Hi all!
I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas/New Years break with lots of rest and intention for the new year!!
Before I begin I want to preface that this is not career advice and I am no expert. I have just found each time I have entered the job market I have had more success than the last and I wanted to share these tips as I feel they would have been so beneficial to have learnt in high school!
For a bit of back story, I am a psychology student, and for any of us studying whether that be in university, tafe or high school there’s this anxiety that creeps up about the job market. Last year, I went through this to the point where I was hyper fixated, I booked a meeting with my universities career counselling help me find more options other than “Psychologist” as I felt I didn’t have the grades to only be met with finding out more about how to become a “Psychologist”. So I began to I research my career options by myself, I joined mentoring programs through my university, I doom binged YouTube trying to find the answers I desperately lacked. Through these experiences I feel I have learnt quite a few transferable skills that I thought I’d share for everyone who is looking to either get a new job as a part of their New Years goals, or for school leavers who are looking to enter the workforce.
Firstly, a kicka** cover letter can really do wonders! When I first moved out of home and into the city where my university is I found it was so hard to even get employers to look at me resume, let alone get hired. Even though I thought I had a pretty well thought out Cover letter, in the mentoring program I participated in I learnt that Cover letters can’t always be cut and paste.
Here’s my tips for a kicka** cover letter:
1. You need to learn to “sell yourself” like the company would be lucky to have you as an asset, even if it’s an entry level position! This has always been a struggle for me as I have always struggled with my self esteem. However it has been suggested to me to get my partner, my parents or a friend to write one for me and adjust it to my needs. ChatGPT is also a really great resource, just put in the position, your employment/volunteering experience, hobbies and certifications and ask ChatGPT to tailor all of those to the job your trying to apply for!
2. Tailor your cover letter to the company! If it’s not mentioned in the listing do some light research into the company and find their values! Reflect and see if you relate or can learn to relate to these values! These values are what makes your cover letter stand out! It has shown that (even if you are, which no judgement because aren’t we all!) just applying for jobs on a whim! And that your not using the same old to boring cover letter for every single job.
Resumes, I always thought that I had to list every single job experience, certificate, hobby and grade on my resume. However, I have learnt that it can be handy having 2 resumes, an academic one with academic achievements for applying for things such as scholarships (I did get accepted into a scholarship for my local region, so I can say it does work), and a professional resume, this doesn’t mean to leave out all academic achievements from this resume but it just means to paraphrase and not go into too much detail!
The professional resume is the one I’m going to focus on:
1. If you’re in university, write no more than a sentence stating your degree and your career aspirations. Then a small section on your educational experience, if your a high school student write your school and the year you graduated. If university student, write degree, then uni, and expected completion date.
2. Occupational experience: make sure to write down each job in order of most recent at the top to least recent at the bottom, this is a mistake I made that my high school told me to do and always confused prospective employers and was one of my top comments in every interview I went to!
3. Occupational Experience: don’t write too much about the your role in the job! 2-4 sentences should be enough to detail everything that needs to be said! And your prospective employer doesn’t have the time to sift through all of the words! For all of my fellow worst folks, I found that asking ChatGPT for help synthesising everything I wanted to say was very helpful!
4. Volunteer and Certifications: you don’t need to go into a lot of detail, as high school students or even uni students your not expected to have lots of volunteer experience or certifications, however the experience is always helpful if you do.
Lastly, I wanted to talk about interviewing! This is one that always gets better the more you do it, however here is a few tips before a job interview:
1. Dress presentably, whether this be for a job in hospo, retail or something that pertains to your career aspirations dressing up a little (not like your going out for dinner) shows your interviewer that you take the job seriously (I know it sounds like a boomer tip 🤭 but it’s true)!
2. Be confident! And if you can’t, fake it until you make it! They are hiring, they’re the ones who need the staff, so you are a hot commodity and you should be treated like one (obv please don’t say that in an interview)! Your confidence will be admired!
3. if you are unsure about a question they have asked, it is okay to say you don’t know! Especially if you’re willing to learn and expand upon your skill set!
4. Work your experience to fit the job! You worked in hospo before but your looking to become a sales rep? You would use your ability to work in a fast paced environment with a vast majority of individuals to assist in your ability to make sales.
Again I’d like to say that this is in no means sound and concrete advice, and I’m not a professional! I’m just sharing my own career anxiety spiral to help others! If any of you have any job hunting tips you’d like to share please feel free to add them below or if any of my tips need refining or can be adapted I’m very interested to see what you have come up with!
I really hope this helps everyone who is struggling with the job market at the moment!
