Many international students have a maximum of 3 months to find a job after graduation or they will have to leave America. Sometimes finding a job or internship can prove very difficult. But if you follow these ten steps, I can guarantee that you will get a job in 30 days or less. If you do these, you can seamlessly move from being a student to being a worker in corporate America.
Here are the ten things to do to get a job in 30 days or less.
1. Know what type of job you are looking for and write down about 5 job titles.
When I ask students what they want to do, they often tell me they do not have any idea. What you must do is to take your time and write out 5 possible job titles you can search for on google. I am a software engineer so I can look for something like, “full stack engineer,” “software engineer”, software developer, and many others. Try your best to write down the kind of jobs that are associated with your field. If you think you are not able to do that, just ask someone who is ahead of you and in the same field to help.
2. Make sure your resumé is 2 pages.
Schools will tell you that your resumé should be just one page so that your prospective employers do not miss it. But experience has taught me that the best people always have a 2-page resumé. You must do well to add an award and projects section. Try to make it two pages. Three pages is too much, and if you do only one page, you will not stand out. 2 pages is always the best. Do not fear to add your school projects. Yes, they are projects you did in school but write them down exactly like experience.
For example, let’s say you were a cashier in a company. What you do is that on your resumé you put it on there along with the name of the company, the year, and some of the jobs you did. Do the same for your school projects. Where you did it is the name of your school, and give yourself a title. The title here could be the name of the project, the year, and write 3 or 4 things that you did. You must understand that any school project you did, and you had to write a report on can be taken as experience. If you regard something as experience, the whole world will regard it as experience, and if you do not regard it as so, no one would. Alway look at your your school projects as experiences.
Here is something to think about. Let’s take the professor who works at your school. He is going to put what he does and the name of your school on there as part of his experiences. So, do not hesitate.
Do not worry if you never received any certificates, or awards in the university. My next point will help you.
3. Take Leadership Certificates on EDX and put them on your resumé.
There are many leadership certificates on EDX including personal leadership certificates, organizational leadership certificates which may take only 12 hours for completion. You can even do it in one day or spread it to two days. Go ahead and do it and put it on your certificate because those things really make you stand out.
4. Create an excel sheet of about 150 jobs all across the country.
Remember, I said that if you’re going to be able to secure a job or internship in 30 days, you have to write down about 5 titles. So, here, take one of those titles, and do a google search. It is important to always start from your city.
As an example, in my case, I did software engineering, and I listed software engineer as one of the job titles. So, I can take that, go on google and type, “Software engineer jobs in St. Louis.” You must create an excel sheet of the jobs that come up. Why? Because you will usually get a job after your 7th interview, and most of the time you may have to apply for about 20 jobs before you land one interview. I’m not talking talking about a recruiter interview but an interview with a hiring manager. So, do not get discouraged of you have not applied for about 20 jobs yet, and you’ve not been called. That is how it is usually like.
In the picture below, you will find an example of how I have been doing it for some members in my church, and almost all of them have been a let to get a job.
Concerning the url, do not put the one you got on google on there. If you learn that a company is hiring, look for the company name on google, go to their website, and go directly to the job, and get the job url and apply directly from their websites.
5. Focus on searching for jobs based on the titles written.
Do not start applying for new jobs until you have completed all the 150 jobs you listed on your excel sheet. This May appear to be a lot of work but trust me, it’s worth it. And it’s easy too. All you need to do is click on the links and go ahead with the application process.
6. Do not apply alone.
Just like study groups, have a job search group. Team up with a group of friends who are also looking for jobs and be doing it together. You can even do this together on zoom. I believe that this will help you to quickly get a job in 30 days or less.
Many people apply for jobs alone but very few people are able to do that consistently. When you do it alone, there is not much accountability so you tend to be relaxed about it. That is why doing it in groups helps. You do not need to be doing the same course or be in the same field. Rather, all you need is for both of you to be searching for jobs so that you can encourage each other to go on with the process.
7. Aim to do 5 applications a day.
Focus on doing 5 applications and then, take a break. This will take you through about 30 days of applying for jobs. What will happen is that by the time you get to those 30 days, some will be calling you for interviews.
8. Tailor your resumé and cover letter for each application.
What this means is that for each application, your cover letter and resumé should be different for every link. The way to accomplish this is that you must look at the job description and get some of the keywords used and use them in your resumé. Do not lie only make sure to use those keywords. When you do this, the computer can pick up your resumé because it will be looking for certain keywords as described in the job description.
These last two key points about interviews always work.
9. Have 3 superior characteristics about you and 3 stories to back each
These 3 things will fit for all the job descriptions so you do not need to tailor it for each specific job. For entry level employments, there are certain things they are looking for with respect to character. So, in my case as a software engineer, 3 characteristics that can apply for entry level character could be “perseverance”, “detail-oriented”, and “strong initiative and drive.”
When you come up with these three characteristics, come out with 3 real life examples where these apply. Employers are aware that people tend to lie a lot so if you have real life examples to prove these points it will be to your advantage.
I have also written about some 10 important interview tips here.
10. Always end your answer to a question with, “for example”….and tell a story to back it
Always connect your answer to your 3 superior characteristics with a story when you answer a question. The only time you will not need to do that is when it is a technical interview. The one who is capable of telling life stories has a high chance of getting lots of offers.
In summary, these are the ten points that if you follow, you will be able to get a job in 30 days or less or secure an internship. If there are two things I will ask you to pay attention to, it will be:
A. Do the job search with a team
B. Your 3 characteristics with 3 real life stories which you will use every time in an interview.
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