Use College to Find the Right Job While Learning a Few Things Too

Four years go by and you’ve managed to take twenty years off the life of your liver. You’ve partied hard. By the time you reach senior year your drinking tolerance is the best it will ever be.

“If you don’t look for a job while in college, you’ll spend the next year after graduation looking for one,” a college professor once told me.

It was sophomore year, I was taking introduction to International Relations. In class, I was surrounded by other aspiring professionals. But like everyone else, we had no idea what we were going to do with our lives.

Fast forward two years, it’s now senior year. The words of the professor rung in my ear.

Focus on class and grades, the career counselor, parents, and friends would say. The job will come. Heck, they’ll even find you.

College is a four-year transition into the “real world.” But in the “real world” you don’t have to study and maintain grades. You have to hustle every day to stay competitive. What better way to gear up for the competition than to use the four years to find a job. The last thing you want to do is graduate from a four-year school not having a job lined up. Instead, consider focusing at least 30-40% of your time researching organizations, attending networking events, and interning. The rest of your time can be focused on your studies and social life.

Get Ahead of the Curve by Applying the Following:

Research organizations you aspire to work for. The internet is a beautiful thing. Unlike our parent’s generation, we can look up just about any organization and research them. We can see what their leadership team is made up of. We can read their views on corporate social responsibility. We can determine the type of work we see ourselves doing there. Use the internet to start digging into organizations you hope to one day work for.

Study the reviews of the organizations. With the proliferation of the internet came websites such as Glassdoor, Indeed, Monster, etc. I prefer to use Glassdoor.com to read the latest reviews of organizations from people that work there. These reviews can provide incredible insight. Happy and disgruntled workers will share perspective on their day-to-day duties, internal politics, pay & benefits, talent, workforce, and more. You can even gain a feel for what type of salary you may be offered. Like everything on the internet, the information should be viewed through a lens of skepticism. But if a collection of reviews callout the same issue, you can walk away with a good idea of how the organization is run.

Proactively reach out to recruiters and professionals. Again, the internet is a great thing. With tools such as LinkedIn, you can conduct research and reach out to employees without any barrier to entry. This may come as a surprise, but people like helping others for the most part. Perhaps there is someone from your school who works at the organization. Reach out to them directly, offer to take them out to coffee if they are local. If not, ask them if there is a way you can connect via email or over the phone. Approaching people you do not know can be daunting, but if you are polite and respectful of their time, they may respond. You may not have a lot to offer them, but that’s okay, you’ve got to start somewhere. I’ll address how to reach out to people you don’t know via LinkedIn in later posts.

Attend networking events. In my opinion, the internet has decreased the benefits of networking. Face-to-face meetings with targeted employers for recruitment purposes has been declining for years. However, that does not mean you shouldn’t find networking events to attend. Every college in the country has career fairs. Take advantage of them. There may also be career fairs in cities not sponsored by a university. Attend those if you can and meet recruiters in person. Stand out by taking the face-to-face approach combined with an online presence. I landed my first job out of school by simply showing up to a career fair and shooting the breeze with the recruiter. This led to an in-person interview on the spot with a job offer in hand three weeks later.

Maintain a respectable social network. Remove public access of your Facebook and Instagram. Recruiters do not need to see you chugging beers at the tailgate. Ensure your Twitter page does not say anything that could get you in trouble. Your LinkedIn profile should be up to date and polished. A recruiter is going to value the courses and skills you’ve acquired in school. Especially if you lack “real world” experience.

Keep a list of targeted organizations. Maintain a list of organizations you hope to work for. Throughout your time in school, you will be exposed to a collection of organizations and people. Having a list to reflect on with information from your exposure will help frame your applications and show the recruiter you’ve done your research.

Apply, Apply, Apply. Use your time in school, especially your senior year, to apply to as many jobs as you can. Spend at least one day a week applying to as many organizations as possible. Remember, this is your first job out of school and it is better to land a job than it is to be unemployed. The more applications you throw out there, the higher likelihood a recruiter will call you. Putting all of your eggs in one basket is a risky decision in today’s market. It’s highly competitive out there and limiting yourself to one or two dream organizations could impact your employment if passed over. When others are studying for hours on end in the library, carve out some time to apply for real jobs!

College is a lot of fun. But don’t underestimate how fast it goes. It will be over before you know it. Use the time to not only excel at school but to find a job.