By: Ryan Prior
In 2011, as a junior at the University of Georgia, I took a semester-long academic course called “Professionalism and Career Development.” We learned about resumes, interviews, and everything else you need to know to find a job.
As a recent grad on the prowl for the past couple months, I’ve realized that much of the information we learned is in need of a major overhaul. A great list of internships and an eloquent cover letter aren’t what they used to be.
Since entering college in 2008, I’ve lived through three major geo-political trends that have caused the hard facts of landing a job a few years ago to be turned inside out. They are:
- The social media revolution: one career coach commented that technology had caused the greatest shift in the job market since the Industrial Revolution.
- The global economic recession: Employee recruitment changes based on the business cycle. In times of low unemployment, employers are more aggressive about seeking out candidates. In times of high unemployment like now, candidates must be more aggressive about seeking out employers. Simply responding to online job postings is now far too passive.
- Ever-intensifying globalized competition: as we emerge from the Great Recession, companies are not necessarily changing the tighter hiring restrictions they embraced at the height of the crisis. The leaner organizations and robust investigations into each and every candidate will now be a standard feature of companies recruiting applicants to lead organizations in the most competitive environment America has ever seen. And this leaner, feistier America is all the better for it.
Based on intensively reading and listening to some of this best job search gurus as well as my own observations and analyses, I would recommend that upcoming graduates follow a brand new set of principles on their job hunt.
Get Off Online Job Postings Boards
Online job postings boards are the most obvious approach for millennial job searchers. It’s the first thing we think of. They’re actually quite useless. You’ll often apply for 20 or 30 jobs and only hear back from one or two. I’ve heard them called both an “abyss” and a “black hole.” According to the perennial job-hunt classic What Color Is Your Parachute?, this job search method has only a 7% effectiveness rate. Don’t waste six weeks doing it like I did.
Open Up on Social Media
You’ve likely been told to wipe
down your Facebook page or tighten up your privacy settings because companies will search for you and use anything negative they find against you. However, the opposite is also true. Anything positive on your account can be used in your favor. Employers are now trying to recruit via Facebook, not just dig up dirt on you. So add all your employment information to the “about” section. Applicants willing to use their personal Facebook or Twitter accounts at work can dramatically help their companies. In journalism, this means promoting your articles; in politics, it’s promoting your candidate; in advertising, it’s promoting your product. As the social scientist Robert Putnam has written, “social networks are their own form of capital.”
Make Yourself as Findable As Possible
For recruiters (or friends with job leads) to find you, you’ll want to be Googleable on as many channels as possible. There’s a lot you can do besides being open on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Upload your resume to Scribd, the “YouTube of documents.” Upload the slides for a presentation you made to SlideShare.net. Perhaps the best thing you can do is have your own YouTube channel; YouTube is owned by Google and its videos move to the top of Google search results. If you’re into that sort of thing, even start a blog in which you can write at greater length about your professional interests.
Max Out on LinkedIn
If you’re like me, you’ve had a LinkedIn profile for a couple years, but could never quite figure out what to do with it. Here’s what you need to do, and do it now: LinkedIn will monitor the strength of your profile (30%, 40%, etc.). You need to take yours to what they call “All-Star” level. (http://topdogsocialmedia.com/linkedin-marketing-infographic/) This means listing every volunteer activity, every award, every certification, every test score, every relevant course you’ve taken, and every marketable skill all the way from Microsoft Office to the operational procedures on International Space Station toilets (if you know them).
Here’s why you do this: The moment you make a major change to your LinkedIn profile, LinkedIn will e-mail your connections to tell them to congratulate you. I added a new internship to my profile, and immediately I had two friends reach out to me telling me about friends they had who were looking for applicants to fill an open vacancy. It’s that easy. A good online presence makes job offers come to you.
Network, Network, Network
The best thing about networking is that most of your work is already done. Every teacher, coach, boss, mentor, and most importantly, every friend, is already part of your network. Your job search is a chance to re-connect with people you should be already keeping up with. If they have LinkedIn profiles, connect with them! Simply let them know about your life and they’re bound to drop a hint. In the past week, I’ve told two particular people about where I’d love to work and it’s turned out they’ve know people who already work there. As soon as you graduate, get as involved with the UGA Alumni Association as you possibly can. Its connections will be vital for the rest of your life, but probably the most powerful for you as a recent grad.
Here’s why you do this: Many companies offer handsome referral bonuses to employees who refer their friends. My brother funded his laser eye surgery by referring a college friend to work at his company. The cost of firing a bad hire causes more pain to a company than an extra week of vacancy while they investigate a candidate more deeply. If an existing employee can vouch for you, this dramatically reduces hiring uncertainty. People often have similar values, backgrounds, and work ethics to their friends. For this reason, having a friend at a company is often the most guaranteed way of securing a job there.
Don’t Job Hunt; “Company-Hunt”
Once you’ve got your online professional trail beefed up, it’s time to put yourself out there. Confidently. Make a list of the top eight or ten places you’d like to work. Connect with them on LinkedIn. Find who you know who knows people at those places and ask them to introduce you to people in the company.
Resumes Should Repeat Keywords
Hiring managers often use a resume computer system that enables them to search for keywords in resumes. They often will only read resumes sifted to the top in a keyword search. Even if they don’t use a resume computer system, the hiring manager is still primed to scan the document for specific words or phrases. You can overload your resume with keywords they want to see.
Here’s how you do it: Print out six job descriptions for positions you’re interested in. Highlight all the words, concepts, or phrases common to each job. Rewrite your resume to use as many of those words as possible. Often this will be an alphabet soup of systems or specific skills (research and writing skills are among the most common skills needed in job descriptions). For programmers it might be HTML, CSS, MySQL, Java, C++, etc. Dazzle the manager’s eyes with an executive summary at the top of the resume listing the keywords. Then weave them into as many of your internship or job descriptions as possible.
As a general principle, your resume should be skills-based and accomplishment-based, rather than a list of job duties.
Cover Letters Should Now Be “Short E-Letters”
The number one aim in cover letters should be sharp, laser precision. Hiring managers have very little time to go over a lot of applications and stating your case as concisely as possible is an important virtue. It may be best to get rid of the concept of cover letters completely.
Giving a personal memoir or a lengthy re-statement of your resume is unnecessary. The number one question a hiring manager needs to ask is “what benefit can the applicant provide immediately?” Focus solely on your ability to provide meaningful impact straight from the start. The resume will give them the back-story of your past; the short e-letter should focus on your potential for the very near future. It should excite the reader and make him/her want to read your resume.
Copy and paste your cover letter into the body of the e-mail. Then attach it as a PDF as well.
Conclusion
One of the recurring complaints I’ve heard from recent graduates is that they were never taught how to look for jobs. We’re taught resume-writing, interview skills, and how to dress, but the actual job search process is far more complex. Recent grads also say to me that were unprepared for how long, hard, and psychologically taxing the job search really is. In a good economy, the search averages 4-6 months. In this economy, it’s definitely 6, if not more. Dealing with the anxiety, depression, and overall psychological toil of the job search is a very real and pressing need. It’s probably best addressed by telling people as early as possible that learning how to search for jobs is a skill in itself. Thankfully, that skill can be taught.
The information in this article is based The Wall Street Journal Guide to Starting Your Career, Knock ‘Em Dead, What Color is Your Parachute?, and hours and hours of the Career Cloud Radio podcast.
