ELITE PRO
RESUME SERVICES

1-407-545-5159
[email protected]

Archives for September 2019

How To Get a Job as a New Grad

Job Hunting, Job Search, Resume

The following article will give new grads great tips on how to land their first job

Your first professional job can be very hard to obtain, and you might be competing against hundreds of other grads to land only one role. If you executive your job search the right way you can overcome many mistakes other recent grads make and improve your chances of landing a job.

Give the Impression That You Have More Experience Than You Do

Landing your first role in your profession can be quite competitive because many new grads are competing for very few spots. To make yourself stand out from the competition, your resume should give the impression that you have more experience than you do. Here are 3 suggestions on how to do that.

1. Include volunteer job-related experience.

If you have any volunteer unpaid experience in your field you should make sure you list that experience. Below you will find an example.

Data Analyst (Volunteer), ABC Corp 2017

As a volunteer data analyst, I assisted the strategy department in determining the effectiveness of major projects’ outcomes. Used Excel and Salesforce to attract data to analyze success.

2. Include job experience not related to your field.

When looking to land your first job in your field of training, if you do not have relevant work experience, you should list unrelated work experience on your resume. This will show potential employers that you have experience in a work environment. In addition, many employers value unrelated experience, such as working in fast-food or retail, because it develops great work ethic and customer service skills.

3. Include academic job-related experience.

If you have no job-related experience but have the academic-related experience, elaborate about that in your resume. See the example below.

Academic Project – J2EE Mobile Banking Application
University of Waterloo 2017
For my final academic project at the University of Waterloo, I designed and developed a mobile banking application using J2EE, Java, Spring, Struts, ibatis, JSP, AJAX, HTML, Oracle 12g, Maven, Log4J, slf4j, iText, Edit plus, Eclipse IDE, JUnit, WinCVS, Axis2, JSON, and UNIX.

Highlight Academic Achievements

While academic achievements are always important to include in a resume, highlighting them is even more crucial when you are looking for your first job. Any academic achievement you have obtained, such as a high GPA, scholarships, awards or any other accomplishments, should be listed on your resume.

Focus on Entry-Level Jobs

As a new grad right out of school with little experience, you should focus on looking for entry-level jobs. These are jobs where employers want to hire someone who has little or no experience.

Starting with an entry-level search might seem like common sense, but a lot of grads don’t make applying for entry-level jobs their focus. Most want to jump right into a high-paying job with all the perks and benefits. But they forget one thing: those jobs require experience.

Experience is something a new grad doesn’t have. By putting in the time and working in an entry-level position, you’ll gain the experience that employers are looking for and then you’ll be qualified for more advanced roles.

You can look for entry-level jobs on all major job sites, specialty sites, aggregators, job classifieds, and entry-level job sites.

Get Experience by Internships or Volunteering

If you do not have any job-related experience, a great way to get it is to do an internship or volunteer in your field.

Many companies offer both paid and unpaid internships designed to help those breaking into that profession gain experience. If an intern performs well in their role, a company often will hire them when the internship is finished.

To find internships or volunteer roles, look at all major job sites, specialty sites, aggregators, job classifieds, entry-level job sites, and internship/volunteer sites.

How to get Paid and Unpaid Internships

Proper Interviewing Etiquette

You worked hard in school, got good grades, did an internship, and when it comes time to interview, you mess up. This is very common for new grads, but it can be corrected.

The number one thing many entry-level job seekers have trouble with is how to interview professionally. Most new grads do not know how to communicate in the corporate workplace, so when they interview, they are too casual in the way they express themselves and make the mistake of littering their speech with slang. This turns potential employers off. My advice to new grads is to practice proper interviewing etiquette and learn to speak in a professional manner.

Conclusion

Getting that first job in the profession they trained for can be a difficult undertaking for a new grad. Applying the tips in this chapter will make looking and obtaining your first job easier.

How Do I Change Careers?

Interview Questions, Job Hunting, Job Search, LinkedIn, Resume

The Purpose of This Article is to Give you Some Useful Tips on How to Change Careers

There comes a time in your career when either by choice or with limited options you need to switch careers. Switching careers is not an easy thing to do, and many individuals do not know where to start.

How to Think of New Career Choices

1. Consider careers based on your interests and hobbies. The most obvious place to think of when thinking of changing careers is your interests and hobbies.

2. Look at another person’s success. Do you know people who are in careers that you could see yourself doing or you have an interest in? Ask them for pointers or ideas.

3. Research on YouTube. Check out different YouTube videos to get ideas of potential career choices. Enter “career search” in the search box and see what comes up.

4. Meet with a career counselor. Career Counselors can work with you to determine potential careers that are a good fit for your education and interests.

5. Do a career exploration test. These tests will point you to a career that matches your personality and interests.

6. Research on Google. In Google’s search box, type “career search” to look up information on different career ideas.

7. Ask friends and family for possible ideas.

8. Look on Job Boards. Major job boards (such as Indeed, Monster, and CareerBuilder) will show you what kinds of careers are out there.

9. Go to your local library. Look up books on different career ideas. Or ask a librarian for help.

10. Check out government labor sites. Most countries have websites that provide great info on jobs and labor trends.

My final recommendation is to think of something you are passionate about as the more passion you have for something the more likely you will do well and like it.

Be Realistic in Your Career Choices

When considering career choices be realistic in terms of education and experience. If you want to be a lawyer, and you do not have a law degree and a license to practice law you will not be a lawyer. Your new career choice must match your education and or experience.

In many cases You are going to have to start at the bottom of your new career. That being the case if you are a retail manager and you want to be an accounting manager realistically speaking you are going to have to start as a junior accountant.

Get the Right Education for Your Field Obviously, you must get the right education in your new chosen field if there is a need to. For instances if you want to get a job as a developer, and you have no academic experience in this area you will need to do this.

The good news is today many professions you can take short academic programs to find employment. A good example is the numerous developer boot camps. An example of this is Udemy where you can even learn how to program in the comfort of your own home.  https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/

For some professions you can do an apprenticeship to master a skill. In my previous career as a recruiter I personally taught hundreds of individuals from scratch how to become a recruiter.

Also, there are many professions you will find that require no previous education in the field. An example of this is many sales roles where on the job training is the education.

Many people knock sales roles but there are many examples of salespeople who have made over six figures to over millions of dollars in sales without any formal education and experience.

Creating a Resume and LinkedIn Profiles that Match Your New Career Interests

You might not have exact experience in your new career choice, but you might have relevant career experience for that field.

An example might be you work in real estate in sales and want to switch careers into finance and in your current job you do some accounting and finance work like creating financial models using Excel. This experience you would focus in on your resume and LinkedIn profile.

Also adding in courses and volunteer work related to your new career aspiration is a must. For instance, if you are looking to get into finance and you have taken accounting and finance courses, you would put this in your resume.

To learn how to create an effective resume please see this article

https://eliteproresume.com/2019/09/17/how-to-create-a-resume-for-an-executive-or-professional/

Creating your new resume and LinkedIn profile to reflect your new experience can either be done by yourself or hiring a company like my company Elite Pro Resume Services.

Home

Looking For jobs in Your New Field.

Please see my article on the top ways to look for a job as a good start

Top 10 Best Ways to Look for a Job

Another avenue is to focus on entry-level jobs in your new field. For this type in the word entry level or junior along with the job title you are looking for in the title section on the job board you are using. An example would be typing in “Junior HR” or “Entry Level HR” if you were looking for an entry level HR job.

How to Interview For your New Chosen Occupation

As a starting point I recommend reading an article I wrote about the top 20 interview Questions that HR asks. https://careers.adventhealth.com/blog/how-to-answer-the-20-most-common-interview-questions

Before your interview in your new field think of all your current, relatable skills be it either academic, professional, and any other relevant skills.

When you have an interview use these examples to show the interviewer you have some related experience. For instance, if the hiring manager asks you about your experience with marketing you can mention academic courses and projects with marketing.

If you even did basic marketing at your last job you can even mention that experience. For example, if you were a retail manager who created in-store marketing that would be something you could mention.

Be Positive

Changing careers is not an easy thing to do, and you are going to have a lot of negative people in your head convincing you that will not succeed. You should do your best to ignore these negative people and move forward and try to keep positive.

There are many examples of many people who have successfully changed careers. A great example of this was a former school janitor who switched careers and eventually became the principal of the same school. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-48594032

I am personally another great example of someone who found success switching careers. In my early career, I switched careers a few times until I found my profession. If I never switched careers, I would never have become one of the leading experts about job hunting resumes and recruiting and a 2-time best seller on the subject B00IW54CJ0

Conclusion

Switching careers is difficult to do but by learning some of the useful tips from this article you will get a good head start in your quest for a new job. I wish everyone the best of luck!

Beware: Your Social Media Profile Can Cost You a Job

Job Hunting, Job Offer, Job Search, Social Media

The following article will explain how your social media profile can cost you a job.

Many people today have social media profiles on different sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn. There is nothing wrong with being on social media, but a measure of caution must be exercised. If your profile appears unprofessional and if what you post becomes too political, rude, or in bad taste, your career can be impacted.

When screening candidates, many recruiters, and employers will look at a potential candidate’s social media footprint and assess if their profiles are appropriate and suitable for a career in that organization.

Some might think this is unfair and that their social media profile is their own private domain. This is a false way to think. As soon as you put your thoughts out there on social media, they become accessible to the public, including employers. There have been many stories of employers who passed on interviewing candidates because they found embarrassing pictures posted online, such as selfies where the candidate was intoxicated and other moments caught on camera.

Social media can still be enjoyable, but thinking in terms of your career and potential impact on your personal brand, it’s a good idea to avoid posting the following things on social media:

Never post embarrassing photos of any kind that put you in a bad light.

You might think it is cute to post photos of yourself after a night in the town or when you had too much to drink but if potential employers see you in this kind of light they will only think of you in bad taste. This, in turn, will result in fewer job opportunities for you.

Be cautious when posting about politics.

Your personal opinions are important, but you might offend a segment of the population who do not agree with you.

Politics are an important part of self-identity but with the world being very divided by politics you could cost yourself an interview if your politics differ from a hiring manager or recruiter beliefs. Keep out of political discussions to prevent potential employers from rejecting your application.

Never post anything that is of bad taste.

If you are not sure is something is of bad taste, then don’t take the chance—don’t post it.

Anything that can potentially offend or insult anyone should not be posted on social media. If you are not sure if something is offensive the rule of thumb is not to post it on social media.

Never post something that could be perceived as rude or obnoxious, as this will make people see you in a negative light.

One person’s impulse for humor might differ from others. To avoid potential employers from rejecting your application do not post offensive rude and obnoxious items.

Stay away from posting about controversial topics. Doing so may turn some people off.

You might have had a chance at your dream job when all out a sudden a potential employer sees a post about a controversial topic you had posted on social media and that one shot at your dream job is now over.

Get rid of past social media posts that may paint you in a negative manner

This is what I suggest: look through your social media profiles and delete any pictures or posts that match the above criteria. This could take time but won’t that be worth not losing out on your dream job.

Conclusion

By having professional social media profiles, you will reduce the likelihood of potential employers drawing a negative conclusion about you based on your profiles. This, in turn, will prevent you from being disqualified as a candidate. With a professional presence on social media, not only will you build your personal brand, you’ll go further in the selection process, perhaps even landing that coveted job.