Mitzi Ilagan | Negosentro.com
Are you one of the fresh graduates who were once excited to march to the stage in your toga and are now sick of your eat-sleep-Facebook routine? Well, the transition from being a determined student to being an unemployed citizen (and being a couch potato in between) is really tough, especially now that we are having a tight market competition, with all the jobless professionals and new graduates, too.
So, after months of being unproductive at home, you now decided that you need to find a job because reality suddenly hits you. But where would you start? Since the vacation, your brain might have been preparing your neurons as you enter the “real world” soon. With that, you should be able to prepare for the battle before you dash into HR offices.
First, all your requirements must be ready, in case you get a job immediately after interviews. Who knows, you might. After graduation, you must have requested already for your transcript of records (if available), copy of grades and diploma. You should also begin to apply for Social Security System account, Tax Identification Number, NBI clearance, Cedula, Copy of NSO birth certificate and medical certificate (the company usually provides this). Most importantly, your resume must be well-prepared. Take note: your resume must be updated, honest and brief. Be sure to include necessary information and use correct grammar. Remember to use keywords on your résumé and align them on the job post because employers may not have all the time to read your 5-page résumés thoroughly. So, when they see keywords on yours, a little “ting!” would probably light up as they read because they finally had a match within a pile of résumés.
When your cover letter and résumé are ready, be sure to look for relevant companies which you are interested in and are in line with your interests or skills, so that you won’t waste time and effort sending all those e-mails. After well-prepared e-mail applications, weeks pass by and there are no responses, you’ll probably end up copy-pasting the same application for the next e-mail addresses days after waiting for nothing. But here’s a trick: be patient. As they say, nothing worth having come easy.
You could go for another strategy: job fairs and walk-in applications. Gather recommendations from friends and even people from the internet about the company you are interested in and do a research about them, so that if you’d be having an on-the-spot interview on your application, you are ready and knowledgeable. Prepare for it. It may not too bad to go for Google but no matter how hard you’ve tried to memorize facts and interview answers, if you don’t understand it well, chances are, you’d get nervous and then you’d forget what you’ve memorized. Also, looks matter. Be professional-looking and pleasing and wear appropriate attire for a job application. Dress for success.
If you have successfully made it through an interview, remember the trick: be patient. It may take days or even weeks before they call back. And if they don’t, don’t worry because that job may not be for you, and that something’s better coming up for you.
Another problem of fresh graduates is this one word: experience. How would they possibly have a work experience, when in fact, they have graduated only weeks ago? This may be a setback, but probably, not all companies require this. You just have to be sure that you have realistic expectations of your compensation and position. Well, everybody starts from the bottom, right?
Fresh grads may experience difficulty in looking for jobs because of this, but your internship, grades and extra-curricular activities could matter, too. You just have to be persistent in finding the right job opportunity for you. And if you’ve already found a job, be sure to be loyal to it. Don’t be a jobhopper. Be contented with what you have because based on your personal experience, it is never easy to find a job nowadays. Don’t just apply to a company because your friend would like to work there, too or your relative is an employee of that workplace. Know your strengths and weaknesses, reflect upon it, find a relevant job post for you and push for it.
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