Tips for a Job Hunting New Grad

Hello everyone! This post is going to be the culmination of everything that I have learned while job hunting during my last semester at the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford.

If you are reading this, you may be thinking about or are already in the process of hunting for a job after the completion of your technical degree. If you are not, or are you are just searching for an internship, then continue reading as some of these tips will be applicable to internships as well.

I have decided to share my knowledge as I am sure that it may be helpful to others in a similar situation, where they are afraid they might not score a decent job after college. I was deeply afraid, which was what had led me to create my blog post earlier this year about how I was falling behind my peers and I needed to try harder.

Thankfully, my effort had paid off, and I was able to score dozens of interviews with companies which includes Big Tech, and I have recieved 5 wonderful job offers in total, which was something completely unthinkable to me only half of a year ago.

I believe these tips helped me succeed and that they will help you as well.

Quit Wasting Time

First and foremost, quit wasting your time! The tech field may be expanding at a rapid rate with unparalleled growth, but so is the number of applicants. There will almost always be someone better than you or more experienced than you applying for the same position. If you are serious about getting that job or internship, then you need to be early and start preparing in any way you can.

Be proactive. Start following these tips today.

Improve Yourself

Depending on how much time you have, you may be able to improve your skillset before you begin the job hunt. Of course, for you to improve your skillset, you need to figure out where you want your career to take you. If you plan on becoming a programmer, then start reading Cracking the Coding Interview and practicing LeetCode Questions, both of which are very important for programming related interviews. If you are going more into "technology," then your best bet may be to get certifications and practice sought-after skills through projects.

I knew that my career was going down the "technology" route, so thats what I decided to do. I focused on studying for the CompTIA trifecta and had managed to get my A+ and Network+ over the summer, both of which were impressive to interviewers. This demonstrated to them my desire for learning and gaining knowledge, which is something that companies desire from college graduates.

Besides those ideas, one can improve in other ways. One important idea is to quit things that waste your time unecessarily, such as games. If you are going to be job hunting while in school, you are going to be crunched for time, so you need to prioritize where that time ends up. Gaming should not be the answer.

Apply Early

The early bird gets the worm, and that holds true for jobs. A lot of early career / new graduate / internship roles start their hiring process very early to fill quoatas. Even though graduation may seem far away, it is never to early to start applying for jobs.

As time goes on, many of the early career opportunities are taken up and the masses fight for what is left, making what little opportunities that exist hard to get. I know this from personal experience when I failed to find an internship for this Summer when I started applying in February of this year.

If you are applying for jobs for when you graduate in July, start applying in the fall semester. The number of opportunities and the chance to land one of those opportunities are increased dramatically the earlier you apply.

Fix up that Resume / Portfolio

Before you apply anywhere, you need to fix up that resume and portfolio. A good resume will be the difference between your application being automatically rejected and you receiving an actual interview.

Here is a list of things I would recommend for your resume:

• Your resume should be concise but very detailed. You want to put in as much experience that you have, whether that be work experience, projects, or tools that you are very comfortable with.
• Don't be afraid to put in skills that are not entirely relevant to the position you are applying for. Most companies love asking about your projects and skills and may even find them useful in some cases which may get you some bonus points.
• Use quantifiable metrics whenever possible, such as demonstrating how a project eliminated costs or helped to increase work efficiency by a certain percentage. This will help you get past the ATS scanner that will automatically reject some applications and also helps to demonstrate to the company that you are an asset that will help improve their business in some way.
• Do NOT put in skills, tools, and technologies that you don't have working experience with. Expect to be quizzed on anything within your resume on your interview. Never lie.
• Include soft skills in descriptions of past experiences and projects. You don't need to dedicate a whole section to soft skills such as 'leadership,' as they will find out more about that during the interview. However, it is a good idea to include keywords such as 'leadership' and 'customer service' within your resume, such as in the descriptions of projects and work experiences to help you with the ATS scanner.
• Keep it to 1 page and formatted nicely. Hiring managers have hundreds of resumes to sort through and they on average spend less than a minute analyzing each resume. They don't have the time nor desire to go through more than a single page unless you are extensively skilled. More than likely as a new college graduate your formatting is off which is expanding the amount of space required, or you have unecessary amounts of information within it.
  • Also, keep it in PDF version as some Word documents can look different on other people's screens. PDF's are also easier to run through an ATS scanner.

Your resume should also include a link to any portfolio that you may have, whether it be a GitHub profile, a website, a blog, or something else that demonstrates your professional ability in certain fields. Now would be a good time to freshen them up.

Fix your GitHub profile by adding more repositories with projects you have and by making correctly formatted README.md's that demonstrate what the project is about and how to get it to work. An empty GitHub profile is a bad sign, especially if you plan on getting into development at all.

Another nice thing to create or freshen up is a blog, such as this one. A blog will demonstrate more about who you are and your thought process when it comes to tackling problems and challenges. You might not believe that interviewers check out blogs, but I have had multiple instances where they did, especially with my capstone project. They will get to learn more about you, of which is not displayed on your resume.

Apply Everywhere, but Target the Best First

As mentioned before, it is best to apply early, but where do you apply to? How many jobs do you apply for? These are some questions that I had when applying for jobs.

My advice would be the following:

• Search for 'new graduate,' and 'early career' jobs first. These jobs are tailored for, well, new graduates and their expectations for applicants are much lower than that of junior roles. They often hire around graduation dates, offer lengthy and strong training programs, and great rotational programs for people who aren't entirely sure of where they want their career to go. They are designed for you, so apply for them first!
• Use LinkedIn, Indeed, and Handshake as your primary job search tools. I have found these websites to be the best when it comes to searching for jobs, especially Handshake and LinkedIn. Filter them down based on keywords such as 'new grad' and be surprised at how many results come up.
• Keep a lookout for career fairs. Career fairs offer you the opportunity to meet with campus recruiters directly, giving you an edge when applying for jobs. Two job offers that I had received had come from a career fair where I was able to use the recruiter as a reference. You also get to learn more about the company, the interview process, and other important information when going through these events.
• Apply for jobs at companies you may not have heard about previously. It's okay to do this, but make sure you at least know what you are getting into before doing it. Look at their webpage, look on glassdoor for reviews, make sure it's a place you might consider working for and then apply. Job applications take a long time, and spending hours on researching a position that you probably won't get might be fruitless. You can research more if you are called for an interview.
• Apply for as many jobs as you can. You may like some opportunities and companies more than others. You may also have higher hopes for some than others. You getting to final interviews with a company might make you believe you don't need to keep applying. However, many recommend you apply for 100 or more interviews, with 100 being on the low end. I was panicking when I realized that opportunities were dwindling by October and I had only applied to 100 jobs with no offers in sight. I wish I had applied to more and felt more comfortable.
  • It may be good to create an excel spreadsheet to keep track of the positions you have applied for.

Know Your Resume

As mentioned previously, everything on your resume is fair game within an interview. They may ask you many job specific questions, but they will also probably ask your questions about your projects or experiences with some technologies that you have stated on your resume. They may be generic questions about where you applied them, or specfic questions that tells whether or not you truly know your stuff. You need to be prepared to answer these questions.

If there is anything on your resume that you can not easily explain what it is, how and why you should use it, where you have used it, and actively demonstrate working knowledge of it, then you should consider either removing it from your resume, or refreshing on those skills.

A good strategy is to make sure to go through some crash courses on material you know are important to the job that you already have worked with before just to make sure you don't forget anything simple. For example, you may have worked a lot with linux, but you may not remember what every directory is used for, which is something even I was tested on. Know your resume!

Research Before the Interview

Always always always research the company before the interview! They are going to almost certainly ask you why you want to work for the company, why you chose the industry that the company is in, and why you chose the position that you are applying for. You need to have actual interest in the company, their products, their culture, their mission, and their principles to effectively answer their questions and be deemed as an applicant that knows what they are getting into and that they are actually interested in the company.

You have to understand that businesses want to hire someone that will grow their business by identifying problems and places where improvement can be done and improving it. Someone who does not have an interest in the company, their principles, mission, products, customers, and future will not be that someone. The interview will be able to weed out those who fail to meet this requirement.

Later in life this requirement may be lackened, as per my own opinion, as one will be able to provide technical solutions from their wealth of experiences in the field. However, we are young, innovative, and energetic, and they are hiring our passion. A new graduate applicant needs to have interest in the company and that passion to rise above others, especially those with more experience.

Besides the company, be sure to study what type of interview questions they may ask and what the interview process is like, something that can be found on glassdoor where those that have already went through the interview process for your position share their experiences. You can

This can be instrumental in helping you prepare for your interview. Do not fully trust or invest much time into specific questions as they change per interviewer, rather, look at the type of questions answered and invest your time into that.

Besides glassdoor, you should also study the job description as it will feature many of the skills they are looking for in a candidate, hopefully of which are on your resume. You should brush up on those skills featured on the job description before your interview.

Draw Conclusions From Past Experiences for Behavorial Interviews

One of the key components of interviews for early career jobs are behavorial questions. In fact, in the majority of jobs I have applied for that were early career, whole interviews were dedicated to behavorial questions. Behavorial questions are going to be the predominant questions you need to prepare for based on my own experiences.

Behavorial questions are going to give the hiring manager more of a chance to understand you, and not just your skillset. They, hopefully, expect you to be relatively new to the professional field and they want to capitalize mainly on your potential. Skills and knowledge can be learned and attained through time, but changing who you are is a lot harder to change.

They will be asking questions about you and how you work. To answer these, you need to draw conclusions from past experiences and adapt them for the question at hand. They don't want you to just say you work good on a team, they want you to demonstrate it.

The questions will typically be phrased in a way similar to "tell me about a time when [something]." The following are some of the many common questions that I have been asked throughout all of the dozens of interviews I have done:

• Tell me about a time when you had a deadline and were running behind. - They want to see how well you work under pressure, how well you work with a team with time constraints, how you prioritize work, and how you overcome these frequent challenges.
• Tell me about a time when you had to work with a difficult team member / customer. They know you will undoubtedly have to work with difficult team members and customers, and while it may be stressful, it is work that has to be done. They want to see you overcoming those difficulties, completing your work successfully, and leaving the customer happy, all while not becoming difficult yourself.
• Tell me about a time when you created and implemented a solution into your place of work. This is a very difficult one. They want to see where you actually benefited the place you worked for in some way, as they hope you will benefit their business too. For those with little work experience, this is hard.
• Tell me about a time you failed at work. The hiring manager knows you are human. You will make mistakes. They want to see that you will take ownership for your mistakes, correct them, and learn from them. Be sure to include in your response how you learned and then benefited from the experience, as that is what they want to see.
• Tell me about a time you overcame a difficult challenge / had to work with something you didn't know. They want to see your willingness to learn, adapt, and overcome obstacles. They want to see you willingly struggle with something and succeed at learning it and putting it into practice. A good way to answer this is by explaining a project you worked on and learned by yourself.

The goal of these types of questions are to see who you are, how you act, and how you work. They want a good worker who will learn and grow and overcome challenges. They are investing in you.

As stated, you need to use past experiences to answer these questions. Your experiences should give enough detail to the interviewer without overloading them with unecessary information which is known as the situation, provide them with the task that you needed to accomplish, the actions you took to overcome that task/challenge, and the resolution or response of your actions in conflict with the situation. This method of 'storytelling' is known as the S.T.A.R method, which is a method often requested and utilized in interviews. Find out more about the S.T.A.R method here

It may be difficult to come up with an experience for every question they asked. Sometimes I was asked questions that I did not prepare for and had to draw faroff conclusions on experiences that didn't have much relevancy. It can fluster you, for sure. The best way to combat this is to prepare as many experiences as you can prior to the interview. Experiences can be used for more than one question, you just need to adapt the question to fit the answer. Having many examples available in your brain, though none perfect, will give you a better chance at identifying one where you can successfully answer the question with on the fly during the interview.

Don't be afraid to use experiences outside of technology. I have used experiences from my time at Walmart to answer many of the customer service related questions that you will undoubtedly be asked. Draw from everywhere.

Sometimes it is a requirement to adapt your answers to principles of the company. Some companies, such as Amazon, want their applicants to demonstrate their principles through their experiences. Some companies may not explicitly state this, but adapting your experiences to accomodate for as many as possible will surely give you some bonus points as an applicant. It will also show that you are interested more in the company, which is always a good sign for hiring managers.

Practice and Adapt!

I researched the job and company, studied the required knowledge, and vocalized my answers for my behavorial interviews for hours before each interview. Doing this, along with getting active feedback during interviewed had allowed me to strengthen my knowledge in various areas while improving my conciseness in my answers and my confidence in general.

After every interview, I wrote down the behavorial questions asked and prepared better examples for them in case they were asked again in different interviews. I then practiced those same questions outloud, helping to strengthen my working memory of it.

Overtime, most interviews became easier and I didn't feel as much pressure getting into them, allowing me to be more myself. Feeling confident in your answers based on your constant feedback and improvement will help you become an even stronger candidate.

Sell Yourself

My last piece of advice would be to sell yourself. Never lie, instead, make your strengths clear and apparent. I am 100% certain that I was able to attain the job offers that I had because of my passion to learn. I made sure to let them know that I would be constantly improving myself outside of work, gaining certifications and knowledge that would make me a stronger worker overtime. I evidenced that through my work at school and my decision to improve myself this summer by gaining as much knowledge as possible.

A friend of mine was able to score a job at a company in the agriculture side of business due to their passion for the industry. She truly wants to help improve it and has made most of her work through college about agriculture. Her passion in that field was certainly one of the main driving factors to hire her, and is something that might not have been displayed through the resume or interview questions.

Resumes and interview questions only can tell the interviewer so much about you. You need to work in those passions that you have into the interview somehow. You need to do this to set yourself apart from the masses and give them an additional reason to hire you.

While I do not recommend writing cover letters for every job, I would recommend doing it for jobs you really want or jobs at bigger companies. I have had very little success with scoring interviews with companies where I have attached a cover letter and it took a long time to draft, but they do serve a purpose. They give you the ability to convey your passions and interesting things about you during the application review stage, potentially alotting you an interview slot where you might not have gotten one before.

Sell yourself. Show them who you are, and who you will be to them. Demonstrate that you are an asset.

Conclusion

These tips were designed for early career jobs, and your experiences may vary widely, especially if you are applying to jobs above typical new graduate, early career, entry level, and some 'junior' level positions. I would expect those interviews to be much more technical than the ones that I have encountered.

Still, I hope these tips have helped you out! Good luck on your job hunt!