Maybe you are almost finished with your studies or maybe you are already dreaming of finishing because you can’t handle any more exams. Good news for you: there is a pretty good market for starters nowadays! However, how to market yourself to get the job you want?
Preparation is the key to success
Well, there are multiple ways to get in contact with future companies. The most obvious one would be to simply send your CV to applications of said employer. This is a well known way and was probably the way to go 20 years ago. But this is the age of social media and as we said there is a pretty good market for starters! As such, recruiters will come and find you on LinkedIn. Besides the attention you will get from this you might also get some stress, because these guys want results (cheap students) and they want them fast.
Therefore you need to prepare. Get your LinkedIn page updated and add all your experiences, projects and accomplishments to the page. Remember that small scaled tutorial on that software you got in some random lesson 2 years ago? Yes you have experience in that as well, not a lot but at least some experience! Heck, you might even ask your friends and fellow students to endorse your skills. All that to prepare your LinkedIn page to catch the eyes of recruiters. Last but not least, when you are ready for a job in the upcoming months change your interest for a job on LinkedIn. This option allows you to show towards recruiters and companies that you are available for a job in the near future.
Last but not least: update your CV. In the end recruiters cannot simply send a LinkedIn page to their customers. I mean they should be able but not a lot of companies have introduced this option thus far. So get that CV make it at most 2 pages as a starter and keep it short and clean. Preferably only add relevant working experience to your CV, which is not possible for everyone. If you do not have any relevant experience add what you have. Sometimes people also ask for a motivational letter and my only advice is to keep that to a maximum of 1 page. Write who you are, how you learned about the company and about your relevant courses and experiences. If you can, write something a bit more “special” and remove the feeling that this is just another motivational letter you send to all companies.
But I don’t want all those recruiters
The negative part of this option is the attention you will receive. I have personally received five messages from recruiters this week alone. This shows that you might get a lot of attention all of a sudden and you might get overwhelmed. Don’t worry there are loads of alternatives! The first one would be to totally ignore LinkedIn and contact those recruiters or companies yourself. This contact could be by looking around on their websites and find applications yourself. You can also go to certain events which allow companies to show of what they do. These events are always a bit more casual and allow you to talk to recruiters and professionals directly. I believe the next one is the Supply Chain Dinner of our own Study association.
Lastly I’d like to point out that you should know something about your own value. Think about what you would like to earn, think about what kind of job you want to have. Think about the environment, team and other factors that might influence your job satisfaction. This is not only for your own good to get some awareness about what you want. But these are also questions you might get during your job application. Good luck!
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