Have you thought about your post-school career yet? Your college education will set you up, but you have to take the last steps to get your first real job. The good news is that you can start taking these steps before school is out, so you can establish a presence in the job market. Here’s what you can be doing right now to get your career going.
1. Work on your resume
If you haven’t started writing a resume, now’s the time to create one, when you’re not applying for jobs. And if you have one, now’s the time to update it, so it’s ready to send out into the world. If you’re not sure how to get your resume ready, we have resources that can help with it, which I’ll talk about below. One easy tip, though: If you’re worried about the fact that you’re not finished school, just list your education with an “anticipated graduation date” of when you think you’ll be finished.
2. Manage your online presence
Remember, employers will eventually look at your social media, so you need to get to work on making it workplace-friendly, which means cleaning up your Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, or at least locking them down heavily. But instead of just reducing your online footprint, you can also actively work to expand it in positive ways. For starters, get a Linkedin profile if you don’t have one, and update it. Secondly, if you’re in a program where you get to produce work that you can show off (and really, that’s most of Centennial College’s programs), it’s worth getting a personal website to show this work off. There’s plenty of free web hosts out there, and making something simple and clean to post your resume, profile, and pictures, videos or text of the work you’ve done in school can make you look better to employers. Plus, you can put the link on your resume, and on your email signature.
3. Join some clubs and organizations
There’s a list of clubs at Centennial College here, and joining one can be a positive career move due to the personal connections you can make since you share an interest with everyone there. Meanwhile, many of Centennial College’s programs are partnered with professional organizations and offer you the chance to join them. Doing so will directly connect you to a network of people associated with the career you’re trying to get into, providing you with a foot in the door.
4. Make good use of college resources
Our Career Services department can start preparing you for the job hunt immediately. When it comes to creating or editing your resume, they offer workshops and critiques. Speaking of workshops, they can teach you the ins and outs of the job hunt, how to ace interviews, and even offer practice interview sessions. At the same time, the college itself holds several industry job fairs throughout the year (you can check here for when they happen), as well as special networking events, letting you work on getting into the industry. The resources are all there, and making use of them before you graduate will help you enter the market strong and prepared.
By Anthony Geremia