4 Strategic Tips for Every Upcoming College Graduate’s Career Search

Me sitting at my college graduation (unemployed) from the College of the Holy Cross in 2011

As announcements of job offers and post-grad plans from classmates and friends fill our social media feeds, it’s exciting to see great news happening to people around us. However, thoughts of comparison and panic can run deep when you are someone that is months away from graduating and without a job offer:

“Why haven’t I secured a job yet?”

‘Am I behind?”

“What am I doing wrong?”

“What am I not doing?”

“Did I miss my window to get a job? Is it too late?”

These feelings are quite familiar as someone like who felt these same sentiments in 2011 as a college senior, first-generation American, and the first in my family to get a job after receiving a college education. As I sit in my seat nowadays as a recruiter working exclusively with college and university students, these feelings still ring true today, and so is the feeling of uncertainty around whether you’ll get selected for a job interview or a job offer.

When I was in these shoes years ago, I remember taking on a load of mental stress and pressure that resulted in time and energy wasted, as well as making some uninformed decisions about my job search. So, before you follow the impulse to apply to every job out there and go down a similar path that I went through, I’d like to share four tips from my journey to help you accomplish the following:

• Save time and mental stress in your overall job search process
• Create and project a focus for your career search to help you stand out in today’s competitive job market
• Find that first job after graduation that you’ll love and are passionate about

TIP #1: Block out the distractions.

While there are many external, uncontrollable factors at play, what you can control is your mindset and mental health by embracing two facts of reality:

• Competing and comparing yourself to others will only serve as a distraction. Consistently thinking about your career search progress in comparison to someone else’s is a series of thoughts that don’t need to live rent-free in your head. They will only stall you from taking that next step and making strategic decisions about your job search, so acknowledge the impact of this thinking and its dangers on your mental health. (You’ll thank yourself later.)
• Recognize that everyone is going to move at their own pace. There’s no rule book or deadline that tells us when college seniors should be getting jobs, so don’t let the LinkedIn announcements from your peers discourage you or tell you that your timeline is late — because it’s not too late.

I’ll admit — I didn’t take this advice myself back then. Admittedly, my job search process ended up being much longer because I was stubborn and I allowed myself to do a few things I regret to this day as a result of unnecessary panic and stress. I acted impulsively and applied to hundreds of jobs on a whim. Whenever I got the interview, I realized I had no idea why I was applying or why I was actually interested because I applied out of negligence and urgency. I then got rejected every time, which I took really hard and often created vicious cycles of disappointment and self-criticism.

Once graduation came and went though, I knew my approach and mindset just wasn’t working anymore since I was still unemployed at that point. Eventually, I decided to break that vicious cycle, changed my mindset, and altered my search tactics (which I’ll be sharing with you shortly in my later points). Since making that shift, I found my first post-graduate job in less than two months from my college graduation, which to this day led to my 10-year career so far that I’ve absolutely loved — so stay with me as we keep going with these tips.

TIP #2: Set your priorities.

HubSpot’s Katie Burke and Colleen Grant capture this tip beautifully in Katie’s ultimate informational interview:

“Before starting your job search it’s important to think about what matters most to you as you begin your career. When you picture your first full time job, what sort of things are you envisioning that bring you energy? This could include job location, autonomy, company values, use of a preferred skill, etc.”

The key question to highlight here is, “what will bring you energy in a job?”

It took me a while to answer this question at first. Thinking back to my college years, I realized that I sacrificed my own personal interests in order to appease people like my family and pursue their ideal career pursuits for myself. (For context, my family strongly wished for me to pursue a medical degree and a career in healthcare.) That way of thinking caused me to apply for healthcare jobs I thought I was interested in. However, I ultimately came to the conclusion that while a noble profession, healthcare just wasn’t for me because it didn’t answer for what I was truly seeking from a job in the end:

• Job environment — I wanted a fast-paced team environment filled with dynamic, collaborative people, and a job where I was consistently talking with people instead of being alone most of the time crunching numbers on a computer screen.
• Type of work — I wanted to have more ownership of my day-to-day and work on projects that required creativity, analytical thinking and problem solving.
• Company values — I wanted to work with a team with strong values about doing good in our communities and promoting diversity, inclusion and belonging, especially as someone who felt like an outsider often growing up as a first-generation, queer person of color.

In addition to job environment, type of work, and company values, here’s an example of a few other things that my 22-year-old self heavily considered as priorities for my first job:

• Location — I wanted to be based in a city like Boston, not in the suburbs.
• Compensation and benefits — Because I was on my own right out of college and with very little money to my name at the time, unpaid jobs weren’t an option to support myself in Boston. I needed a job that could help me pay for rent, food and bills (especially student loans) as well as benefits to offset costs for some of my personal health needs.
• Leadership — As much as I focused on great company values, I also wanted to have leaders and a manager that were kind, supportive, trusting, and passionate about my career growth.
• Schedule and work-life balance — I sought a job that allowed work-life balance in which days off and vacation were norms instead of fantasies.

Everyone will have a different list or answer for what aspects of their first job matter most to them, but identifying those priorities early helps create the focus that will help you — and others too — find a great match for your first job. Even back then, I wasn’t blind to the fact that I would be spending most of my week in the workplace, so I thought, “why not try and find a job that would make me excited to go to work everyday?”

Once you’ve set your priorities, it’s then time to research potential fields, industries and companies where your ideal first job will be.

TIP #3: Do your research.

From my own experience as a job seeker and my observations as a recruiting professional, college graduates often skip this step and resort to this “spray-and pray” method of applying to every job that interests them (spray) and hope that they’ll get a response from an employer (pray). Suddenly, they’ve applied to 500+ jobs with the same resume and general cover letter — and probably spent hours, days, weeks, etc doing so — only to find that they were turned down for most if not all of them.

Whether it’s 2011 or 2021, the job market is always going to be competitive, and one way to stand out is to describe why you want to enter a career field with specific context. Nowadays, it’s not enough to want to enter a career field because you simply want to or find it interesting. You also want to speak to why that field and type of work appeals to you and matches your priorities and experience, which you’ll only be able to do by conducting career research through two steps:

1) Take your list of priorities and research a list of career areas (job fields, industries, etc) that align with your priorities. (Make notes of the ones that aren’t a great fit too — it will help remind you of your priorities.)

Start with resources that are readily available to you as current college students to find inspiration about careers to pursue like:

• This occupational outlook handbook (provided by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics) if you’re looking for hard data and statistics about career fields and jobs
• Visit your career center to meet with a career advisor and brainstorm career fields, and learn about upcoming events to meet employers visiting your campus community
• Meet with your professors and learn where past students have taken their careers
• Research alumni from your college/university by browsing your school’s alumni database to learn what fields or companies that alumni work in currently
• Survey friends and family and get a feel for what kind of fields they work in (or will be working in)

2) Identify jobs within career areas or companies that match your priorities, and build context about the skills and day-to-day responsibilities of the jobs.

With more information available than ever before because of the internet, here are some resources to get you started:

• Gain context about careers in fields like sales, marketing, business, etc through certifications like HubSpot Academy or Grow with Google and learn key skills required to get ready for jobs in these fields
• Learn about the day-to-day of jobs in a specific career field from thought leaders themselves through books and podcasts they’ve published (If you’re considering going into tech sales, here are some book recommendations and podcasts from top sales leaders in the industry)
• Check out companies’ and employees’ content on social media and their main website to learn about a company’s mission, culture, values, career opportunities, and advice they share about open opportunities. (For example — to learn about tech sales careers at HubSpot, we host a ton of content on YouTube, our HubSpot Sales blog, social media, and our Careers website, to name a few resources.)
• Review job search websites, like LinkedIn or Glassdoor, that aggregate job openings, reviews and other company information into one place for job seekers.
• Browse LinkedIn to find alumni from your college/university or people in jobs that you find interesting and ask for an informational interview to learn about how jobs function at their respective company

One may argue that this step feels like a ton of work and waste of time, and that your time would be better spent working on your resume and submitting job applications. (Fact: I thought this as a college senior myself.)

Let me describe the value though from the perspective of an employer:

For any open role, employers seek to hire someone to solve a specific business challenge. Often the person who is selected either has previous experience or showed potential based on a combination of their experience and their understanding of the work required. As upcoming college graduates with little to no full-time professional experience, it can be the research you’ve shown that can compensate for your lack of experience and instill trust that you’re the right candidate for the role. So my advice? Don’t skimp or take shortcuts on this step :)

TIP #4: Approach opportunities that best fit your priorities.

Once you’ve researched potential career areas and identified areas and jobs that match your priorities, it’s then time to start approaching companies and positioning yourself as a candidate.

Be intentional with your application materials.

• DON’T: Send the resume with all of your experiences and achievements for every job application.
• WHY: Recruiters spend an average of six seconds per resume to manage reviewing high volumes of applications. In that short time, recruiters are trying to make connections between your experience and what the job’s desired skills and attributes are for an ideal candidate. If recruiters can’t find or make that connection clearly, it’s on to the next candidate’s resume.
• TRY THIS INSTEAD: Submit a tailored resume to each job application by reviewing the job application and connecting the dots between your experience on your resume and the job’s desired skills and attributes. Borrowing from Katie Burke again, here’s her go-to tip for connecting the dots on your resume:

When I’m applying for a role, I try to think about dividing a page into two equal parts: the first side (on the left) is the skills I bring to the table as an applicant. The second side (on the right) is what the job description says the role entails with specific bullets on the skills or attributes for a desired applicant. Then I ask myself if the application I’m submitting connects those dots directly. Often times there are gaps that don’t seem obvious to you because you live them every day. As an example, when I applied to HubSpot my personal social media wasn’t very active, so it wouldn’t be obvious in a quick Google search that that was something I was well-versed in, nor was it clear on my resume. I used this simple exercise to recraft the bullets on my application and cover letter to reflect that experience and skill so it wasn’t left to the recruiter or hiring manager to either glean that themselves or find out later in the process.

Be cognizant about how you identify opportunities and express your interest to a company.

• DON’T: Whether it’s through your resume or cover letter or even through a written letter via e-mail or LinkedIn, don’t send a message to a company employee expressing your interest in a number of disparate areas at a company. (Example: “Hi Viennie, I’m interested in pursuing roles in marketing, sales, business analytics, and product management. Please let me know if I’d be a fit for any of these roles.”)
• WHY: While I can appreciate that most candidates do this as a way to get a foot in the door, it actually sends a confusing message to hiring teams and raises questions about whether you’re taking an intentional approach to your career goals. Don’t get me wrong — we’re all allowed to have a wide range of interests as multifaceted and multitalented human beings. However, most companies aren’t just seeking someone to fill a seat for an a job; rather, someone who wants to be remarkable and is intentional about their career growth within a specific area. For example, when I was considering HubSpot as my next career move, I had experience in customer service, sales, and human resources. While I could have been interested in any one of these areas, I was upfront about my interest to work on HubSpot’s People Operations team specifically. I wanted to be part of the team responsible for shaping and delivering its award-winning culture, and was hoping to translate my past experiences of supporting and empowering different communities to a role at HubSpot. Once I set and made my focus clear, it showed in my interviews — and well, let’s just say that the rest is history!
• TRY THIS INSTEAD: If you’re approaching a company and exploring their opportunities, lean into your priorities again. Then make a decision about which team and job will not only match your priorities, but also is one that you’ve researched well and can articulate how your experience and the context you’ll built so far will make you remarkable. From there, make sure to tailor any future messaging or application materials accordingly to your targeted career goals and interests.

Be adaptable and open to a hiring team’s recommendations.

• DON’T: Think that because one role you were targeting didn’t result in an interview or a job application, your chances are 100% dead at that company.
• WHY: I can’t speak to every company’s recruiting or hiring practices, but if a hiring team decides not to move forward with your candidacy for one role, you may be approached about another opportunity that they believe is a better match for your priorities and experience. As an example — when upcoming college graduates pursue entry-level sales at HubSpot, they can start their sales career either as an Inbound Success Coach (ISC) or a Business Development Representative (BDR). Often graduates gravitate to the BDR role because it’s the most common entry-level sales job in the industry. However, depending on their sales readiness and experience, the hiring team might decide that the BDR role is not a great match yet and will position the ISC role instead as a first start on our Sales team. While it can feel super frustrating, we don’t make that recommendation lightly. We do so because the ISC role is designed to prepare teammates for two things: 1) the fast-paced, competitive environment of tech sales without the pressures of a quota and 2) for the rigor of senior sales roles like BDR and an account executive. Historically, our ISC program has helped fuel the growth of HubSpot’s top performing BDRs, account executives, and sales leaders, and we’re proud to have a pathway like this for aspiring tech sales reps. If this is a recommendation that we suggest, it’s because we want to set you up for long-term success in sales instead of failure at the beginning of your career. Long story short — if hiring teams recommend another role, it’s because we still care about finding a match for you and your career growth.
• TRY THIS INSTEAD: Acknowledge that the original role to which you applied may not have been a great match at that particular point in time and have an open mind if hiring teams suggest another opportunity that’s a better match. If you want to try and re-apply at a later date, that is also an option!

This is by no means an exhaustive list of things to do for your career search, but is more of a list of tips emanating from the mistakes and reluctance I had as a college senior seeking employment after graduation — and are tips that I hope will help you to not repeat my mistakes.

Out of transparency, I don’t regret any of my decisions per sé because I wouldn’t be here with you now if I had done anything differently. However, I’m a big believer of working smarter, not harder, and I believe that adage applies here, especially for those of you looking for that first job of your career that you will always remember.

Best of luck on your post-graduation career search, and feel free to share your thoughts, trials, and tribulations with me — I’d love to hear them all!

You can follow Viennie for more tips and advice on LinkedIn or @thatuniversityrecruiter on Instagram and TikTok.