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Job Seeking Advice for Young Professionals


With my internship with the Center for Digital Engagement, I had the opportunity to listen to a panel of recruiters a few weeks ago.  With it I took some valuable tips about finding employment in today's market that you may find useful:
  • Create a powerful open ended statement to describe yourself.  One that will get others to ask you about it.
    • For example, mine is "I can get other people to talk about your company"
  • Specialize, dont be a swiss army knife
    • Companies are looking for someone who is a subject matter expert in certain areas.  It is better to be a master in a few fields rather than proficient in many.
  • Always highlight your top 3 skills 
    • Determine what you are best at, find ways in your social media, resume and in interactions to sell yourself as the product
When it comes to today's job market, our networks become more important than ever before.  Who you know can often be more vital than what you know, at least in the stages of finding new employment.  In order to maintain your professional contacts, it would be recommended that you take great care of your LinkedIn profiles. These recruiters who spoke with us expressed that there have been many times that they will hire individuals off of their LinkedIn profiles rather than even looking at their resumes.  Some advice for operating on this network would be:

  • On LinkedIn the amount of connections and secondary contacts that you have will greatly improve your visibility.  It is recommended to add in some L.I.O.N.s to your contacts.  These are LinkedIn Open Networkers.  That means that they accept all connection requests, and often have a very large network. Just adding them greatly improves your secondary connections.
  • Keep your privacy settings to a minimum on Linked in, remember LinkedIn is a place where you want to be found, so make it easier to find you!
  • In the same token of the last note, ensure that your contact information is simple and easy to find on your profile.
More importantly than any other point would be to adjust your mindset.  As cheesy as it may seem, good things often happen to good people.  
  • Start every day with a statement like "Today is going to be a good day!"
  • Include calls to action in everything you do, whether it be sending messages or sending some encouragement, get things done and help others do the same.
  • Remember that the little things matter.  Don't forget about handwritten "thank yous" after interviews or actually following through with people who have done something for you.  Genuinely care for others and it will not go unnoticed

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