





How will your friends react when you tell them you've landed yourself a great job? How will you feel with the dreaded bank manager is off your back because you have secured a substantial pay-cheque each month?
Most graduates hitting the job market for the first time expect to have to fill in loads of application forms, to take part in two-day interviews with all sorts of aptitude and personality testing, and to travel up and down the country with little to show for it.
But the truth is job hunting can be a fun, exciting and rewarding as long as you stay focused and concentrate on the profession you really want to follow.
It is unfortunate that many graduates get pulled along by the 'rush' to get selected and therefore spend a lot of time chasing jobs that don't really suit them. Hence this is why many graduates change jobs three or more times within the first 18 months out of college/university.
So, how do you stay focused with 200,000 graduates all after the 'best' jobs? Listed below are five top tips to help you tackle your job hunt in a systematic and business-like manner:
2. Be Smart
Think about, then action your individual job hunt. Be ahead of the game by re-writing your CV and application forms to have a business emphasis. Steer away from the common student writing style which includes too much emphasis on hobbies, course details, references, holiday travel and grades of every examination ever taken such as swimming, gymnastics and dance.
5. Be Professional
Invest as much time and effort as you can into researching your chosen profession and putting your application together. So many graduates see a position they like the look of and just throw anything down on paper in the vain hope that it will get them the job.
Researching the company and writing a personalised CV/application form may seem to be a fruitless exercise if you don't get offered the job but it is a catch 22 situation. If you don't put the effort in, your application doesn't stand a chance.
Spend at least a couple of hours finding out about the position on offer and a similar amount of time, if not more, writing the application/CV.
This time can be reduced further if you spend a little bit of time discovering more about what makes employers choose certain applications rather than others.