5 Strategies To Kick-Start Your College Job Search In 2016

By Julia Dunn on December 28, 2015

Calling all college students: is it your 2016 New Year’s resolution to find a fabulous job? Have you had trouble navigating applications, or gotten stuck in ineffective job search techniques that are wasting your time?

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Many students think they know how to conduct an effective job search, but as weeks or months go by without much luck, it’s easy to get discouraged or upset about a lack of results. Start 2016 off with a great new job by making these five changes to your job-search strategies.

1. Search online work-study and non-work-study jobs through your university.

If you’re looking for on-campus or local jobs for full-time students, check your university’s online listings of work-study (if you qualify through financial aid) and non-work-study jobs. Using your college’s online job postings is useful for narrowing down what you may be looking for, and may get you more results than if your primary search tactic is simply asking around to the people around you about any openings they may know of.

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2. Don’t send an identical resume to different employers … for 2 reasons.

Many students think it won’t matter if they send the same resume to many employers.

For one (on a technical basis), employers will completely disregard your resume if you have the wrong company name written at the top of your application materials (cover letters and resumes). This is a sloppy and preventable mistake — make sure that the application you’re submitting to the hiring manager is labeled for that specific job, and not for another one.

Secondly, you never want your resumes and cover letters for different jobs to be identical in content. Your materials will be a lot stronger if you tailor your resumes and cover letters to highlight different experiences that are relevant to different positions.

For example, say you intend to apply for two different positions: an editing job at a newspaper and a science educator position at a local children’s museum. While there are skills that are applicable to both positions that can be listed on both resumes, you’ll want to highlight your writing experience more strongly on the editing job application and your biology research internship on the science educator application. It may be a waste of space to mention your spear fishing certification on a resume for an application to become a childcare assistant at a preschool (then again, you never know).

You’ll increase your chances of getting an interview with the manager if your supplemental materials look like a good match for the position, and again, it won’t really help you to list experience raising a winter hog on a resume for a mental health educator as much as it’ll help you land an internship with Future Farmers of America.

Be intentional with what you include on resumes and cover letters going to different people; pay attention to which types of work experience you want to use for different resumes going out to different job opportunities that are not created equally.

3. Use your campus’ career center (ask for help!).

Are you weak on interview skills, or unsure how to format your resume? Check out your university’s career center!

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Resources like these are great for students looking to become more competitive job seekers. College career centers offer workshops and training about employment basics for students, including mock interviews and seminars about choosing majors that will prepare you for career paths of potential interest to you.

The career center can work with you to help you gain confidence that might ultimately bridge the difference between getting or not getting a part-time/full-time job during college or afterwards.

4. Get on LinkedIn.

This online resource is more useful for students who are about to or have already graduated college, but it’s definitely an advantage to get your LinkedIn up and running sooner than that. While you probably won’t use LinkedIn to find any small part-time job scooping ice cream or selling clothes at a boutique for some extra cash in between classes, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for students going after their big dream career, and it’s a phenomenal networking tool.

To explain it most relatably, LinkedIn is like the professional version of Facebook, loaded with data regarding all of your accomplishments, experiences, and interests that may attract employers to your profile. The more complete your LinkedIn profile is, the more frequently you’ll be matched with job opportunities you’re interested by.

5. Quality over quantity.

It makes sense to think that the more jobs you apply for, the higher a chance you’ll have at landing an interview and getting the job. However, you should consider thinking otherwise — it’s actually more effective to spend more energy on applying for fewer jobs. This way, you’ll focus more productively and make sure to flesh out applications to jobs you really want, rather than spreading yourself thin by applying to 15 jobs.

If you submit 15 poorly-constructed job applications, you probably won’t get any of them. The effort you channel into just a few applications will stand out when a manager is reading through application packets, and you’ll more likely than not get through to an interview.

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Job searches can be time-consuming and feel tedious sometimes, especially for students who are very busy, but making some or all of these job-search changes can significantly quicken the process without wasting your time. It’ll be 2016 in not too long — why would you want to waste time using job-hunting strategies that aren’t working for you?

Good luck!

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