3 Things No One Tells You About Your First Real World Job Search

By December of your senior year, everyone is telling you that you need to get a job. As stressful as this is, you don’t need anyone reminding you because you’re going to find an opportunity – your determination to find a job means that your hard work will pay off: It’s all just a matter of time, so instead, to relieve some of the pressure, here are a few things we wish we’d known during our first real-world job search not too long ago – this helped us keep the right type of mindset and refocus our energies on the positives to come.

Your major won’t prevent you from looking into other options.

Family friends and strangers who didn’t even fund your college education might try to box you into a specific type of career based on your major (“Oh, you’re studying English? You must want to be a professor!”). Because of this, it’s easy to confuse a specific field of study with a narrow career path, but your major doesn’t define you or your career path, it is your college experience: registering for classes outside of your major, taking on demanding internships and participating in extracurriculars — which gives you an arsenal of skills that extend far beyond the world of your major.

Ask your parents and alumni about their first jobs out of college and where they are now – you’ll find that most people choose a job that is completely unrelated to their major, so if you find yourself itching to follow a fork in the road and try something new – a startup, a fellowship, a job abroad, then go forth and go for it.

When your friends get jobs, it’s not a reflection on you – but it will motivate you.

Not so fun fact: Your friends may get jobs well before you do, and while you should be happy for them, it’s enough to give anyone anxiety. The first thing to realize is that different industries have different hiring cycles – the industries your friends are choosing to pursue may hire candidates earlier than your desired industry. Your lack of prospects in December isn’t a reflection on who you are as a candidate (or even how well you can do a job) but instead may be all about timing.

The second potential reason that your friends are getting jobs before you is that they have a better search strategy. The silver lining there is that their success will not only motivate you, but also help accelerate your job search. Use your friends as resources – ask as many questions as you can so that you can knock your job search out of the park.

If you’re personable, you’ve already increased your chances.

Employers already know you don’t have 5 years of experience- no matter how many incredible internships you’ve taken on during school, winter break or over the summer, nothing can fully prepare you for a full-time job until you get a full-time job. What companies are looking for in you is potential, a willingness to learn and likeability. Having now been on the other side of the interviewing table, we know that even the most experienced candidate who absolutely crushed an interview got a rejection letter because he or she was flippant, arrogant and quite frankly, unpleasant to be around. Sorry, but not sorry – no one wants to work with someone they don’t like.

That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you’re applying to jobs where you think you’d be a great culture fit. Most organizations will include something about the company culture in the job description and they’ll definitely have it on their website. Find out as much information about the company and its employees as you can. Think about your work habits (are you collaborative and loud or do you like to eat lunch at your desk with your headphones in?). Then, try to picture yourself at the company. Be confident in your skill set, but humbled by the opportunity and most important of all, be kind to every single person you interact with both through email and when you go to your interview. Seriously, if you walk by the janitor, you should give a big, genuine smile and say hello, same as you would to the CEO. Everyone in the office talks, and if you make the mistake of assuming that only one person is the decision maker, you’ll fail the likeability test.

Biggest lesson of all? Relax because you are going to get hired – we know everyone tells you that, but it’s true. It might not be the most perfect job in the world – and it might not be the job you’re expecting, but you can rest assure that it’ll happen and you’ll learn so much about what you can accomplish. Plus, because our job is to get you a job, we won’t rest until you’re employed.

Good luck, Class of 2016 – we’re so excited to see where you land next!