Documenting Success

How to search for a job after college - Part II: Ways of finding a job
Published on January 11th, 2007

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(This is Part II of the series. Here are Part I, Part III and Part IV)

Now that you got your resume and cover letter prepared, you’re ready to submit it. The most important thing to realize about the process is that it’s quantity over quality. The more places you send your resume to, the better the chances of you finding your dream job. When I was looking for a job after college, I must’ve sent out a thousand resumes, without exaggeration.

Of course, I don’t mean that you should go on Monster.com and apply for every job that you find. That gets you nowhere and will only aggravate the people reading your submission. You should only send your resume to relevant positions that you think there’s a good chance you’d be a fit for. That means, unfortunately, you can not apply to “senior” and “mid-level” positions either.

The most effective way of finding a job

The most important way to land a job is through personal contacts. You are at enormous advantage when an employee comes up to his boss and says “Here’s a resume of my friend Dave, he’s a pretty bright kid that’s looking for a job right now”. All of a sudden you are ahead of all the faceless resumes that are stacked on the manager’s desk.

At this point, I bet some of you are thinking “that sounds great, but I don’t have any friends like that.” Of course, being straight out of college, your personal network is bound to be small. But your extended network is guaranteed to be large.

Make a list of everybody you know you can ask. It can start with your family, no matter how remote, and should include literally everyone you know – your friends, classmates, professors, family, friends of family, etc. Prepare a plan of what you’re going to say in advance, and call everybody. Explain your situation to them, and ask if their company is hiring and whether they have a position similar to what you’re looking for. Chances are, the answer is going to be “no”, but don’t get discouraged.

(and by “calling everybody” I do mean EVERYBODY you know)

Next, ask them if they know of anybody who might help you. In this case, the answer will most likely be “yes”. If they do think of somebody, ask if they can give you the number. You should then call them yourself so that your friend won’t be troubled.

Put the new contact’s info on your list, and update it with results of this phone call. Then, call your friend’s friend. Immediately introduce yourself and say something like “I’m a friend of Tom May, and he gave me your number. I just graduated college, and Tom said you might have a position in your company.” Trust me when I say this: the above method is by far the most efficient way to find a job. It is how I found my dream job a few months after college. One final thought about calling your friends and acquaintances: if you’re naturally an introverted person, it provides invaluable experience in communication skills.

If you have ambitions of a long and successful career in any field, you have to learn how to talk to people. And if you’re going for a career as a scientist, hoping to be locked in the lab and never talking to anyone, it’s not going to happen. This is not how real world works. Any career involves communicating with people. If you ever want to be successful, you have to get over your fears.

Other, less efficient ways to find a job

Another way for you to find a job is a job fair. Here you’re at advantage, because you’re a recent graduate (or still at school). At the job fair, you won’t compete against people with experience in the industry.

When it comes to job fairs, there are a few things worth keeping in mind. First, you don’t have to go to every company there. Go to the fair’s website in advance, and look over the list of companies that are going to be present, then go to their tables only.

When you attend, make sure to look professional and have a plan of action. And by “plan of action”, I don’t mean mumbling something incoherent and trying to hand in your resume as soon as possible so you can leave. Instead, you should do research beforehand and come up with some questions about the company.

Don’t start by handing in your resume. Start by asking those questions to show that you’ve done your homework. That will instantly set you apart from others. Be courteous, show your enthusiasm, and once you do hear satisfactory answers to your inquiries, give them your resume.

Finally, we have come to the least efficient method of getting your resume to a company. Of course, I’m talking about online job boards.

Online job boards

When I say that job sites such as monster.com are the least efficient way to look for a job, I mean it sincerely. Consider what happens when you submit your resume to one of online job postings. In most cases, your resume ends up in a gigantic pile on HR or recruiter’s desk. While some excellent recruiters will be able to find a great job for you, it’s a level of resistance you have to pass before your resume ends up where you want it – in the hands of a manager.

(Recruiters are also known as headhunters, because you don’t want to mess with them)

Once your resume leaves the recruiter, it is passed on to the HR department, where they will weed out the good from the bad, and pass those to the manager. That’s two levels of resistance you have to fight through just to get your battered and bruised resume onto manager’s desk.

To maximize your chances of finding a job, you should use all the ways that are available to you. Don’t count on any one method to do the magic trick for you.

Having said that, here are some of the ways to make online job searching more efficient:

1) Use niche sites.

Monster.com is great. You should definitely use it all the time. But, it’s not enough. You should also seek out other sites, preferably ones that cater to your industry of choice. For example, for IT and programming jobs, there is no better site right now than Dice.com. Also, look for local job postings as well. For example, craigslist.org has an abundance of jobs by smaller companies, such as recent start-ups.

2) Keep your profile updated

It’s not good to create a profile on an online job board, and then forget about it. Companies usually search only the most recent profiles, so if your job search is taking longer than you expected, you’re running the risk of not appearing “fresh” enough. Update your profile once a week, so the date remains fresh.

3) Quantity, not quality

You have to remember that the probability of your online resume submission landing you an interview is very low. Therefore, to increase your chances you have to submit numerous resumes. Of course, I’m not advocating submitting your resume to every possible position out there – that’s not going to do you any good. You have to submit your resume to as many positions that fit you as possible. Maximize your chances. The more people see your C.V., the more likely it is that someone will like it.

Keeping track

If you followed my advice from the last section, you’ve been submitting a whole lot of resumes. When I was looking for a job, I didn’t go to sleep until I sent it to at least 10 places, more often 20. After a while, you’re going to experience a mild case of déjà vu. Haven’t I seen this job posting before? And haven’t I submitted my resume there? The only way to avoid confusion like that is to keep track of where you submit your resume.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to advertise some high-tech solution to this. A simple text file will suffice. Every time you submit your resume somewhere, through a friend or online, put some basic info about it in that text file. Date, job description, company name, contact info of a person your resume was submitted to, and which version was forwarded (very important!)

And that is it for Part 2. Part 3 coming up soon, where I’ll talk about a job interview and why those words should not inspire fear. If you have questions or comments, please post them below – I’m always looking for feedback.

(This is Part II of the series. Here are Part I, Part III and Part IV)