any brochures or promotional materials the company distributes – you can even get a friend to ask for these to be sent out, posing as a potential customer. Whatever it takes!

Really, resourcefulness is just another way to describe creative problem solving, a skill that employers find pretty much irresistable. Ask yourself: “What are the potential problems I might have making a good impression on my interviewer?” Maybe one is that your CV doesn’t show that you have a lot of real world experience. That’s only a problem if you let it be! Google something like “how to create an awesome CV”. You should also check out our blog post: 3 Creative CV Strategies to Get You Noticed – and Hired!

As far as determination goes, you can show this by following up after every interview – don’t wait passively for someone to call you back! Start by sending an email or e-card, or even dropping off a handwritten note, to thank your interviewer for their time and say how much you valued speaking with them. This shows good manners and professionalism, and should be done as soon as you get home after your interview, or in the case of the personally delivered note, early the next day.

But don’t stop there. If you have not heard back after two to three days, give your interviewer a call to ask about how their decision making process is coming along. If you can’t get through, leave a phone message, and follow up with an email to politely explain that you’d tried to reach them on the phone, and are enquiring about the status of your application. Don’t be afraid to make a joke or include a lolcat or other funny picture in your email – it will be a bright spot in your interviewer’s busy day. Bringing a smile to someone’s face tends to make them like you, and all things being equal, people would rather work with people they like.

One final piece of advice … TAKE ACTION!

There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long range risks of comfortable inaction.

- John F. Kennedy

There are many other things you can do to differentiate yourself from other graduates, depending on your chosen career and situation. We hope that reading these career tips has left you inspired to take the action you need to create the destiny you deserve!