When applying for jobs fresh out of school, people often find themselves intimidated by 2 things: the years of experience needed for an "entry level" job and the required skills that were never taught in school. Yes, it may be true that the job listing included those to weed out the unconfident and don't really require half of them, but... what if the job really needs those skills you never learned?
6 TIPS ON QUICKLY GAINING NEW SKILLS & YEARS OF EXPERIENCE DURING/RIGHT OUT OF SCHOOL
If you're in college, choose a major, minor, & electives that match closely with your dream job. Look at the skill list, description, and resume examples for the job to guide you. That way there will be less to catch up on later.
Attend local keynote speeches and conferences. They're often free and sometimes worth paying for. If you can't find any, watch TED Talks and listen to podcasts.
Take free online classes or watch youtube tutorials. I learned Adobe CS (photoshop, illustrator, etc.) via youtube. If you don't have the software the course is teaching, go to your local library (college public libraries are best) and they may have the resource. Some great online courses I took for social media/web were facebook blueprint & google analytics which can both give you real certificates.
Do an internship or shadow someone. Do not base the internship value on pay if you can, but base it on the value of the information you get!
Start your own business to prove and test your skills if you can. You can build something for yourself and put "CEO" on your resume as a bonus. You will learn a lot since you have to wear many hats to make it run. If you start early and it's related to your desired field, you can use those as years of experience.
If starting your own business is a lot, volunteer to help local small businesses or friends, write a blog, start a youtube channel, etc.
MY REAL LIFE EXAMPLE: I currently do social media marketing and can technically say that I have 4 years of experience and a related certification even though I've only been out of college for a year. This is because I used social media marketing to promote my business since about 2016, did a social media internship senior yr (graduated Dec 2017), got certified online for Google Analytics, and after college, did 2 temporary social media/digital marketing jobs before getting my current job in May 2018. I didn't want to sound too unrealistic in my interview so I said I had 3 years of experience, showed my resume, etc., and was able to land the job (probably against people older than me with "real" job history)!
Comments