You have finally graduated university and are now ready to take on the real world. You want to be independent but first, you need to find a great job.
When looking for that elusive career opportunity, you will have to deal with the mission that you have what it takes to be a success in your chosen field of profession in spite of your lack of job experience.
For candidates, it is important to provide a resume for prospective employers that showcase their skills and abilities despite lacking in the job history department.
To begin, you have to create an objective statement that expresses your aims and strengths. For example, if you have graduated with academic proficiency in foreign policy, you can state that you are looking for an entry-level position that is relevant to your chosen field.
Showcase your education on your curriculum vitae or CV. If you have graduated high school or college, produce a subcategory in your resume with a title like Related Course Work. In this category, you can highlight the courses or programs you have fulfilled.
As your job experience grows, you will eventually change this category with professional highlights. These details are crucial to prospective employers when evaluating fresh graduates and entry-level applicants.
Turn your accomplishments into professional testimonials. Although you might not have any kind of paid work just yet, you have probably achieved a number of great things that will do well on your resume.
Create a list of relevant accomplishments that you can think of but steer clear of accomplishments that happened over 5 years ago. Examples of past achievements include project management, volunteering, youth leadership, writing experiences and on the job training.
Establish practical and levelheaded objectives. Although you might have graduated with honors, it is doubtful that you will quickly earn a position as a head of a department.
Plenty of companies feature categories in their career websites that target entry-level staff. Make sure that you keep track of these chances and as soon as you are selected to join a company and with plenty of good work, you might be amazed to find out at how fast you can acquire a promotion.
Keep on progressing your work experience. You have with you a basic resume that is filled up with all the necessary details and now you will have to keep developing it throughout your working years.
If you are curious of where you want to be in 5 or 10 years’ time, you can ask a seasoned staff or employee in the company and ask them about suggestions. You can show them your resume and inquire for pointers on how to enrich your resume more.
They may offer you suggestions about activities or methods you can accomplish in order to develop your credentials like gaining certifications, volunteer work or joining professional groups.
Remember as well to keep your resume to a 1 to 2 page document. HR personnel are known to spend just seconds glancing at candidates’ resume.
They check whether you have presented yourself well on paper, if the resume has grammatical errors, if it is concise and direct and how relevant your credentials will be with the job position.
And keep this in mind as well, when it comes to job histories, be as honest as you can. Do not invent one if you do not have any sort of job experience.
The majority of hiring employers will authenticate three of your current jobs (if you have experience). Getting caught lying by a prospective employer is not worth it and it will not land you the position you are after.
If you have any good or bad experiences with creating your initial resume and getting your first job that you would like to share, an opinion about getting your first job and how to go about promoting yourself, or questions that you want feedback on, please leave a comment below. We would love to hear it.
Leave a Reply