Looking for a job is never easy, especially when you’re a fresh graduate. This is when you need some career tips that are essential to kick-start your career!
1. Set up a preference order!
No two people are the same, and this is also true for companies. Before you start looking for your dream job, it’s a good idea to ask and answer yourself a few questions! Take out a piece of paper or your phone and write down 3 things you definitely want in a job. These could be about working conditions, colleagues, pay, anything that is important to you. Once you’ve got that, then you can move to the 3 things you don’t want to see. The end result will be a list of priorities and a list of prohibitions. This will give you a clearer picture of your preferences and a criteria that helps you choose between companies and positions. This is the first step of all career tips!
2. Get the most out of your CV!
A typical application package contains a CV, a cover letter and a reference. The CV is the alpha and omega of the job search, so you need to refine it until it is perfect! Zyntern will give you all the help you need! On the one hand, we’ll show you how to create the perfect CV, and on the other hand, filling in your Career Profile will take a lot of the burden off your shoulders. The biggest fear for career starters is not having anything to upload their CV with. An almost blank page can be terribly demotivating. To avoid this, you need to remember a basic rule: there is no such thing, as bad experience! Even the simplest student job, student union membership, volunteering or competition participation has given you invaluable skills, be proud of them! You’ll have time to sort out your experiences when you become a professional with years of work behind his back. Right now, anything goes!
3. A career tips are nothing without a honest preparation!
If you are really interested in the position and want to impress the interviewers, you must be prepared! Nowadays, thanks to employer branding, employers are sharing more and more information about their day-to-day activities online. Visit their websites and career pages, follow their social media platforms, watch their videos, read their articles! This will help you identify the key values that are at the forefront of the company’s life. Of course, it’s best if you can get in touch with a company representative. If you don’t have a wide enough network of contacts, use LinkedIn!
At the interview itself, you can expect 4 types of questions:
- Descriptive questions are the ones when they ask you to tell them about yourself, and your experience. Basically they want you to talk about your CV.
- Conditional questions ask you how you would react in different situations, how you would solve tasks. It’s a bit like a case study competition.
- For retrospective questions, you should give examples from the past when you solved a challenging task or problem.
- Stress questions try to distract you from your calm and test your reactions instead of the answers you have learned. They ask strange questions, interrupt you while you’re answering, and pretend that they’re not listening to you. But watch out, they are!
4. Manage your applications!
It is rare that you apply to only one place at a time. In such cases, you should create a simple Excel spreadsheet with the following columns: company, position, date of application, date of telephone interview, date of face-to-face interview, name of HR specialist, contact details of HR specialist. If you have used different CVs for your applications, please indicate these as well! Why is all this necessary? Put yourself in the HR specialist’s shoes. You like the candidate’s CV, you call to arrange an interview, and the person doesn’t even know a thing about your company, nor the job he/she applied for. Make sure you don’t lose a job because of inattention and laziness! If you apply via Zyntern, the system will list the positions you have applied for by default under “My applications”.
5. Never give up!
Sometimes even the best CV won’t protect you from that one rejection email. It can be even more painful when companies don’t even bother to get back to you. In such cases, all you can do is keep your head up, because it’s all part of the job search. It’s not the rejection that’s wrong, rather giving up afterwards! Perhaps the most important career tip is to learn from your mistakes. Review your submissions, ask for feedback, think about what you said during the interview and then use the lessons learned for your next job interview. As the saying goes, the road to your dream job is paved with rejected applications.
+1 Don’t be afraid to make a change!
Sometimes we start looking for a job, we do our research, we create the perfect CV, we prepare for the interview and we get the job we want, and then something goes wrong and it starts all over again. There’s nothing wrong with your first job not being your dream job. You’re young, there are lots of different companies and positions waiting for you, and you can even try yourself at a completely different job! But it’s worth to learn a little more about yourself, so that you can find a career path that will help you fulfill your potential. Personality tests can help you to understand why you can’t stand monotonous work, why you are a natural problem solver, why you are motivated or frustrated by dealing with a lot of people on a daily basis, etc.
Now it’s time to put these career tips into practice! On Zyntern.com you will find hundreds of internships and junior positions from the top hungarian and international companies!
