Next month, thousands of bright students will graduate from college with undergraduate and advanced degrees. Not only will they graduate with prestigious degrees, but they’ll also be graduating with high expectations.
From my experience with coaching and preparing recent graduates for their careers, many of these bright individuals aren’t fully prepared for the real world. Part of the reason is because they’ve spent most of their time trying to earn good grades rather than actually preparing for their careers.
Below are five of my biggest tips that I share with students I mentor—and now I’m sharing them with you. Use these career empowering tips for yourself or share them with students and young professionals in your circle. These tips will help lead to a smooth college to career transition.
My 5 Easy #College2CareerTips
#College2CareerTip 1: Connect with career services before you leave campus. This department is a gold mine for students and recent graduates. They will be able to provide you with helpful career resources and connections.
#College2CareerTip 2: Equip yourself with a polished résumé. Your résumé is your ticket for landing the career of your dreams. Let a couple of your mentors review your résumé and ask them for their honest feedback. This is vital because your résumé has to be A-1!
#College2CareerTip 3: Make strong connections with key professors. Identify and connect with a few professors that you like. Ask them if you can keep in touch with them for professional purposes after you graduate. Making such connections can help you secure some good job leads in the future.
#College2CareerTip 4: Join a national professional association. Conduct some quick research and determine which national professional association within your major field of study interests you most and become a member. If you join the group before you graduate, you probably will receive a significantly discounted “student membership†rate.
#College2CareerTip 5: Clean up your social media profiles. A lot of employers research prospective employees by checking out their social media pages. Don’t waste your time trying to figure out if they can or should be utilizing this tactic to screen potential employees. Instead, just do yourself a favor and ensure that your profiles only have professional content, images, and messages displayed.
Add your own empowering tweets with hashtag #College2CareerTip. These powerful tweets will help the next generation of leaders prepare for the “real world†in this tough economy. Let’s motivate and empower them.
Antoine Moss, Ph.D., (@2PositiveTweets) is a nationally recognized resource on internships, early career achievement, leadership and motivation. CEO and founder of CEO Style Consulting L.L.C., Moss empowers professionals and organizations to reach their full potential, and serves as speaker, workshop instructor and consultant. The author of Learn to Intern CEO Style, Moss has been a featured expert on outlets including Fox 8 TV News and George Fraser’s 2011 Power Networking Conference.