Land Your Dream Job: How to Find a Job After College 2024

1. Get Upskilled in Any Specialized Skill or Technology

A strong academic record is a great accomplishment, but to stand out in today's job market, developing additional skills can be a major advantage!

Specializing in a particular technology or skill through professional upskilling courses gives you a deeper understanding and makes you a more attractive candidate to employers. Whether your degree is technical or non-technical, acquiring in-demand skills can give you a competitive edge.

The good news? There are many online training platforms offering short, project-based courses taught by industry professionals. If you have an interest in data analysis, consider Data Science courses. For those with a marketing focus, digital marketing training could be a great fit.

These courses can equip you with the practical knowledge and experience employers seek!

• Get to know Top IT Skills Companies Are Looking for in 2021 & Beyond
• What Career is Right for Me - Know That in Just 10 Steps
• Top 10 High Paying Jobs Without Any Degree

2. Grab Industry-Recognized Certifications

Adding certifications to your newbie portfolio does three things, it:

• Builds a competitive advantage for you
• Build your strongest skills & knowledge needed by employers
• Builds credibility for hiring

After finishing the upskilling training, focus on taking the industry-recognized certifications around that skill/technology. IT, Manufacturing, and Healthcare are 3 core industries where they look for certified resources, who are exposed to real-time job knowledge, and have validation to their learnings. With certifications, you no longer stay novice and companies appreciate how you put in the effort to become Job-relevant.

Whatever technical or non-technical skill you chose for making a career, you would surely find some credible certifications around it. Supposedly if you choose Salesforce, you will find a good number of Salesforce certifications like almost 40+.

If You Can’t Decide What Skill or Certification Around It to Go For, Here Are Your Options:

• Salesforce Certifications Complete Guide
• Azure Certifications complete guide
• AWS Certification complete guide - Highest Paying certifications
• Data Science Certifications, Types, Details, Preparation tips
• Business Analyst Certifications Types & Details
• 12 Automation testing certifications for beginners & professionals
• 10 questions to know DevOps Certifications Better
• 15+ Digital Marketing Certifications, types, details, exam cost

Also Read - Top IT Certification Courses For Beginners in 2022

3. Work on Some Self-Created Quality Projects

Once you have upskilled and grabbed the certifications to validate your knowledge, after that it’s best if you invest in some self-design projects which can help you test your knowledge and will act as proof to showcase your skills to recruiting companies.

Supposedly:

• If you are choosing a career as a designer, you can create sample designs using required tools & applications based on some hypothetical requirements.
• Or say if you have done your upskilling in Data Science, you can do a lot of self-created projects related to maybe coronavirus visualizations, Uber’s pickup analysis, the impact of climate change of global food supply, and so much more you can choose based on the domain you are trying to score a job in.

Just do as many projects as you can. These self-propelled initiatives will not only build your portfolio but also boost up your confidence to pursue your skill and real-time projects and will help you do well during your interviews eventually.

At JanBask, we let you work on plenty of real-time industry-focused projects from real multinational corporations and help you till you develop mastery of it.

4. Apply for Internships - Build Some Experience

If you missed applying for summer internships throughout your college journey, maybe it’s time you do it now for sure. Companies want to hire candidates who could show their professional commitment, aptitude, have the great application of skills to real work settings somehow, and have the potential to fit in real-time jobs. And internships are the best way to give you the broadest spectrum of all these.

You Can Actively Explore Work Gigs Related to Your Studied Discipline or Any Related Skill Over These Platforms, Suitable for Finding Paid or Unpaid Internships:

• Internships.com
• Internmatch.com
• Idealist.com
• Mediabistro.com
• Indeed.com
• Experience.com

There Are a Variety of Other Portals, Wherein You Can Easily Find Some Good Internship Opportunities.

Pro Tip - Just go for any internship that adds value to your professional journey. Don’t think about paid or unpaid internships, choose one that could appear strong while sharing your candidature with recruiters. And do as many internships as you could spare time for while searching for job opportunities.

5. Set Up Your Resume Like Professionals

“Recruiters have hardly 6 seconds to dissect a professional resume, oh and since you are a fresher, they would hardly take 2 seconds to decide whether to put up your resume in a dustbin or in an interview invite pile.”

Well, the only gap between you and others (who hit the goldmine of job offers) could be the lack of real-time work experience, since you are aiming for finding a job after college. And this might be the biggest reason why you can’t find a job after college. Hmmm… this may seem to limit but you can turn this into an opportunity by brushing your resume in such a way you seem to be an ideal candidate.

In Your Resume, Enlist:

• Professional summary telling what you foresee for the company to achieve and how you can help them with your talent, see this for an example:

Professional Summary Highly Motivated & self-driven Program Manager looking to absorb the new business analyst position at  ABC (name of the company applying at). Passionate about analyzing services & product lines to maximize revenue & efficiency. Have done B.A in Business Management. Can conduct skilled financial analysis, risk analysis by paying great attention to detail.

• Training or upskilling course you did, certifications you obtained, any internships or projects you worked on.
• If you don’t have work experience, try pushing your education right after professional summary, and tell explicit things you did at college like joined a hackathon, was a student body president, participated in a tournament, or anything that can make you look like an active candidate who is well exposed and ventures out for new things.
• Add an impressive cover letter, telling why and how you could be a worth-it choice for the organization you are trying for. You can also have a recommendation letter from your college dean or teachers, this can make your candidature look bright as well.

Some Quick Tips to Write an Effective Cover Letter for Entry-Level Positions:

1. In the first paragraph, explain who you are, how you got to hear about this job, and what position you are seeking. You can also mention any alumni or any known person through whom you got the opportunity, mention them in introductory lines.

For Instance:

For Instance:

2. In the second paragraph, discuss the job-relevant skills or any accomplishments you have. Use this section to highlight your caliber and explain how you gained that skill through real classroom or any student service experience.

“ I have found out that you’re looking for a candidate with strong verbal and written business communications skills, as well as experience with strategy development and event planning. As a vice president of the student body, I was responsible for planning and organizing students’ recreational events & programs. This engagement required me to plan and promote the event on social media, send broadcasts through marketing touchpoints to students across the campus. Through this association, I was able to learn various automated marketing tools.”

3. In the third paragraph, toot your own horn & tell the hiring manager why you are an ideal fit. You need to mention real-life examples to show how you are a great fit for the job. You know it you are best fit but now you have to tell the recruiters.

For Instance:

4. In the fourth paragraph, conclude the entire above letter, make it action-driven such that hiring managers are tempted to contact you or get in touch with you for further discussion.

For Instance:

Check out:

• 6 Steps to Build Impressive AWS Resume (With Samples)
• Data Science Resumes That Will Get You Interview Calls
• How to Make Python Developer Resumes for Freshers & Experienced

6. Bring your “Networking” Skills in Motion

Your networking has to be really strong in order to land your first job out of college. Networking is one of the surefire ways to get job leads, even better than your regular, old boring methods like posting on job portals where you apply and wait for a recruiter to respond, joining job seminars, sending bulky unsolicited resumes.

Do you know almost 87% of recruiters must be using Linkedin daily? There are 55 million companies listed on this networking platform, involving almost  14 million companies with job vacancies.

With networking sites like Linkedin, you can spruce up some powerful connections, directly with the top-level superiors or hiring managers. With a strong professional profile, adding job-related posts and sharing some insights about your skills, you can easily bag some good opportunities.

• Build connections with recruiters, people at a bigger role
• Keep posting insightful content and job search-related content or comments
• Like, share, comment on others posts to become visible
• Have an impressive bio line, advertising yourself, infuse keywords recruiters would look for in it “Looking for Business Analyst job” or “Willing to join as Data Analyst”.
• Ask for recommendations. Recommendations are your testimony kind where people who know you prescribe your skills and talent for other recruiters. You can ask your teachers at college or peers in a professional setting to write you a realistic recommendation, this will make you a promising candidate.

7. Sit For As Many Placement Drives As You Can

Campus recruitments or college placement drives are the best way to get important job leads. Sign up for your college placement cell. 

While you are in the middle of your degree, start sitting for the placement interviews as this gives you exposure, builds your professional skills, and helps you become prepared. This way, you might even get a good internship or part-time job opportunities, which you can pursue in your summer or autumn or any break.

8. Explore Career Sections of Biggest Brands

Don’t deplete yourself in waiting, visit the career section of the dream companies, after finishing your training. There you will know what job opportunities they have at present. 

• Just make a list of top companies you are willing to work with, it could be Facebook, Google, Amazon, IBM, Accenture, Microsoft or so.
• Individually apply to the different profiles at these companies’ career section based on your location, job title, product type (if any), and you are sorted.

Thinking about why should I directly apply for these big brands? Do these big sharks hire freshers like me?

“Well, dear friend, nothing is impossible. These big-shot companies are very welcoming towards the fresh talents, the recent graduates. However, to be able to crack their interviews, you have to have relevant skills, certifications to validate what you know, and strong conduct during the interview rounds. Even if you are not an alumnus of the biggest colleges, these three aspects, when prepared with an accredited training platform, can definitely help you gain an offer letter.”

9. Look For Entry-Level Jobs, First

The other broad reason why you can't find a job after college is that you don’t search for the right kind of job. As a college pass out, with no experience, don’t expect to jump a big ladder. Look for jobs which are suitable for inexperienced students like you. Like read the description and see if they have training protocols to shape you for the job.

Companies who are into fresh talent will specify what kind of resources they are looking for and will also mention whether they are up for on-board training or not. So look for such companies and career options where your skills can be nurtured with time.

10 . Attend the Course-Relevant Webinars

Now before you scream in the comments section about “how the heck webinars will help us in getting the first job out of college”, hey wait, hold your horses.

Webinars by online training institutes are one of the popular sources to help students like you navigate a career path around a certain technology. And since they are conducted by some industry-specialist speakers, who have been in that technology for years, they can help you unfold some dos and don’ts around the talent market or that particular technology’s talent market, which will really come in handy for your interview preparation.

At JanBask, we conduct insightful webinars around the trending IT technologies & skills with renowned speakers from the real-time industry. To schedule a spot for yourself and get to know the job opportunities, enquire for our upcoming webinars now!

11. Don’t Lose Hope, Something Good is Waiting For You

In the end, do not feel disheartened, just keep aiming your arrow higher and soon you will hit the target. Practice great positivity, exuberant great confidence, and explore & prepare for a career where growth traces are higher and higher.

Don’t give yourself unrealistic expectations, just do the hard work of learning the skill and some smart work of unlocking sources to finding a job after college.

In case you feel you have tried enough and are still struggling to hit to a right aim, connect with our level-headed expert career counselors for free, who would expose you to solutions to your every career-related challenge and show you some uncomplicated career path and strategies,  where you will land up in an amazingly-paying and growing career, super soon.