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Careers | Employment Search Suggestions for College Applicants
- Register and use your campus career services. Do this before attending career fairs and finding that you need to sign up to participate later in on-campus interviews.
- For a career fair, consider attending by yourself and not with friends or in a group. Your mission is to best represent yourself to potential employers. Avoid offending your roommate or being offended when an employer chooses to focus on just one of you or one of you dominates the conversation to the detriment of the other. Focus on your career needs and business for being there, not your social needs.
- Be sure to meet representatives across different types of industries, from different businesses in the same industry and from locations you might not have been considering. At a career fair, make pre-planned 'outside the box' contacts a priority. It'll help refine your pre-employment skills, broaden your outlook and maybe find you the connection you didn't realize was out there.
- Warm up at a career fair with a couple of firms you've never heard of; talk to firms that are located outside your perceived geographic limits; introduce yourself to representatives from industries you weren't initially considering. Save your key visits for after you've personally settled into the career fair.
- If you've gotten coaching on your resume, be sure yours and the 'next student from the same major' haven't used verbatim materials from the coaching session. Distinguish yourself and your resume.
- Provide just one email address for yourself.
- Include phone numbers for both your school year, between semesters or summer residence.
- Have resumes ready to share and distribute with employers at either career fairs or on-campus interviews.
- Dress and act to be taken seriously for both the career fairs and interviews.
- Participate in the opportunities provided on campus to improve your interviewing, communications and presentation. Apply continuous improvement to your job hunting processes.
- Follow up when you're interested. Don't leave it to recruiters who see hundreds of resumes to always be able to remember your conversation or what you were wearing that day.