First, some employment perspective for recent (or soon to be) college grads: I feel for you. It’s a rough job market, I know. A recent Rutgers University study revealed that only 51 percent of students who have graduated from college since 2006 have a full-time job. Eleven percent are unemployed. It’s not going to be easy.
But it’s hard to be sympathetic towards a recent grad like the one profiled in this article who says she applies to five or six jobs a day (good), but wakes up at 9 a.m. because she has “nothing to wake up for” and spends the rest of the day “watching TV and reading — all while wearing makeup, just in case an employer calls for an in-person interview.”
C’mon. If you really want a job, don’t sleep in and watch TV all day. Get up earlier and spend the entire day looking for work. Contact potential employers. Customize your cover letters and resumes to each position. Call the place you’d love to work and offer to take on a project for free in your spare time. That will help your job prospects a lot more than watching TV.
Mark Cuban describes this well on his blog:
In this kind of economy, it really is a numbers game. You are going to have to keep on applying for everything and anything that opens a door you want to walk through. You can never slow down. It’s hard work finding a job. If you have bills you have to pay, and it means taking a night job in order to keep looking for the day job or to keep a job you want, do it. Be a waiter, a night janitor, wash clothes, sell vacuum cleaners door to door, whatever you need to do, all the while reminding yourself that it opens the door for your future.”
Now, for the high school students…
Get your first job while you’re in high school.
Everybody needs their first job at some point—the job you take because you don’t have any work experience and know you can’t afford to be picky. Why not do that in high school? It’s a lot easier on your ego to flip burgers when you’re seventeen than it is when you have a college degree. You’ll have something to list on your resume and references you can give to potential employers. Thrive at one job and you’ll have an advantage when you look to move on to your next one. Have a string of successes by the time you graduate from college and you’ll be ahead of the job-seeking competition.
And if you’re on your way to college this fall, here’s a past post on skills that will help you land a job, and another about how a remarkable college career will improve your employability.